Sharing and cooperativism: designing for economies

Abstract

Recent work on sharing and cooperativism has helped widen our understanding of the emerging systems for exchanges, interactions, and relationships beyond mainstream economic models, in particular through studying local cooperatives and their sharing practices across various domains. These efforts also indicate that design has the potential to shape our engagements with the global political economy. However, so far, there are few design resources tailored for exploring and further developing design insights from empirical and conceptual research on sharing and cooperativism. Therefore, we invite the community to discuss the role of design in relation to economies of sharing and cooperativism. In this workshop, we will gather a diverse group of scholars, designers, and activists to think together how designs for sustainable economies can be created and circulated across cooperatives and platforms, with the aim to springboard social and economic aspects of sharing cultures.