with A.S. Rose

Abstract

The recently introduced construct of consumer sharing is represented as a nonreciprocal, pro-social distribution of resources given without expectation of reciprocity (Belk, 2010). The approach adopted rests on shaky ontological and epistemological grounds and reproduces an array of problematic modernist dichotomies (e.g., agency/structure; nurturing family/instrumental public; gift/market; altruism/self-interest) that significantly constrain the analytical enterprise. The present work redresses some of the conceptual problems in the current formulation. The critique highlights a focus on resource distribution based on a more holistic, socially grounded perspective on circulation. We offer the alternative concept of mutuality or generalized exchange and the metaphor of inclusion rather than exchange as central to this perspective. We argue this may provide a more sound basis for understanding alternative modes of circulation.

 

Summary and Conclusions

Our paper represents an effort to contribute to the conversations in marketing and consumer research that try to make sense of evolving systems of resource circulation among consumers and between consumers and consumer-facing organizations in which the term “sharing” has been drafted by popular and theoretical commentators (Belk, 2010; The Economist, 2013; Geron, 2013; Owyang, 2013; Plouffe, 2008). In particular, we have provided a constructive critique of the sharing construct (Belk, 2010) on both the micro and macro scale. In the above paragraphs, we first offered a critique of a proposed definition of sharing; then, a critique of the empirical approach adopted to persuade researchers of the construct’s value. We next disputed the ego-centric ontology of the conceptualization on the grounds of inconsistency with a cultural approach to consumer culture and with contemporary social theory. Central to our critique is a defense of the anti-utilitarian conception of the gift in social science as providing both an explanation for many phenomena grouped under the heading of sharing, and as providing a foundation for an alternative conception. The next section of the paper deconstructs the ethnocentric and anachronistic vision of the family presented as foundational to the prototypical definition of sharing. The paper then turns briefly to the political dimension of the sharing concept. Finally, we concluded with a more detailed treatment of our alternative construct, mutuality, or if one prefers, generalized exchange to solidify and tie-together the various themes that arise in the critique. With mutuality, the guiding metaphor becomes inclusion rather than exchange.

On the micro level, we have shown that this project to isolate sharing as a discrete form of circulation of consumer goods fails on ontological and epistemological grounds. It collapses on ontological grounds because it inadequately distinguishes sharing from joint ownership, joint appropriation of common property resources, inalienable wealth, and goods circulating through mutuality, or generalized exchange processes. It is only through a contestable social utilitarian construction of the gift construct that the sharing project is viable. But this construction runs counter both to the understanding of this phenomenon in the large anti-utilitarian literature about the gift as a mode of circulation qualitatively different from State or market modes (Godbout and Caillé, 1992; Caillé, 2000; Godelier, 1972; Hyde, 1979). Similarly, this social utilitarian conceptualization fails to accommodate modes of circulation and value creation within temporary, affective collectivities (Arnould and Price, 1993; Gouldner, et al., 2002; Kozinets, 2002) or more ostensibly instrumental ones such as corporations (Alter, 2009) or C2C exchange networks (Willer, et al., 2012).

The project must be deemed unacceptable on epistemological grounds as well. The attempt to define the object of study through the concatenation of disparate, decontextualized examples is a mode of argumentation that inevitably and equally conflates things that appear to be similar but in fact are not, while differentiating those that are. It also adopts an implicit evolutionary phylogeny of sharing that situates its origin in a construction of the family and the place of women within it that is scientifically unsupportable. Most fundamentally, there is a fatal problem in the levels of analysis. A naïve realism is employed; this is a realism of the kind long ago abandoned as untenable by cultural theorists in favor of a variety of post-Wittgensteinian, post-Foucauldian constructivisms.

Further, on the macro scale, the argument, built on an extended project of the self, takes as axiomatic the atomistic, utilitarian, patriarchal subject against which anti-utilitarian philosophy has been arguing since Mauss and even before (Butler, 1999; Liebersohn, 2010; M.A.U.S.S., 1996). With it come the considerable political ramifications of theorizing on the Western stage alone with no apparent aim towards multi-contextual applicability. Regardless of the intention behind the politicization, this concept of the self is untenable outside of the mythical assumptions about human actors and their motivations in social science traditions inspired by neoclassical economics.

The scope of our paper is limited. We have not investigated the analytic boundaries between mutuality, access-based consumption, and co-creation and co-consumption between institutionally distinct market actors (Bardhi and Eckhardt, 2012; Bostman and Rogers, 2010; Chen, 2009; Felson and Spaeth, 1978; Lamberton and Rose, 2012). We would suggest systematic investigation of the role of mutuality or generalized exchange in such situations would shed further light on the evolving nature of the circulation and distribution of consumption resources as well as of the evolving relationship between mutuality and possessive individualism (Humphreys and Giesler, 2007). Further, such investigation might complement research on these emergent forms of circulation and use of resources that has tended to view them either through the lens of a romantic humanistic discourse (Bostman and Rogers, 2010; Thompson, et al, 2013) or through a critical Marxist lens (Cova, et al., 2011). For the more phenomenologically inclined, research might investigate the kinds of mental accounts that organize these modes of circulation (Bradford, 2009; n.d.).

We welcome the attention to the kind of generalized exchange behavior that we prefer to label mutuality, but we have argued that the concept of sharing offered in consumer research cannot be accepted by the social scientific community for the reasons we have described. At the same time, the key point is that the many forms of circulation which social scientists like Mauss, Polanyi, Sahlins, Weiner or Graeber have described—mutuality, pooling, debt, hierarchical redistribution or market exchange—must be understood as distinct analytic constructs or as useful metaphors but not irreducible empirical facts. By that token, all should be subject to reflexive examination (Anderson, 1986; Krippendorf, 1993) that interrogates their basis in the master tropes of mutuality and possessive individualism. At the same time, we should remember that mutuality, the gift, market exchange and all modes of circulation emerge in interactions. Practices through which people constitute these modes of circulation in the course of interaction have received relatively little research attention. As Araujo (2007) has observed with regard to markets, various acts of circulation should be studied as ongoing and contingent accomplishments. More future research is needed to reveal how, when, and with what consequences, people accomplish mutuality and market exchanges in interaction. And of equal importance, researchers have consistently mis-stepped when decontextualizing particular actions from the social and temporal systems of circulation in which they are inevitably embedded. For the social and temporal contexts must also be established and affirmed through circulation; they are not given a priori. Future research needs to look more closely at how contexts of interest, gratitude, debt, and obligation shape particular moments of circulation (Caillé, 1994; Llewellyn, 2011; Marcoux, 2009).

At the limit, if sharing is a distinct construct that should be retained, its domain should be considerably reduced from the claims made in the “sharing” paper (Belk, 2010). At one end of the social scale, for example, in how people define what makes them kin or not (Marshall, 1977; Overing 1989; Sahlins 2012) then sharing does seem apposite. But notice that what constitutes “sharing” here really involves nothing more than an especially dense, recurrent network of generalized exchanges among kinsfolk; or put the other way round, kinsfolk are defined by intense transfers among moral accounts (Bradford, 2009, n.d.; Caillé, 1994; Carrier, 1991; Godbout, 1995). Among close kin, the scale is small; the scope of mutuality is great. A second localization of sharing might lie at the macro scale where the scope is narrow, that is, in the realm of ecosystem services provided by natural endowments of air, water and other resources (Costanza, et al., 1987). Here, where new modes of management are urgently required, the challenge lies in acknowledging participation and extending mutual recognition and responsibility. Cases of successful collective appropriation of common property resources (McKean, 1992; Netting, 1981; Ostrom, 1991) provide examples upon which future research could build.

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