Regulating the Sharing Economy
* CfP: Special Issue on Regulating the ‘Sharing Economy’. Internet Policy Review, 2015
URL = http://policyreview.info/node/371*
Description
"You are ‘the new infrastructure’, an entrepreneur breathlessly explains to the Wall Street Journal in a recent piece on sharing economy start-ups (9 March 2015). Conceived in the early 2000s to describe alternative practices of creativity and distribution, the sharing economy has become the rallying call for an array of new businesses which rely on networked connectivity of users willing to exchange, sell and purchase services from one another. The co-optation of online ‘gifting’ by capitalist interests is a story which traces the progression of many digital social phenomena, from community discussion fora to digital video youth culture. The sharing economy raises important issues for regulators: When does ‘sharing’ cease to be a private activity and become a public concern? When do affective relationships become exploitative? When is something a gift, and when is it labour? How do we ensure that risks and costs are accurately reflected in the provision of goods? And how should costs be divided between collaborative consumers, businesses, and the public?
This special issue will consider both informal norms of governance as well as formal legal structures governing sharing communities and services. As a result, contributions are likely to touch on a range of disciplines and approaches, including sociological, economic, technological and legal. It is the hope of the editors that this collection of individual contributions will lead to identification of issues of theoretical importance across different configurations of sharing economy practices, and help crystallise future areas of inquiry for empirical study.
Contributions should focus on the impact of technological and social innovation in this area, with specific reference to European societies and digital regulatory frameworks."
More Information
- 7 September 2015: Deadline for expression of interest and abstract submission (500 word abstracts) to the co-editors [email protected] and [email protected]