Economies of Coworking: Sharing, Exchanging, and Buying as Acts of Commoning

Abstract

The past fifteen years have seen a rapid growth in the number of coworking spaces worldwide. In the research literature, these spaces, in which start-up entrepreneurs and other self-employed people form professional and social networks, are often understood either as a manifestation of increasingly precarious forms of work within neoliberal capitalism or as a solidary alternative to this form of individualizing and competitive economy. Drawing on ethnographic research from a coworking space in Barcelona, we identify three forms of sharing—demand sharing, passion sharing, and public sharing—which simultaneously carry the potential for communal and passionate work and for instrumental and exploitative forms of collaboration in coworking. We show how coworkers balance acts of sharing, exchanging, and buying/selling their skills and knowledge in different ways, depending on their personal situations, experiences, and professional skills. Accordingly, we argue, in this setting coworking also involves forms of “differential commoning” through which coworkers can obtain—even if it is only momentary—a sense of being part of an intentional community that operates according to values of solidarity, care and passion, which intersects with yet differs from what they perceive as individualist capitalist work life.