Sharing economy as an anti-concept

Abstract

The “sharing economy”, a term often used interchangeably with the “collaborative economy” and “collaborative consumption”, is a recurrent topic both in public and academic debate on new Web-based services characterized by forms of peer-to-peer or business-to-peer sharing. This paper investigates it theoretically as an “anti-concept”, that is, an unnecessary and rationally unusable label forged to replace a concept endowed with greater legitimacy. A critique of the sharing economy as a common-sense construct is carried out in order to suggest its rejection as an analytical and interpretative category and to question any unconditioned cultural legitimacy of the sharing economy under its promoters’ economic interests. Four main critical issues are discussed: (a) the contradiction between the relational and the commercial dimension; (b) regulatory challenges related to the dimensions of labour, trust, risk and agency; (c) the injunction to share; and (d) the consequences of the sharing economy in terms of social change. The notion of neoliberal entanglement economy is proposed to replace that of sharing economy.

Citizen Perceptions of Government’s Resistance to Shared Parking

“…The results support findings from previous research, which has addressed how government bodies associate their resistive attitude toward sharing economies, based on existing rules and regulations (Kim et al, 2019;Leung et al, 2019), and that they are often slow to move innovation forward (Hong & Lee, 2018). The results also support findings from previous research that suggest citizens tend to defend sharing economies against the unfair limitations imposed by obsolete laws and regulations (Pedroni, 2019). At the same time, the study emphasizes the balancing power of people in making change happen, particularly through their election behaviour, group pressure aimed at politicians, and even civil disobedience in protecting their rights.…”

“…Extant laws and regulations to manage safety, workforce, privacy, and tax issues in such communityoriented distributed systems are either inapplicable or differently applicable for sharing economies (Leung et al, 2019), and which are therefore in need of being updated (Greene & McGinty, 2016). Also, citizens are argued to have an interest in defending the sharing economy against the unfair limitations imposed by extant laws and regulations (Pedroni, 2019).…”

“…Over the past decade, "sharing economies" have surfaced as a huge challenge for cities and governments (Vith et al, 2019). Although the term "sharing economy" lacks a clear and widely accepted definition (Gyódi, 2019;Pedroni, 2019), studies commonly emphasize the use of "slack resources" and the ways collaborative consumption can be beneficial for both individuals and societies (May et al, 2017). In a particular sharing economy, "idle resources" are allocated for "peer-to-peer" (P2P) sharing with people outside of one's typical social networks (Frenken & Schor, 2017).…”

The political economy of sharing

“…M. Pedroni understands the sharing economy as socio-economic relations provided by sharing platforms and associated with short-term access to private resources [12].…”

The cultural underpinnings of platformization: How social movement organizations helped form the category of the sharing economy

“…Our aim is not to explore how sharing economy platforms impact society and culture (Duffy et al, 2019), nor to disentangle the “contested nature” (Acquier et al, 2017) of the concept of sharing economy (see also Belk, 2014; Eckhardt et al, 2019; Pedroni, 2019), but rather to investigate how the sharing economy emerged as a prominent cultural category in the first place, and to consider the implications this emergence might have for platformization. That is, we approach the (sharing) economy as “an achievement rather than a starting point or a pre-existing reality that can simply be revealed and acted upon” (Çalışkan and Callon, 2009: 370).…”