User:Oana Spulber/sandbox

To be added to Sharing economy.

This article will be part of the Sharing Economy article

Sharing dynamics

Sharing economy can take different forms and can incorporate a wide range of structures. According to Russell Belk, sharing differs from economic exchange. Sharing increases the effective use of resources and it is characterized by free access to collective ownership. Two types of sharing that frequently occur are “demand sharing” and “open sharing”. Demand sharing occurs when children ask to be fed, but also when someone asks us for directions. Open sharing is implied when we tell a guest, “My house is your house.” This implies that they can use all the facilities the house provides without asking. With family members, such privileges are self assumed, while for those whom we have invited to share our home, these rights need to be established unless there is a history of such sharing practices between the host and the guest.

"Open sharing" involves in most cases "sharing in" and would be quite unusual with strangers. Belk introduces the concepts of sharing in and sharing out, to distinguish among examples of sharing that come close to family sharing and view ownership as common, and those which share with others but who stay outside a close circle of friends. When sharing involves dividing something between strangers or when it is meant as an act that occurs only once such as helping s stranger with directions, spare change or communicating the time of day, it is described as "sharing out".

Through sharing in and sharing out, resources can be attracted and transmitted so as to sustain sharing practices of the core, the contributors, and the public. "Sharing in" practices help build trust and contribute to group bonding purposes through extensive sharing of cultural capital, social or economic capital. "sharing out" economic and cultural capital is not limited in an economic sense, because economic capital (source code) is not limited, but divisible. The more people share in total, the greater the gathering of economic, cultural and social capital.

Sharing across

Andrea Hemetsberger introduced the notion of "sharing across". "Sharing across" is taking place when different forms of economic, cultural and social capital are shared across members, contributors and the public, for example when the public acts as advocate for open and free software, or shares their thoughts and comments with single contributors.

Sharing across can be seen as an extended or hybrid form of both sharing in and sharing out, partly as a result of sharing out, partly as a result of the low level of technological capital required to participate and the high level of development in open online communication. Sharing across influences the additional power of online sharing systems by bringing together the members of the sharing community, regardless if they are producers or consumers. For the "Sharing across" to function well, open systems are needed, systems where all kinds of information can flow without restriction.

== Gift economy vs Sharing economy ==

In Marcel Mauss's work "The Gift" he states that a gift logic is present in the large societies and it is a part of the capitalistic economy. He refers to various social insurance created by state, corporations and unions like family benefits to union or unemployment insurance as collective gifts. These techniques have the role of attaching workers to their employers and enforce social obligations on them, in the same manner gifts impose reciprocity in small communities. Gift economy distinguish itself from sharing economy through a few characteristics: gifts can be coercive, receiving a gift means an obligation in the future;gifts are personalized and alienable, to transfer the gift to a third person means undermining the relationship between the receiver and the giver. Compared to commodities who are alienable, gifts carry signatures of the giver. "In traditional gift economies gift exchange is also characterized by a time delay".

Commodities are by default alienable, so if we think about the online sharing practices they don't follow this patterns. The concept that comes close to sharing as a gift economy is online collaboration for free software. The free software movement has been debunked by several scholars. Steven Weber argues that the logic of gift is not sufficient for understanding free software and that network observation may give a better understanding of why people contribute to resources like open-source software. Another model of sharing practice is the free operating system, Linux. Linux is a model of commons-based peer production enabled by the network technologies of the Internet. Yochai Beckler states that current technological circumstances make sharing practices accessible due to the low investment required to participate. Namely, the only tools need are a computer and and a Internet connection.