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Announcement
Rethinking structure in modalities of consumption: case of an alternative model in south India

Student name: Mr Sahil Patni
Guide: Dr L N Venkataraman
Year of completion: 2017
Host Organisation: earth&us, Auroville
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Minhaj Ameen
Abstract: Collaborative consumption is a contested term (Belk, 2010) that fits seemingly well within two spheres of human cooperation. One is based in a self-interested economistic exchange, most often found in marketplace transactions. The other concerns fairness, reciprocity and deeply rooted individual values, most often found in family exchanges. The sharing economy discourse is split across these two spheres, which implicates future pathways for new models such as the Library of Things (LoT). In an attempt to understand how certain practices align with family- like exchanges as opposed to ones in the market, Schwartz’s Theory of Individual Values (Schwartz, 1992) 1 is leveraged within Social Practice Theory to understand the role of values in shaping the self-ish/less nature of practices. The research explores the value-shifts in the dimension of human agency by studying how engagement in collaborative consumption practices (CCP) contrasts between family and non-family exchanges. Using qualitative approach, the Study evaluates the interaction between an individual’s power-resources value and the collaborative practices they engage in. As this is exploratory in nature, it examines the potential role of value in enriching collaborative experiences among people. The Study highlights three key areas of concern in replicating the ideal type of family sharing, outside the family. One, conceptualization of the ‘self’ as extended would increase the individual’s access to resources for intermittent use, thereby increasing their sphere of self-sufficiency. Two, the notion of consumption is mediated by in/convenience experienced while using alternative modalities of consumption, such as borrowing. Three, characteristics of things such as their financial value, appears to trump matters of values or convenience. These findings are assessed against the market-structured option of sole-ownership, which often equated to the rhetoric of hyper-consumption. This Study posits that understanding how human agency interacts within alternative structures of collaborative consumption, can highlight possibilities for sustainable modalities of consumption.

Keywords: Collaborative consumption; sharing economy; library of things; sustainable consumption; individual values.