Paper short abstract:

While Italian state officials seek to improve maternal health outcomes, women’s desire for a shared experience in childbirth goes unacknowledged as an important aspect of women’s positive experiences in pregnancy and childbirth.

Paper long abstract:

Pregnancy can be a difficult time for many women, but these emotional challenges are often undervalued by state officials who design maternal health guidelines aimed at improving cesarean section rates throughout the country. Through the use of statistical data and clinical trials from outside of Italy, state officials create a universal reproductive body, the goal of which is to provide the foundation for a healthcare model that can be applied anywhere. In reality, the model ignores important local realities that shape women’s maternity care experiences. State level guidelines suggest that women can make appropriate healthcare decisions only when they are informed and do not fear childbirth. The reality, however, is that women do not crave information but an avenue to share their experiences.

While the Tuscan government offers informational classes for free, the women’s goal in attending these classes is not to gain information, but to find expectant mothers and midwives to share their experiences. These classes facilitate the further sharing of experiential knowledge outside of the classroom through the creation group chat in the messaging app WhatsApp. The ability for women to share these experiences becomes indispensable especially after pregnancy, when women notice a severe decrease in the amount of support offered by the state to new mothers. Through 18 months of ethnographic research on maternity care in Florence, Italy, I show how women’s shared experiences supports state goals even while these activities go unacknowledged by the state.

Paper short abstract:

Internet infrastructure is facilitating the rise of ride-sharing methods. Users develop different behavioral patterns, depending the way they get to share a journey. The concepts of trust and risk are differently perceived by people that use online ride-sharing apps and by those who are hitchhiking.

Paper long abstract:

As an increasing body of research indicated, we are facing a huge wave of new economic organization. Shifting our focus from an institutional type of trust, to an individual or to a network-based trust, online technologies take advantage of this dynamics and are reshaping our behavior. Companies like Blablacar, Airbnb or Uber, through their web platforms, are creating new patterns of consumption for their users, participating in the same time at a rise of alternative forms of consumption.

My research, began in 2016, takes up the case of ride-sharing culture. This field is influenced sometimes by factors like: limited resources or oil price, which encourages sharing between drivers and travelers or commuters. I explore the differences between what I call online hitchhiking (using apps like Blablacar) and street hitchhiking (the 'traditional' way). Using participant observation and informal interviews, I collected data both from drivers (truck, private cars, buses) and hitchhikers. The findings indicate that app-based hitchhikers reference, most often, efficiency, transparency, lower costs, predictability, 'community' membership, and trust. 'Off-line' hitchhikers emphasize 'freedom', euphemize risk, rapport building with drivers and negotiation. As a common characteristic, both practices involve a more sustainable mobility.

Keywords: ride-sharing, sharing economy, sustainability, trust, economic exchange, risk, Blablacar

Paper short abstract:

The paper traces the story of library in a small town in China. It was set up by a Chinese returnee who felt that her hometown was "dying". Young adults had left for work elsewhere.The old and the young were left behind with limited access to books and training in creative and critical reflection.

Paper long abstract:

The sharing economy in China takes a different form than other parts of the world. The main driver was the the retail sector, and even today, the enterprises that succeed are commercial enterprises. The social impact of the sharing enterprises is limited by severe restrictions on setting up non-profit organizations and on doing social work. Still, the sharing economy is growing rapidly and does have considerable social impact. The paper analyses the emergence of one typical sharing enterprise and how it is embedded in a local community. Through its organization, services and network, it serves to reproduce, but also to change established power relations and cultural understanding of self and society.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to share research results conducted in Poland addressing the subject of "food initiatives" in the chosen Polish cities, and is focused on social practice, sharing food and space, class context, the creation of new social forms and its inclusive /exclusive character.

Paper long abstract:

My research is focused on different collective activities connected with preparing and sharing food in Polish cities. Depending on various forms of organization and auto-identifications they are called "people's kitchens" or "culinary/eating collectives". These activities are often organized by informal groups in a public space of the city and include social events opened for external participants. The distinctive feature of these initiatives is that sharing food goes beyond established social structures and cultural or religious traditions. They are also different from commercial entrepreneurship and does not bring any profit to the organisers. They usually demand private investments of time, work, money and often are based on using private kitchens. It can, therefore, be said that they go beyond the known forms of economic organisation and are a new social phenomenon linked to new urban lifestyles and could contribute to different dimensions of social and cultural change. The members of food initiatives are mostly young adults with ambiguous class positions: they have high cultural and social capital and low economic capital, which is characteristic of Poland due to its political history. My goal is both to recognize detailed forms of such practices and theoretically explain their possible meanings, that can be articulated also in broader axiological, economic and socio-political terms. I will try to reflect on the class context of initiatives: in what sense do initiatives concern the privileged or disadvantaged in the system (relatively new capitalism in Poland)? What is the potential of food initiatives to be "inclusive" and "exclusive"?

Paper short abstract:

Religious festivals offer business opportunities for ritual specialists, who try to benefit from the religious needs of the attending devotees and thereby accumulate wealth. Devotees, in contrast, strive to accumulate and share religious values such as merit, blessings, and sanctified objects.

Paper long abstract:

Religious festivals are not only religious events. They also offer business opportunities for ritual specialists and temple servants. To demonstrate this statement, two Hindu festivals celebrated in Puri (Odisha, East India) have been chosen as ethnographic examples: the Renewal of the Deities—the ritual renewal of the wooden images of Puri’s presiding deities, celebrated every other decade—and the annual Chariot Festival, a public presentation of the deities attended by millions of devotees.

In the context of these festivals, the concept of sharing has to be considered from a new perspective: deities provide the values exchanged on a religious marketplace. Often, temple servants act as intermediaries between deities, as producers, and devotees, as customers. Some of these temple servants rather altruistically promote the sharing of the divine values. Yet, many devotees accuse temple servants of profit orientation: financial gain is not regarded as an adequate goal in the context of these (religious) festivals. Although the accumulation of wealth is one of four traditional goals, in religious settings, wealth is only acceptable if shared; it should not be accumulated.

Devotees strive for accumulations of a less material quality. They visit the festivals to amass religious values such as spiritual merit and the deities’ blessings. Some devotees gather as many sanctified objects as possible to later store them in their household shrines and/or share the accumulated objects with relatives, friends, and neighbors. Through these objects, merit and blessings can be shared with those devotees who could not attend the festivals themselves.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the importance and diversity of shared economic practices in securing the viability of rural households in Latvia.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2014 to 2015 and resumed in 2017, I analyze the survival strategies developed by rural household members in Latvia in order to meet the needs of the household. For Latvian rural households, located in areas far from urban centers and characterized by poor road/ traffic infrastructure and low economic activity, shared economic practices constitute one of the strategies to ensure household viability. Depending on the resources available and the needs of each household, various shared economic practices take place. For households located in the Latvian-Russian border area, as a result of Latvia’s integration in the EU and the consolidation of the external border of Latvia, shared economic practices manifest as practiced aimed at procuring cheaper fuel and food supplies from Russia. Those Latvian borderland inhabitants who have access to the Russian market (as they have retained the status of a non-citizen or have free "visas") help to deliver significantly cheaper products to those residents on the Latvian side who live without such access, thus providing crucial financial support for low income households. A different shared economic strategy can be witnessed in the practices of members of households -newcomers in the countryside; they create innovative shared economic practices that help them build and strengthen relationships with local people, thus providing them with an opportunity to join the local community.

Paper short abstract:

Surplus linked to shortage is a driver in the sharing economy worldwide. But is it also a driver in society at large? In Berlin we meet a group of literature professionals and students - refugees from conflict zones - who have co-built an Arabic library sharing space with the Berlin State Library.

Paper long abstract:

Berlin is known as one of Europe's most vibrant and experimental startup capitals. The streets are full of evidence of the spirit of a sharing economy, if that means commercializing the possibilities for collaboration: We-Work and Deutsche Bank co-working real estate in high rent districts; Betahaus and other incubators where new businesses are explored and built; cars, bikes and scooters for sharing via smartphone app parked at all the curbs and city squares. But the recent three years of newly arrived refugees fleeing extreme violence have highlighted the place of social enterprise within the sharing economy and may push the boundaries of our knowledge about agency for social change that the sharing economy creates. One such social enterprise is Berlin's only Arabic Language Library.

Baynatna is translated from Arabic as "between us." It is the innovation of literature students and professionals who fled Syria's violence, and is a joint undertaking with a network of Berlin's social and educational institutions. Baynatna may offer a new model for ways of bringing together and redistributing society's surpluses, in the face of an overtaxed State. Can the sharing economy fill the gaps? And is agency for change granted willingly by the State? And even where not, is evidence of change visible in other forms? The paper follows Baynatna from its original spark to the visions for the future, and analyzes it as a model of a new way to respond to societal need.

Paper short abstract:

Movement is an important aspect of identity struggle that is understandable through external domains of social relationships. There is always interconnection between the moved and the stayed in the society in order to maintain the kinship network through reciprocity.

Paper long abstract:

The cultural allegory of movement in Igbo cultural setting of Nigeria

suggests that it is only the lazy ones in the society stay at home why

their mates move in search of greener pasture. Movement is an

important aspect of identity struggle that is understandable through

external domains of social relationships. That is why some are driven

to the lands of the foreigners out of shame of continuous stay in the

indigenous land. Through movement, individuals or groups engage in a

competitive struggle for influence. That would perhaps give them the

potentials to compete and demonstrate their strength with other

members of the society. Besides, there is never a permanent movement

outside the environs of the Igbo society. Periodic returns are

encouraged. This is mainly during festive periods such as Christmas,

new yam festivals, Muo festivals, Marriages and funerals. There is

always interconnection between the moved and the stayed in the society

in order to maintain the kinship network. Through an ethnographical

reports complemented with empirical research, this study sees movement

as a means of societal adjustment in the community life towards a

solidaristic expansion of network. Therefore, this study analyses the

rationale behind movement in Igbo society by identifying and

qualifying the values of moving while staying.