CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Solovova, Ekaterina Andreyevna |
|---|---|
| Title | Challenging the Sharing Economy in the Post-Soviet Urban Environment |
| Summary | Sharing economy is a phenomenon that has recently brought a lot of debate to the social sciences. Innovative platforms such as Airbnb and Uber claiming to reconfigure the way people consume and live through sharing of underused resources now just seem to join the line of largest international companies with growing profits. At the same time, being inherently an urban and global phenomenon, it reaches all parts of capitalist world. Post-socialist countries have joined global capitalism quite recently and the case of intersection of sharing economy and post-socialism is a peculiar one. This thesis claims that rapidly urbanized post-socialist cities might challenge the perception of sharing economy and contribute to the understanding of its complexity. Firstly, post-socialist city is contextualized in the framework of material and social infrastructures through the case study of one peripheral city. Subjective perceptions of sharing given by citizens of post-soviet cities are provided. Secondly, the operation of Western sharing economy platforms is challenged also through people’s subjectivities and concept of social embeddedness of urban economic practices. The analysis, therefore, reveals internal contradiction in the sharing economy of post-socialist space – digital dimension full of strangers and opportunities is in conflict with deeply rooted institute of personal networks resulting in current disembeddedness of Western-based sharing economy in urban environment. |
| Supervisor | Zentai, Violetta |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/solovova_ekaterina.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University