Socially Oriented Sharing Economy Platform in Regional Australia: A Polanyian Analysis

In this chapter, we explore the role of sharing economy models in addressing exclusion and inequality. We critically review the definitions, characteristics and debates within the sharing economy and identify two dominant sharing economy models: platform capitalism and platform cooperativism. Platform capitalism symbolises the increasing commercialisation and profit maximisation of sharing economy organisations. Using Polanyi’s work on market society, we argue that the sharing economy firms in platform capitalism are disembedded from social relations and have a detrimental impact on the local economies, particularly on the poor and marginalised communities. We argue that community-owned and democratically governed sharing economy platforms, embedded in the local context and oriented towards economic pluralism, are more equipped to address poverty and inequality. We use the case study of bHive, a place-based, community-owned sharing economy platform, to identify the mechanisms and processes that strengthen the local communities to potentially address exclusion and inequality. Our findings show platforms could use three processes, collaboration, localisation and decentralisation, to implement their program. We argue these processes help the platform embed in the social context and strengthen social cohesion in the communities. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and discuss avenues for future research.