WHY NOT SHARE
RATHER THAN OWN?
Russell Belk
University of Utah
USA
Consider Daily Commuting
Lone drivers in private autos & SUV
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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 don’t we share?
Can we share more?
Alternative Forms of Distribution
Marketplace Exchange
Gift-Giving
Sharing
On the whole, you find wealth much more
in use than in ownership (Aristotle)
Commodity Exchange
Strangers barter or purchase with money
Balanced transactions incur no debt nor
create/maintain social relations
Simultaneous exchange ideal
Establishes equivalence between objects
Simmel’s society of strangers (not friends or
enemies)
Sahlins’ balanced or negative reciprocity
Egoistic
In Derrida’s & Economists’ views, the only form
of human transaction
Gift Exchange
In Mauss’s view, still based on reciprocity
(obligations to give, receive, & reciprocate)
In Gregory’s view, the opposite of commodity
exchange
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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 Granovetter’s terms, even business
transactions can be embedded in this way (also
Carrier, Silver)
Sharing
A third alternative not fully considered
Prototype—income 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
Key Questions
What don’t 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?
Sharing: An Alternative to
Private Ownership
Includes
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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
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“Sharing” a common place of birth
“Sharing” a language
“Sharing” a set of experiences
Example: 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
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membership $100+GST; deposit $250
60 locations
Book online; some plans include insurance & gas
Sharing 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
Cultural 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
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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
Mixed 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
Impediments to Sharing
Feelings of object attachment
Cathecting objects as part of extended self (e.g.,
body organs)
Materialism
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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
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From broad charitable giving
To narrow giving with the family
Sharing & the Museum
Without Walls
Fine art is Finite
But it can be broadly
distributed
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Art Museums
Inexpensive copies
What is the problem here?
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Benjamin’s loss of “aura”
Denigrating reproduction, fraud, fake, forgery
Status hierarchies – e.g, Visiting Luxor in Egypt vs.
Las Vegas, vs. books, Internet & postcards
Incentives 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)
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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)
Sharing without Losing
A song, joke, story, body, digital files
Even books, journals, videos can be copied
The online gift economy
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Linux, Napster, freeware
BBSs, chat rooms, web sites
Why join these virtual communities?
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Keeping while giving (Weiner)
Cheap altruism (Coyne)
Utilitarianism
True hi-tech gift economy
Other motivations: “Paying back,” cornucopia, &
movement
E.g., Reviewing
Intangible Sharing Communities
Marker goods
Sharing Secrets
Extended Self
Sports fans, music fans, brand cults
Proselytizing & recruiting members
Feeling of minority status, persecution, &
uniqueness
iPod?
Case in Point:
The 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
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From Internet as cornucopia
To Internet as pay-per-play jukebox
The Grateful Dead Brand
“The Dead had created an anarchy of trust, going not
by statute but by instinct and turning fans into coconspirators, spreading their music and buying
tickets, T-shirts and official CD’s to show their loyalty.
The new approach…changes that relationship….The
change also downgrades fans into the customers
they were all along. It removes…brand value from
the Dead’s legacy by reducing them to one more
band with products to sell” (Jon Pareles, “The Dead’s
Gamble: Free Music for Sale” NYT, December 3,
2005).
Incentives to Share Tangibles
School boys/girls sharing clothing
Leveraged lifestyles—e.g., AutoShare
Virtual Sharing
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Bag, Borrow, or Steal
Borrow rip CDs
Share music, films on-line
Greek hospitality & Odysseus
Other Tangible Sharing Incentives
Family heirlooms & extended self
Sharing within the family
Group sharing (e.g., time-share homes)
Institutional sharing—e.g.,
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Museums
National Parks
But, tragedy of the commons?
Limited good vs. Unlimited good (e.g.,
shells; Bible; the commons; Halloween)
Communally extended self & humanity
John 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 friend’s or thine own were. Any man’s
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]
Individual 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)
Social Factors in Sharing
(Summary)
POSITIVE
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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
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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)
Conclusions
Social desirability of sharing
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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
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Santa replaces sharing with gift-giving
Luxury & surprise also make sharing gift-giving
Conclusions
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)