Reference Hunters and Gatherers: The Moral Economy of Referencing in Couchsurfing.

This paper aims at reconstructing the principles of moral economy that underpin the social practice of referencing in Couchsurfing (CS). This largest non-payable hospitality exchange networks is often seen as the prototype of “sharing economy”. A minimal definition of this new and rapidly growing economic trend emphasizes the design, namely deploying accessibility-based business models for peer-to-peer markets (Dervojeda et al. 2013). The authors acknowledge that the process of matching is taking place through online platforms, but fail to recognize an important integrating mechanism, which are feedback systems embedded in these platform that enable users to rate or rank the other parties as a result of the exchange (payable or non-payable) which takes place via the sharing economy platforms. In other words, in distributed organizing (Orlikowski 2002) of “sharing economy” networks, the users are not only enabled to contact their peers, but certain responsibilities – such as referencing – are ceded upon them for the sake of orchestrating the network’s inner-workings. Given that the explicitly formulated rules of organizational culture remain general and abstract, if not vague – users are encouraged to “share their life (…), create connection (…), offer kindness (…) [and] leave it better than you found it” – I argue that referencing fellow Couchsurfers is a social practice which rests upon moral economy, that is, a set of understandings which they follow in order to behave “fair” (it does not mean, however, that social norms guiding referencing need to be internally coherent or followed in every instance).

The theoretical framework of the research project (as it stands now) builds upon a cross-fertilization between practice theory and digital labour debate, I argue that such a perspective offers a possibility for a reclaiming the critical lens, as it can help studying the mundane processes of building and maintaining networks whose “practical, situated nature (...) makes [these processes] hard to see” (Brenishan 2015, 11). While evoking “digital labour” I follow its broad understanding as free (unpaid and not forced) work put into an array of activities performed collectively online and not necessarily recognized as labour by those who do it, organized in such a way that these flows of work are channeled and structurized into capitalist business practices (Terranova 2013, 38). I follow the switch from observing a community of practices to studying practices of a community (Gherardi 2009, 121). Community does not exist prior to practicing certain activities. Rather, these activities and inherent processes of collective learning form a community (Gherardi and Nicolini 2000; Nicolini, Gherardi, and Yanow 2003): “concepts are seen as partly emergent creations (...) which help us orient ourselves in the world” (Sandberg and Tsoukas 2011, 352). What binds these two major theoretical strands together is the notion of moral economy as emergent from collective sense-making and providing tools for performing digital labour in the “social factory” (Ross 2013; Virno 2001) of voluntary networks. An apparent theoretical context which may help building an explanation regarding the emergent moral economy of referencing is the spectrum of gift and market economy (Appadurai 1986; Bourdieu 1977), remembering that socially constructed definitions of where CS-hospitality belongs may change overtime and “how gift and market relate to moral worth is, ultimately, an empirical question” (Foucarde and Healy 2007, 301).

The paper is based on an analysis of over 40 individual in-depth interviews with engaged Couchsurfers (as of January 2016), ethnographic fieldnotes from surfing and attending CS events, as well as an extensive analysis of interviewees’ profiles (especially references section) and various forums on CS where principles of “proper” referencing are discussed explicitly. This fieldwork is done as part of a research grant funded by the Polish National Science Centre (agreement no. UMO-2013/09/N/HS4/03790).

Initial analysis of the collected narratives enabled mapping two emergent modes of behaviour related to referencing which I termed gathering and hunting, to refer to classical anthropological notions. In the first mode, referencing is understood as an important element in building one’s online credibility which is a result of engaging in numerous interactions with other users that references are a “side-effect” of, whereas “hunting” denotes engaging in behaviours explicitly aimed at increasing one’s (positive) references quantity. Does this classification exhaust all the possibilities? How do representatives of each mode reconstruct the “proper” ways of surfing and referencing? Do they recognize the existence of such two groups and what do they hold of one another? In a “CS-career”, (how) can one switch between these modalities? Moreover, what kind of patterns of behaviours are understood as appropriate and which not? Is it necessary to balance one’s hosting and travelling to be recognized as an exemplary CS-er? What are the specific rules of reciprocity and what meanings might non-responding to a reference have? Despite the possibility of writing a “positive”, “neutral” and a “negative” reference, there is a strong bias towards positive referencing (Askay 2014; Lauterbach et al. 2009). Then, how do CS-ers make use of references both in writing them and reading them when looking for a host? CS has lately introduced a new affordance which encourages reciprocity and disabled the possibility to erase previously written ones. Does this change influence the social practices of “the digital reputation economy” (Hearn 2010)?

Couchsurfing was started in 2004, since then it has grown into a network with more than 10 millions of users. In 2011, the previous non-profit was turned into a for-profit (a “B-corporation”) and claims to have received over $22 millions in VC funding. This symptomatic change leads to thinking about the possibilities for building a network of alternative consumption and question the purpose of doing this organizational work – and this has been the point of departure for my research. The general question which is guiding the qualitative research project started in mid 2013 refers to the impact of this change of organizational logics upon its functioning. Regarding this paper, I will attempt to answer what kind of influence did the transformation of CS have upon the moral economy of referencing.