I’m having a strange moment in which a whole series of things that I have written at some point, stretching back at least to 2015, but some much more recently, are suddenly published in the same week (yes, yes, I know, like buses, you wait ages for a paper to come out and then….). A really interesting new collection of essays on Sharing Economies in Times of Crisis, edited by Ant Ince and Sarah Marie Hall, arrived in my pigeon-hole today, to which I wrote a short Foreword (in which I riff on some ideas about the meaning of sharing and public life). Here is the blurb for the book (order it for your library):

“The ‘new sharing economy’ is a growing phenomenon across the Global North. It claims to transform relationships of production and consumption in a way that can improve our lives, reduce environmental impacts, and reduce the cost of living. Amidst various economic, environmental, and other crises, this message has strong resonance. Yet, it is not without controversy, and there have been heated debates over negative dimensions for workers and consumers alike. This book stretches far beyond the sharing economy as it is popularly defined, and explores the complex intersections of ‘sharing’ and ‘the economy’, and how a better understanding of these relationships might help us address the multiple crises that confront contemporary societies.”

And here is the full list of contents:

Chapter 1. Introduction: Sharing Economies in Times of Crisis

By Sarah Marie Hall and Anthony Ince

Part 1: Sharing In and Through Crisis

Chapter 2. ‘It feels connected in so many ways’: circulating seeds and sharing garden produce

By Laura Pottinger

Chapter 3. Malleable homes and mutual possessions: caring and sharing in extended family households as a resource for survival

By Chris Gibson, Natascha Klocker, Erin Borger and Sophie-May Kerr

Chapter 4. Reciprocity in Uncertain Times: Negotiating Giving and Receiving Across Time and Place Among Older New Zealanders

By Juliana Mansvelt

Chapter 5. Relationships, reciprocity and care: alcohol, sharing and ‘urban crisis’

By Mark Jayne, Gill Valentine and Sarah L. Holloway

Part 2: Sharing, the Economy and Sharing Economies

Chapter 6. Home for Hire: How the sharing economy commoditises our private sphere

By Paula Bialski

Chapter 7. ‘Hand-me-down’ Childrenswear and the Middle-class Economy of Nearly New Sales

By Emma Waight

Chapter 8. Franchising the disenfranchised? The paradoxical spaces of food banks

By Nicola Livingstone

Chapter 9. Shared Moments of Sociality: Embedded Sharing within Peer-to-Peer Hospitality Platforms

By Katharina Hellwig, Russell Belk and Felicitas Morhart

Part 3: Alternative Sharingscapes

Chapter 10. Swimming against the tide: collaborative housing and practices of sharing

By Lucy Sargisson

Chapter 11. Just Enough to Survive: Economic citizenship in the context of Indigenous land claims

By Nicole Gombay

Chapter 12. Crisis, capitalism, and the anarcho-geographies of community self-help

By Richard White and Colin Williams