Value and virtue in the sharing economy

Abstract

Critical accounts suggest that the ‘sharing economy’ is mainly an ideological entity, bringing together a wide range of diverse empirical phenomena that have little in common, apart from their common adherence to an ideology of ‘sharing’. This article suggests that the sharing economy can be empirically understood as instances of peer production attempting to ‘come to market’ via the use of a common ‘sharing fiction’. Analysing the origins and present functions of this fiction, the author suggests that we can conceptualize differentials in economic power within the sharing economy in terms of the work that goes into the reproduction of this sharing fiction and the ability to capitalize on it in terms of price differentials.