The terms “Sharing Economy” or “Collaborative Economy” have been commonly used in recent years to refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models and forms of work, from the development of far-reaching corporate digital platforms that have become means of organising cooperative practices, to local, regional and community-led collaborative initiatives in sectors such as housing, tourism, transport, social enterprise, culture and the arts, etc. Researchers from many disciplines are currently conducting ethnographic studies of practices, cultures, socio-technical systems and lived experiences of collaborative economies, producing case studies and data sets documenting these realities and their impacts and implications, as well as developing methodological and epistemological insights and sensibilities about approaching these contexts ethnographically.
The conference is supported by the COST Action “From Sharing to Caring: Examining the Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy” (CA16121, 2017-2021), developing a network of actors focusing on the development of collaborative economy models and platforms and on social and technological implications of the collaborative economy through a practice focused approach.
The conference aligns with the COST Action’s Working Group 1 activities to bring together different ethnographic case studies on collaborative economy with the aim to a) build a basis for developing a multi-faceted view on sharing and caring practices and b) develop a theoretical framework to interpret and classify the different cases.