IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwsre/sre-disc-2018_07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sharing the liberal utopia. The case of Uber in France and the US

Author

Listed:
  • Katarzyna Gruszka
  • Andreas Novy

Abstract

This article takes the case of Uber, a global platform specialized in transport technologies, to reappraise the claims of the sharing economy. The case presents a chronology of the struggles over the regulation of these digital markets in the US and France, using Uber's self-description and web discourse for additional illustrative purposes. It exposes Uber's business model, the key driving actors and their strategies as well as multi-scalar counter movements. The analysis is framed from a Hayekian and a Polanyian perspective, and the potential of the sharing economy to go beyond market fundamentalism. The Polanyian utopia of sharing as more than market relations based on self-interest is mobilized for legitimizing the platform. The Hayekian utopia of a market society which transforms social relations of friendship and community service into market activities is describing actual development. Finally, Polanyian "counter movements" are described and their potentials are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Katarzyna Gruszka & Andreas Novy, 2018. "Sharing the liberal utopia. The case of Uber in France and the US," SRE-Disc sre-disc-2018_07, Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwsre:sre-disc-2018_07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/sre-disc/sre-disc-2018_07.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin, Chris J., 2016. "The sharing economy: A pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 149-159.
    2. Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, 2017. "Sharing economy workers: selling, not sharing," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 10(2), pages 281-295.
    3. Judd Cramer & Alan B. Krueger, 2016. "Disruptive Change in the Taxi Business: The Case of Uber," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 177-182, May.
    4. Sundararajan, Arun, 2016. "The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262034573, December.
    5. Juliet B. Schor, 2017. "Does the sharing economy increase inequality within the eighty percent?: findings from a qualitative study of platform providers," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 10(2), pages 263-279.
    6. Benjamin Edelman & Micahel Luca, 2014. "Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com," Harvard Business School Working Papers 14-054, Harvard Business School.
    7. Yanbo Ge & Christopher R. Knittel & Don MacKenzie & Stephen Zoepf, 2016. "Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies," NBER Working Papers 22776, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Česnuitytė, Vida & Simonovits, Bori & Klimczuk, Andrzej & Balázs, Bálint & Miguel, Cristina & Avram, Gabriela, 2022. "The State and Critical Assessment of the Sharing Economy in Europe," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 387-403.
    2. Sunyu Chai & Maureen A. Scully, 2019. "It’s About Distributing Rather than Sharing: Using Labor Process Theory to Probe the “Sharing” Economy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(4), pages 943-960, November.
    3. Česnuitytė, Vida & Klimczuk, Andrzej & Miguel, Cristina & Avram, Gabriela (ed.), 2022. "The Sharing Economy in Europe: Developments, Practices, and Contradictions," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 249157, July.
    4. Sally Zhu, 2020. "Sharing Property Sharing Labour: The Co-Production of Value in Platform Economies," Laws, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-17, October.
    5. Jesús M Artero & Cristina Borra & Rosario Gómez-Alvarez, 2020. "Education, inequality and use of digital collaborative platforms: The European case," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 31(3), pages 364-382, September.
    6. Pies, Ingo & Hielscher, Stefan & Everding, Sebastian, 2020. "Do hybrids impede sustainability? How semantic reorientations and governance reforms can produce and preserve sustainability in sharing business models," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 174-185.
    7. Valeria Andreoni, 2020. "The Trap of Success: A Paradox of Scale for Sharing Economy and Degrowth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-17, April.
    8. Jing Lan & Yuge Ma & Dajian Zhu & Diana Mangalagiu & Thomas F. Thornton, 2017. "Enabling Value Co-Creation in the Sharing Economy: The Case of Mobike," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-20, August.
    9. Gruszka, Katarzyna & Novy, Andreas, 2018. "Sharing the liberal utopia. The case of Uber in France and the US," SRE-Discussion Papers 2018/07, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    10. Yongwook Paik & Christos A. Makridis, 2023. "The social value of a ridesharing platform: a hedonic pricing approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(5), pages 2125-2150, May.
    11. Ni Huang & Gordon Burtch & Yili Hong & Paul A. Pavlou, 2020. "Unemployment and Worker Participation in the Gig Economy: Evidence from an Online Labor Market," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 431-448, June.
    12. Florian Hawlitschek & Nicole Stofberg & Timm Teubner & Patrick Tu & Christof Weinhardt, 2018. "How Corporate Sharewashing Practices Undermine Consumer Trust," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-18, July.
    13. Gugerell, Katharina & Penker, Marianne & Kieninger, Pia, 2019. "What are participants of cow sharing arrangements actually sharing? A property rights analysis on cow sharing arrangements in the European Alps," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    14. Jing Lan & Diana Mangalagiu & Yuge Ma & Thomas F. Thornton & Dajian Zhu, 2020. "Modelling consumption behaviour changes in a B2C electric vehicle-sharing system: a perceived systemic risk perspective," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 160(4), pages 655-669, June.
    15. Farajallah, Mehdi & Hammond, Robert G. & Pénard, Thierry, 2019. "What drives pricing behavior in Peer-to-Peer markets? Evidence from the carsharing platform BlaBlaCar," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 15-31.
    16. Koen Frenken & Juliet Schor, 2019. "Putting the sharing economy into perspective," Chapters, in: Oksana Mont (ed.), A Research Agenda for Sustainable Consumption Governance, chapter 8, pages 121-135, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Crommelin, Laura & Troy, Laurence & Martin, Chris & Parkinson, Sharon & Hayward, Richard Donald, 2018. "Technological disruption in private housing markets: the case of Airbnb," SocArXiv cb8z3, Center for Open Science.
    18. Tan, Zhi Ming & Aggarwal, Nikita & Cowls, Josh & Morley, Jessica & Taddeo, Mariarosaria & Floridi, Luciano, 2021. "The ethical debate about the gig economy: A review and critical analysis," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    19. Chan Liu & Raymond K. H. Chan & Maofu Wang & Zhe Yang, 2020. "Mapping the Sharing Economy in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-19, August.
    20. Ge, Yanbo & Knittel, Christopher R. & MacKenzie, Don & Zoepf, Stephen, 2020. "Racial discrimination in transportation network companies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    political economy; socio-economics; economic change; markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • B55 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Social Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwsre:sre-disc-2018_07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/mlgd/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.