Alternative organizing and sharing economies can sound abstract, especially in our individualistic cultures. But an evening at a food hall, with 35 researchers and a pre-paid card each, showed how quickly people shift from “What’s mine?” to “What’s ours?” when the conditions are right.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading a lot about alternative organizing and sharing economies, much of it based on Indigenous knowledge systems and ways of living. Books like Jeremy Lent’s Ecocivilization, Jason Hickel’s Less is More, and to some extent also Silvia Federici’s feminist classic Caliban and the Witch suggest that, contrary to what neoliberal capitalism makes us believe, humans are not primarily driven to maximize their individual outcomes, but thrive in communities and are eager to share their resources. In her book The Serviceberry, Potawatomi scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer emphasizes the principle of reciprocity: If people share and help each other, there is no need to accumulate wealth for oneself. I have always been sceptical about whether these ideas could be brought back to our modern Global North contexts (and I still am).
However, a recent experience in a scientific context served as a striking example that even in our highly individualistic cultures, such a community effect “kicks in” very quickly. The setting was a dinner during a 3-day workshop on organization studies. As a group of about 35 researchers, ranging from PhD students to professors, we went to a ‘Foodhall’ with a wide variety of food offerings at different booths. Everyone got a pre-paid card with a substantial amount of money and could order drinks and meals. What unfolded was a beautiful community experience. Rather than ordering by themselves and keeping their “fair share” or the maximum possible amount, people formed little groups to order different meals and share them. Everyone was happy to use their card to pay for a round of drinks or meals, knowing that someone else would take over once they ran out of money. The cards became a shared resource, a source of joy rather than of jealousy or competition. There was a lot of trust that there would be enough for everyone in the end, and their investments for the group would be reciprocated.
The experience made me wonder what had made the difference that evening. And I think that these were factors that influenced it:
- Shared belonging: There was a strong sense of community, a lot of positive affect and people wanted to feel part of the group.
- Abundance: Everyone had more than they needed. We all received an amount that would enable us to have a decent meal including drinks – not to go crazy, but without a feeling of scarcity. Probably most of us would not have needed the full amount.
- Equality: Everybody received the same amount, regardless of “status” or seniority.
- Sense of finitude: We were aware that resources were not endless and that someone – a host we appreciated and wanted to respect – had given them to us very generously.
- Redistribution: We knew that anything we didn’t use individually could be used by someone else, or would go back to the ‘source’ and could be used for other purposes, e.g. similar workshops for other groups. Except for the motivation to have a good meal on that very evening, there was nothing to be gained individually – i.e., there was no motivation to keep as much money as possible.
Certainly, it was a small-scale experiment in a group of people who were mutually dependent on each other, in the sense that they hoped to collaborate in the future. It also wasn’t our own money, and spending a host’s budget surely feels different from spending one’s own salary. And sharing food is one of the oldest social practices there is: humans have always gathered around meals to share what they had.
Nevertheless, the evening showed how quickly a community can shift from “What’s mine?” to “What’s ours?” when the conditions are right: enough for everyone, equal shares, an awareness of limits and respect for the generosity of the host, and the knowledge that everything unused will go back to the community. Interestingly, these mirror proposals by Hickel and Lent: securing everyone’s basic needs, limiting individual wealth and redistributing resources, and cultivating gratitude for nature’s finite generosity.
The question that stays with me, and the reason I remain sceptical, is whether we can create these conditions beyond a workshop dinner, in places where the resources are our own and the stakes are higher. But perhaps that is exactly where the ideas of Lent, Hickel and Wall Kimmerer begin.
Photo by Ambitious Studio* | Rick Barrett on Unsplash
