The Labour of Sharing: Three Discourses on the Division of Labour in Couchsurfing

Despite the upsurge in interest in the so-called sharing economy, as yet there is relatively little theorizing of this rapidly growing economic phenomenon in organization studies. The debate on sharing economy is organized around the question whether sharing economy brings emancipation from mass capitalism or are they bringing an exploitation of collaborative work? This dispute can thus be treated as a new incarnation of studying the interrelations of market economy and the moral order of the society. I present an analysis of a collection of interviews with experienced Couchsurfers. CS is seen as one of the prototypes for sharing economy. First run as a voluntary organization, it was turned into a corporation in 2011. This symptomatic change leads to question the purpose of doing this organizational work. Accordingly, this paper examines how CS-users reconstruct the division of labour in this network. My analysis points to three such discourses which are described with help of a theoretical framework derived from practice theory, emphasizing situatedness and  and digital labour.