Book part:

Some of the social logics of sharing

This paper is about sharing—the word, the act, its rhetoric, its ideologies and its logics. More specifically, it is about sharing in three different but interrelated contexts: Web 2.0, “sharing economies,” and intimate interpersonal relationships. The starting point of this paper is Web 2.0 in general, and especially social network sites (SNSs). In particular, the following is the outcome of an observation not yet systematically documented by the research literature, namely, that the constitutive activity of Web 2.0 is sharing (but see Stalder & Sützl, 2011; Wittel, 2011). This observation gives rise to the following questions: What does sharing mean in the context of Web 2.0 and SNSs? Are there other instances where sharing is a key central concept? And if so, how might they be related? The following, which is based on an emic approach to sharing, is exploratory in nature, yet it rests on a clear argument, specifically, that in order to gain a deeper understanding of sharing in Web 2.0 we need to include other instances of cultural practices that are called sharing as well. Accordingly, in addition to SNSs, this paper discusses economies of sharing and the centrality of sharing our emotions in the management of our intimate relationships. The outcome of such an analysis is, I believe, greater than the sum of its constituent parts. This paper, therefore, represents the first attempt at outlining the interrelations between these spheres of sharing.