x Foreword: The Sharing Economy
online (e.g., Benkler 2006; Ghosh 2005; Giesler 2008; Hyde 2010; Lessig 2004)
is now largely dead, there remain pockets of free shared content in open-source
software, wickis, blogs, BitTorrent applications, social media, and creative com-
mons applications (e.g., Hemetsberger 2012; Tapscott 2008). Nevertheless, as
with the banner of sharing, monetization has become a part of most online
offerings to the extent that some see willing consumer participation in such
media as another form of corporate exploitation of consumer labor and freely
provided consumer content (e.g., Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2008). In this
view, we have gone from “what’s mine is yours” (Botsman and Rogers 2010) to
“what’s yours is mine” (Slee 2015). There are many charges that consumer-pro-
ducers are also exploited in the gig economy of ridesharing and home-sharing
apps as well (Belk 2017b). But this isn’t all due to corporate exploitation either,
as illustrated by consumers’ grudging sharing of “club goods” within settings
like gated communities (Belk 2017c). For similar reasons, many voluntary and
noncommercial sharing organizations have foundered or become difficult to
sustain (Philip, Ozanne, and Ballantine, this volume; Schor et al. 2016).
In spite of its problems, the overall impact of the rise of the sharing econ-
omy and collaborative consumption has been positive. It has opened us up to
thinking about new models of ownership and use (Hyde 2010; Rudmin
2016). It has led us to reexamine the distinctions between gift giving, shar-
ing, and marketplace exchange (Belk 2010; Widlok 2013). It has caused us to
consider more sustainable forms of using limited resources (e.g., Lawrie
2012) and to consider more equitable models of resource distribution (e.g.,
Ferguson 2015; Gollnhofer, Hellwig, and Morhart 2016; Widlok 2017). And
it has moved us to reconsider how we may come to value cooperation over
competition (e.g., Leadbeater 2009; Sennett 2012; Tomasello 2009). It has
even caused us to imagine alternative forms of economy (Eckhardt and Bar-
dhi 2016). With cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and innovative business mod-
els lacking corporate hierarchies and middle persons, we may be poised for
the rise of distributed autonomous corporations and organizations that take
over our economies (Belk 2017a; Sundararajan 2016; Tapscott and Tapscott
2016). The result might be either sharing the profits with all or forcing us
into government programs of guaranteed incomes that are not contingent on
work. Therefore, while there may be nothing new in the basic concept of
sharing, the stir caused by the sharing economy is reshaping the way we live
and the ways we think about production and consumption. This volume
offers a highly welcome emersion into a range of these issues.
References
Axelova, Eleonora, and Russell Belk. 2009. “From Saver Society to Consumer
Society: The Case of the East European Consumer.” Advances in Consumer
Research 36: 824–825.
