The limits of voluntarism in the Sharing Economy William Charles What is the Sharing Economy, and why did it emerge when it did? Many participants describe it as a response to a kind of spiritual absence. Familiar longings for human connection, authenticity, sustainability, and reciprocity were invoked repeatedly in its early days. Yet this absence was not simply a matter of individual psychology. It reflected deep structural transformations in economic and social life that left people isolated, economically precarious, and disconnected from meaningful collective institutions. The global financial crisis of 2008 marked a rupture in the neoliberal period, which began in the late 1970s and intensified through the 1980s and 1990s, before peaking in the early 2000s. Across much of the industrialized world, this era was defined by deregulation, privatization, welfare retrenchment, and the weakening of labor protections. In Italy, neoliberal reforms arrived more gradually and unevenly than in Anglo-American countries, but their effects were no less profound. From the liberalizations of the 1990s through the austerity policies following the sovereign debt crisis of 2011-2012, successive governments reduced the scope of the Welfare State, loosened labor protections, and privatized public services. Real wages stagnated, youth unemployment soared, and precarious forms of work such as contratti a termine (fixed-term contracts) and partite IVA (freelance work) proliferated. When the financial system collapsed in 2008, many households around the world were already under pressure. The crisis deepened job insecurity, especially among younger generations, and accelerated public sector cuts. People sought new ways to generate income and manage debt. Renting out spare rooms on Airbnb, driving for platforms like Uber or its local equivalents, or selling crafts online became increasingly common strategies to supplement stagnant wages. For some, these activities offered occasional extra income. For others, they became essential to household survival. Alongside the economic crisis was a parallel crisis of social institutions. Over the neoliberal period, States withdrew from welfare provision, deregulated markets, and privatized services. Civil society organizations, too, weakened. Robert Putnam famously described this trend in Bowling Alone, documenting the decline of civic participation in voluntary associations over the late twentieth century. Union membership fell, neighborhood groups dwindled, and fewer people participated in religious or community organizations. Individuals became more atomized, individualized, and socially adrift. These developments speak to long-standing concerns in sociology. Émile Durkheim wrote about anomie, a condition in which individuals are no longer adequately integrated into or regulated by society. Social bonds provide people with stability and ontological security, which are essential for both individual well-being and collective life. Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). Gemeinschaft referred to stable, face-to-face relationships found in traditional settings such as villages, while Gesellschaft described the impersonal, bureaucratic, and abstract relationships characteristic of modernity. Tönnies took a pessimistic view, seeing alienation as an inevitable consequence of modernization. Later sociologists rejected simple nostalgia for rural life, but they recognized that the longing for meaningful social bonds persisted even as societies became more complex and mediated. This longing has often found expression in cultural forms that recreate, in miniature or through simulation, the kinds of stable, cooperative relationships that modern social life tends to erode. In the United States, institutions like churches, neighborhood associations, civic clubs, and bowling leagues historically provided spaces where community bonds were renewed. As these institutions declined over the late twentieth century, new cultural forms emerged to address similar desires. Video games such as Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley have become popular in part because they offer players simulated worlds centred on reciprocity, collective labor, and predictable social ties. These virtual communities are not substitutes for real ones, but their appeal signals the persistence of a yearning for shared, meaningful environments. Similar impulses emerge during moments of crisis. After natural disasters, communities often mobilize mutual aid networks and neighborhood response teams, as seen in the volunteer efforts following Hurricane Katrina or during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when informal networks provided food, care, and supplies in cities across the country. The Sharing Economy must be understood within this dual context of economic insecurity and the erosion of social bonds. It arose both as a material strategy to cope with precarity and as a moral-cultural project to reweave social ties in an individualized society. Participants sought authentic connection and community through new forms of exchange, often mediated by technology. But, as Durkheim and Tönnies suggested in different ways, these longings are not free-floating. They arise from structural transformations in institutions. Without confronting and reshaping these structures, the Sharing Economy risks becoming a palliative, offering temporary relief without changing the conditions that produced the need for it in the first place. 92 93
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