Being a part of the sharing economy can erase social barriers. It creates so-called liminal situations that enable us to temporarily distance ourselves from our institutionalized roles and "be ourselves" by bringing people together in an integral way rather than in a "compartmentalized fashion as actors of roles." As an active participant of both formal and informal sharing networks for more than a decade, I can say that I remember each and every interaction I've had over the years. I can remember my first mitfahr (ride sharing) in Germany over ten years ago when I rode with an African family from Munich to Rome. I can remember using Hospitality Club and the amazing people I stayed with before Couchsurfing came along. I can point out every book on my shelf that I received through BookMooch. I can also remember the delicious feasts we used to create at the People's Kitchen in London where we would split the work and the rewards while learning how to make many new and different recipes with whatever ingredients we happened to have that day. What I can't remember though is the face of the person at the cash register of the chain-store where I bought *something* in a green package last week. I can barely remember any of my commercial experiences because they are just that: commercial and not experiential. In these situations, behaviour is scripted, dialogue is restricted and time is limited since other customers are in line behind you to make their unmemorable purchases.
Commercial vs. collaborative relationships
During commercial transactions you deal with a "what" instead of a "who". You play the role of the customer and your counterpart plays the role of the vendor. The exact opposite is the case for collaborative consumption, where you have contact with an individual who has no specific role to play. Since both parties are a "who" and no commercial interests are influencing your behaviour, you can both be yourselves. Nobody is trying to improve their own situation at the expense of the other. This collaborative exchange takes place in what could be considered a liminal space. The term liminality can be further clarified with the text "Betwixt and Between" from 1967:
Discussing the structural aspect of liminality, participants are withdrawn from their structural positions and consequently from the values, norms, sentiments and techniques associated with those positions. They are also divested of their previous habits of thought, feeling and action. During the liminal period, participants are alternatively forced and encouraged to think about their society, their cosmos and the powers that generate and sustain them. Liminality may partly be described as a stage of reflection in which previous ideas may now be questioned.
For instance, getting into a car with a stranger might force you to reconsider your opinion on this practice. Sleeping at a stranger's house and accepting their hospitality might let you see cultural exchange from a different point of view. The more experiences you have with people, the more you realize that you can trust people. And the more you trust people, the less you have to rely on endlessly expanding multinational conglomerates, which profit from providing services that we could just as easily provide ourselves. How? By connecting with others who may be able to help you without inadvertently benefiting a third party. Such experiences have the potential to create a new kind of society which is based on inter-human connections in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network where people can rely on each other. This would serve as an alternative to being helplessly held captive by a hostile market which leaves the consumer with fewer options and no space to manoeuvre. I continue to search and find new ways to connect with with my neighbours in London and Athens. I borrow tools on StreetBank, I get rid of household goods on FreeCycle and I'm always up for collective cooking at Steki Metanaston. All of these experiences carry a story with them, a mythology of my consumptive existence, which I share with my co-consumers. In a commercial exchange there is no connection between the vendor and the buyer that persists beyond the point of sale. There is no story, no ritual and no bond. The relationship is hierarchical and both participants experience the event very differently. Of course, this ensures that the exchange is fast and convenient, but it doesn't bring you any closer to one another as people. If you consider the collaborative consumption experience as a ritual where the participants are equals and are taken out of their quotidian social milieu, then you can also reasonably assume that the result of this experience could be changing perceptions of the world around us. It is a passage through liminality which brings you into closer contact with humanity as an interconnected network of people and might just leave you with a more holistic view of the universe. Credit picture: