Title: WHY NOT SHARE RATHER THAN OWN?
1WHY NOT SHARE RATHER THAN OWN?
- Russell Belk
- University of Utah
- USA
2Consider Daily Commuting
- Lone drivers in private autos SUV
- Air pollution, global warming
- Dwindling fossil fuels, global competition
- Increased stress triples heart attack risk
- Sharing alternatives (e.g., AutoShare, car pools,
public transit, bike sharing) - So why dont we share?
- Can we share more?
3Alternative Forms of Distribution
- Marketplace Exchange
- Gift-Giving
- Sharing
On the whole, you find wealth much more in use
than in ownership (Aristotle)
4Commodity Exchange
- Strangers barter or purchase with money
- Balanced transactions incur no debt nor
create/maintain social relations - Simultaneous exchange ideal
- Establishes equivalence between objects
- Simmels society of strangers (not friends or
enemies) - Sahlins balanced or negative reciprocity
- Egoistic
- In Derridas Economists views, the only form
of human transaction
5Gift Exchange
- In Mausss view, still based on reciprocity
(obligations to give, receive, reciprocate) - In Gregorys view, the opposite of commodity
exchange - Establishes relationships between people
- Ideally staggered
- Money taboos
- May involve Sahlins generalized reciprocity
- Social exchange and ritual prestation
- Altruism and agapic love possible, but not ours
- In Granovetters terms, even business
transactions can be embedded in this way (also
Carrier, Silver)
6Sharing
- A third alternative not fully considered
- Prototypeincome pooling and resource sharing
within the family predecessor the mother - A Marxian ideal from each according to his or
her abilities and to each according to his or her
needs - An Internet reality? File sharing, P2P, open
source, BBs, Wikipedia, free democratized
information - The open science/academic model since the
Scientific Revolution vs. closed
technology/business - But even the prototype of the family may pool
share less - IPR may trump biodiversity, human life, blood
organs
7Key Questions
- What dont we share
- more?
- Incentives to share
- intangibles?
- Incentives to share
- tangibles?
- Are these incentives changing?
- How does this change our understandings of gift
and commodity exchange?
8Sharing An Alternative to Private Ownership
- Includes
- Voluntary lending, giving away
- Pooling allocation of resources
- Authorized use of public property
- NOT contractual renting or leasing
- NOT Unauthorized use by theft or trespass
- We can share things, places, people, pets, ideas,
values, time, affection, animosity - Excludes non-volitional coincidence
- Sharing a common place of birth
- Sharing a language
- Sharing a set of experiences
9Example Car sharing
- Car Sharing, launched in 1987 in Switzerland and
later in 1988 in Germany, came to North America
via Quebec City in 1993. As of December 2005 - 17
U.S. car sharing programs claimed 91,995 members
sharing 1,737 vehicles, and 11 Canadian car
sharing programs claimed 13,576 members sharing
672 vehicles. - Toronto AutoShare 4 hours cost 33.81
- membership 100GST deposit 250
- 60 locations
- Book online some plans include insurance gas
10Sharing Defined
- The act and process of distributing what is ours
to others for their use (can also share in
production) - The act and process of receiving something from
others for our use - We may share what we feel is ours so that others
come to feel it is at least partly theirs to use
(ours) - Use may be for an indefinite or prescribed period
for our exclusive use or for use by us as well
as others - Givers and receivers can be individuals or groups
- Distribution may or may not make the access to
things more equal
11Cultural Influences
- Sharing, possession, ownership are all
culturally learned behaviors - In the West, possession ownership learned
first sharing, fairness, justice later - Australian aborigines learn sharing first
- Vestigial affect from nomadic past
- Led to difficulties with private cars land
- Chinese Zhanguang Japanese hole-in-one
- African hospitality
- Culture also prescribes what is selfish vs.
altruistic, generous vs. stingy, fair vs.
unfair
12Mixed Effects of Sharing
- Recipient can feel grateful or hostile
- May feel we get our fair share, more, or less
- Can reduce envy foster feelings of community or
create dependency feelings of inferiority - We may see sharing as a sincere effort to please
or a sop - Can take place within excess or insufficiency
- We may share broadly or narrowly
13Impediments to Sharing
- Feelings of object attachment
- Cathecting objects as part of extended self
(e.g., body organs) - Materialism
- The importance attached to possessions
- Components envy, possessiveness, non-generosity
- Fear of loss/damage, tragedy of the Commons
- Materialism accounts in 4 cultures
- E.g., Christmas giving
- From broad charitable giving
- To narrow giving with the family
14Sharing the Museum Without Walls
- Fine art is Finite
- But it can be broadly
distributed - Art Museums
- Inexpensive copies
- What is the problem here?
- Benjamins loss of aura
- Denigrating reproduction, fraud, fake, forgery
- Status hierarchies e.g, Visiting Luxor in Egypt
vs. Las Vegas, vs. books, Internet postcards
15Incentives to Share Intangibles
- Some of our intangibles are not legally ours
a view, classroom seat, our song - Other intangibles may be our property ideas,
designs, various creations (open science) - Academic ideas ours vs. plagiarized
- Presenting publishing sharing
- It also the way to make them ours
- We should give them rather than sell them
- We are more apt to share with doctoral students
- But sharing raw data less likely
- Others may admire our garden, but may not borrow
our tools, seeds, potting soil - Alternate model exists (e.g., Human Genome
Project)
16Sharing without Losing
- A song, joke, story, body, digital files
- Even books, journals, videos can be copied
- The online gift economy
- Linux, Napster, freeware
- BBSs, chat rooms, web sites
- Why join these virtual communities?
- Keeping while giving (Weiner)
- Cheap altruism (Coyne)
- Utilitarianism
- True hi-tech gift economy
- Other motivations Paying back, cornucopia,
movement - E.g., Reviewing
17Intangible Sharing Communities
- Marker goods
- Sharing Secrets
- Extended Self
- Sports fans, music fans, brand cults
- Proselytizing recruiting members
- Feeling of minority status, persecution,
uniqueness - iPod?
18Case in PointThe Grateful Dead
- Long known for tapers freely trading trading
(not profiting from) concert tapes - Evolved into digital downloading
- But in late November, 2005, GD did an about face
told Live Music Archive to stop making it
available - Fan uproar caused a partial reversal
- But GD already suggested shift
- From Internet as cornucopia
- To Internet as pay-per-play jukebox
19The Grateful Dead Brand
- The Dead had created an anarchy of trust, going
not by statute but by instinct and turning fans
into co-conspirators, spreading their music and
buying tickets, T-shirts and official CDs to
show their loyalty. The new approachchanges that
relationship.The change also downgrades fans
into the customers they were all along. It
removesbrand value from the Deads legacy by
reducing them to one more band with products to
sell (Jon Pareles, The Deads Gamble Free
Music for Sale NYT, December 3, 2005).
20Incentives to Share Tangibles
- School boys/girls sharing clothing
- Leveraged lifestylese.g., AutoShare
- Virtual Sharing
- Bag, Borrow, or Steal
- Borrow rip CDs
- Share music, films on-line
- Greek hospitality Odysseus
21Other Tangible Sharing Incentives
- Family heirlooms extended self
- Sharing within the family
- Group sharing (e.g., time-share homes)
- Institutional sharinge.g.,
- Museums
- National Parks
- But, tragedy of the commons?
- Limited good vs. Unlimited good (e.g., shells
Bible the commons Halloween) - Communally extended self humanity
22John Donne (1623)
- No man is an island, entire of itself every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is
the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manner of thy friends or thine own
were. Any mans death diminishes me because I am
involved in mankind, and therefore never send to
know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.
Meditation XVII
23Individual Reasons to Share(Summary)
- Self-interest (e.g., leveraged lifestyle)
- Extended sense of self (e.g. brand cults)
- Altruism (e.g., sharing within the family)
- Social justice (e.g., paying back for successes
in life) - Unlimited good (e.g., shell on the beach)
- Common humanity (e.g., Donne)
24Social Factors in Sharing(Summary)
- POSITIVE
- Internet sharing (e.g., Napster)
- Limited goods (e.g., environmental resources)
- The greater good (e.g., open science)
- Rise of virtual communities online (e.g., MUG)
- NEGATIVE
- Intellectual property rights (e.g., TRIPS)
- Decline of sharing within the family (e.g.,
privatization) - Decline of family (e.g., divorce rates)
- Decline of neighborhood community (e.g. Bowling
Alone)
25Conclusions
- Social desirability of sharing
- Why? Community, civil obedience, environment
- Why not? ID through things vs. people, financial
security vs. social security, economic capital
vs. social capital - Compared to private ownership through marketplace
exchange or gift-giving, sharing is more casual,
less reciprocal, and potentially more altruistic - Santa replaces sharing with gift-giving
- Luxury surprise also make sharing gift-giving
26Conclusions
- Negative social desirability of sharing spouse,
womb, soldiers, children - Battle Online sharing vs. intellectual property
laws vs. public access (e.g., eBooks) - Sharing through post-materialism, VS,
downshifting, dematerializing, experience
economy? - One boom U.S. market storage
- Business leads with the virtual corporation
- Is the virtual consumer next? Why rent when you
can buy vs. Why own when you can rent by the
hour? (AutoShare)