Which capitalism for what responsibility? The case of the sharing economy

This paper focuses on the topic of “sharing economy”, which emerges more and more frequently, even in public debate, as an alternative economic form to the dominant capitalist vision. The goal is to question the concept of “sharing” in order to understand if and in what terms we can speak of the sharing economy as a new “spirit” of capitalism. In this direction, this paper asks how the sharing economy is positioned in relation to this theoretical framework. Is it a distinct economic form and opposed to the essential logic of the functioning of current capitalism? Or does it possess a logic of functioning similar to capitalism? We wonder, from a sociological point of view, if behind the label that this economic form advocates there is not the danger of a real introduction of capitalist logic – that is, the efficiency and profit logic – within areas previously governed by gratuitousness.