A paradigm shift: the crisis of subordination within the sharing economy.

A socio-anthropological perspective and an Italian case

Francesco Seghezzi-University of Bergamo/ADAPT@francescoseghez

Is Polanyi still actual?

• Economy embedded in society

• Labor not a commodity

• Relations and reciprocity as features of labor

• Profit as not the only dimension of labor

Who analyze? • Not sharing economy in general but for profit sharing economy• Three cases: AirBnB, Bla Bla Car, Gnammo• Special focus on the italian experience of Gnammo as social eating

experiment • Doing jobs during ordinary activities

Premise:Socio-anthropological analysis so we use a broad definition of labor as an activity through which man produces profit for themselves or for others

The features of modern employment

• No ownership of means of production

• Control on performance

• Space and time obligations

• Centrality of contract

• Salary performance exchange

Does for profit sharing economy change this paradigm returning at a model similiar of what Polanyi saw in pre-free market economies?

Research question:

Bla Bla Car

The driver who has his own car does not offer a job performance itself, but through an ordinary activity has a substantial profit in saving the travel costs on growing percentage depending on the number of passengers who agree to share the journey that otherwise would be only on his charge.

AirBnB• We consider non-professional hosts sharing rooms in their houses • The provider increase the use of a good (a room etc.) that he already,

making it a business. The customer usually covers cleaning costs and commitment required to the host is only to ensure that he promised in the description online and receive the time stability of the host, no more activities are required. So also in this case the job is inside a daily activity, such as living in their own homes, which through a sharing spaces, allows an inflow statement.

Similiar features

• Centrality of feedback

• Centrality of sociality

• Not economically sostitutive of a traditional job

A new paradigm of labor? • Ownership of means of production but under the control of feedback

and reputation

• No contract as instrument of regulation of labor

• No space and time control

• Sociality as part of labor exchange, not just money for job

Something more than independent contractor

Gnammo: a seed of a new paradigm • Italian platform through which anyone can make their homes a

restaurant for an evening. The amateur cooks can organize dinners on the platform indicating the location, the menu, the cost and a minimum and maximum number of participants. This way anyone can make his passion for cooking a small business.

• Since the foundation there have been over 120,000 "gnammers" (service customers) and over 3600 chefs who have worked for the platform and recently Gnammo developed an app for smartphone.

• We will analyze the new Code of ethics of 2015.

Non professionalsIf we consider a professional someone who practices a specific profession in a habitual and competent way, and if we consider the professional as that worker that puts at his principal’s service his competence and the principal will pay for a certain activity

Gnammo’s cook has not these characteristics. This allows us not to consider his job as an independent contractor or as a form of self-employment, with all the social and anthropological consequences we already have illustrated.

Not habitual events The Code says that the social meetings “are not habitual events”. The irregularity and the prohibition to fix a precise schedule of the same typology of event seems to contribute to the de-professionalizing of the performance and to put it into the cage of the sharing economy. Finally, we can observe the cook’s power to choose his own guests, which are not selected according to a chronologic criterion but in order to build the moment, choosing the ones who can better create a good social environment.

What to exchange?• The cook “makes available his cookery knowledge, the Location, his

conversation ability and his bent for sharing, in order to create the event”• The guest “ makes available his own experience, his conversation ability

and his bent for sharing in order to partake the event”.

The sharing elements seem to be the experience, the conversation ability and the bent for sharing.

A job for everyone? • Suitable space activities, both for the size and for the quality

of the location.• A certain amount of time sufficient to find products and cook

them. • A predisposition to social relations and hospitality, and this is

to be considered the most important quality.

Towards something new The roots of this type of work seem to be relational and not individualistic: • The service is not performed because of a contract between parts, of course there

is an agreement but is not legally forced and so not regulated in terms of subordination or autonomy. • The relationship is governed by a logic of sharing in such a way that the cook in

granting their skills also grants his company, his personality and at the same time considers the presence of the guests as a form of revenue for themselves. • This logic escapes from the normal economic regulation of labor relations, as it

introduces the social dimension as component of the exchange between worker and client. • There is a realignment of the parts and a new balance of power not only

concentrate in the hands of a commitment against a weak contractor or an employee.