SHARING PRACTICES IN A LARGE HOUSING ESTATE

Abstract

The article discusses the alternative economy in newly constructed large housing estates. Exploring Severnaya Dolina, a typical large-scale residential complex in the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, Russia, the author focuses on neighborly exchanges of goods and services, purchases/sales, and donations mediated by an online neighborhood group in VK.com, a social networking site. Outlining the main debate on conceptualization and effects of sharing economy development, the author proposes a new conceptualization of sharing economy that derives from an anthropological approach to sharing as a social relation. Sharing practices are considered to maintain a common resource or enact a configuration of urban commons. The analysis of the data collected with digital ethnography (online posts and interviews with residents and online group admins) demonstrated why neighborly interactions fit the conception of sharing developed in the theoretical part of the paper. The resource that is maintained via exchanges, purchases/sales, and donations is a flow of items circulating over the territory of a large housing estate.