Dynamics of the Sharing Economy between Commons and Commodification

Abstract

Revisiting scholarly debates around the weal and woe of the so-called “sharing economy,” this essay proposes a distinction between commons-based and market-based forms of the sharing economy. Applying a Polanyian lens to these two types of sharing economy not only reveals countervailing developments between commons and commodification depending on the type of platform governance; in addition, such a perspective also directs attention to externalities regularly associated with the expansion of market logics in previously nonmarket territories.