Role of Seoul in the Global Imaginaries of the Sharing Economy

* Article: The Sharing City Seoul: Global Imaginaries of the Sharing Economy and its Local Realities. By Olga Fedorenko. DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIETY, Volume 46 | Number 2 | September 2017, 373-397

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Abstract

"his article examines the role of Seoul, South Korea’s capital, in the global imaginaries of the sharing economy. Experiments with sharing have been attempted all over the world, but Seoul was the first to proclaim itself a sharing city in September 2012, to much acclaim worldwide. Detailing Seoul’s sharing agenda, the article shows that international enthusiasm about Seoul’s sharing economy depends on exaggerating its scale and ignoring its complicity with the usual distribution of economic opportunities. My overarching argument, however, is that globally the sharing economy is significant as an imaginary of a post-capitalist future and that, by appearing to be what it was not, the Sharing City Seoul has played an important role in energizing those imaginaries. The article’s data comes from public discourses about Seoul’s sharing economy and participant observation at its two ritual sites, OuiShare Fest 2016 in Paris and Seoul Sharing Fest 2016."