INTRODUCTION

The “sharing economy” has had the attention of the anthropological community since the dawn of the Internet, with the likes of eBay and Craigslist, back in the 1990s, beginning to transform the lives of ordinary people for whom historically sharing has been limited to known social networks, friends and families and local communities (Schor 2014). It remains unclear when exactly the term was coined and what its original meaning implied. An umbrella category rather than a strictly defined concept, “sharing economy” has since its conception come to comprise a wide range of distinctly different phenomena: from collaborative to access-based consumption, from peer economy to asset-free business models. Formally defined as “an economic system in which assets or services are shared between private individuals, either free or for a fee, typically by means of the Internet” (Oxford English Dictionary), sharing economy’s ever-expanding label has been attached to a large number of hybrid market transactions. Online marketspaces (eBay and Craigslist), peer-to-peer accommodation (Airbnb, Couchsurfing), travel (Blablacar, Tripr), tap and ride services (Uber, Lyft) and social lending (Prosper, Lending Club), despite being hugely different phenomena in both content and form, often get grouped together under sharing economy’s bland, nondescript umbrella.

In a rapidly changing world, where society is becoming more liquid (Bauman 2007) and markets are increasingly being replaced by networks (Bardhi & Eckhard 2012), the temptation to group these together is high: they were indeed made possible by the same technological advances, and rely on a similar business model. “Sharing economy” as an analytical framework, however, fails to address the differences and granularities in the ways these types of businesses actually operate and fit into people’s lives. It is too broad and vague a term to be applicable to often strikingly different phenomena: while the underlying business models are similar, the embodied experiences of the above-mentioned platforms differ from country to country, from culture to culture, from person to person. As boundaries are shifting between ownership and access, shared and personal, public and private, our relationships with things, spaces and each other are similarly transforming.

To fully understand the nature and the shape of some of the emerging practices of sharing, we need a new language to help us get to the core of what happens when “sharing” meets “economy”. In order to achieve this, we suggest moving away from debating “sharing economy” as a wider societal phenomenon, and instead look at more specific cases of economic transactions that involve sharing spaces, services, costs and responsibilities. By getting at the ethnographically rich core of particular sharing practices within the context of economic transactions, we hope to arrive at more subtle and actionable insights that would help us understand how ideas of ownership and freedom, responsibility and flexibility, are changing across the world.

In this study, we have looked at one of the areas that’s been affected most dramatically by the rise of the internet-enabled peer-to-peer networks – urban mobility. We are presently witnessing the demise of the so called “old mobility”, a rigidly organised system with private cars at its cosmic epicentre, and the dawn of a new kind of mobility: one that brings a future “in which we would all be free to move in the greatest variety of ways” (Montgomery 2013). Tap and ride services, such as Uber and Lyft, are classic examples of that futuristic vision. They transform the ways in which we think about vehicles, routes and travel. They allow more and more users across the globe to benefit from their competitive prices and mobile, cashless interfaces. They change the way we think about city travel, planning and time.

Amongst the more recent additions to the global mobility marketplace are pooled mobility services such as UberPool and Lyft Line (amongst many other local competitors). These are built on algorithms that enable strangers to carpool together within a city, when travelling in a similar direction, at a cheaper cost than if they were to use the service by themselves. For the purposes of this article, when talking about carpooling, we distinguish between two different types. Firstly, the well-established practices of ride sharing, or carpooling, amongst close circles of friends and colleagues, organised on a regular or ad-hoc basis by individuals themselves; these practices we refer to as informal pooling. Secondly, by formal pooling, we mean centralised app-based paid services that connect strangers travelling in the same direction – such as UberPool. The latter practices are pivotal to the argument of this paper. As a relatively recent phenomenon, studying them allows us to focus in on the tensions that arise as people make sense of the new practice. We have not included cases of shared car ownership in this study, focusing exclusively on instances of shared rides.

As cities are changing and car ownership becomes less attainable (Cheshire et al 2010), with demand for freedom and flexibility growing (Bauman 2000; Levine 2009), practices of sharing car rides with friends as well as with strangers find themselves in a liminal space where old values clash against new opportunities. As travel norms and aspirations change across locations, genders and generations, so do travel patterns. With cities undergoing significant demographic, economic and infrastructural changes, our relationships with urban landscapes are to a huge extent experienced and take on an embodied form through travel. When we traverse urban landscapes, we create points of contact with different parts of the city, appropriating and getting more intimate with some, while rejecting others. The modes of transportation we choose for traversing those landscapes are linked to how we think and feel about the city; what aspirations and values we have in life; who we want to be and how we want to appear to others. Reasons behind choosing one transportation mode over another can thus reach far and wide. They can say as much, if not more, about our identity and values, as about our attitudes towards transportation. Sexualisation of the car (Miller 1997) and its linkage to higher socio-economic status has been commented on by a number of economic and urban anthropologists over the years (Freund 1993; Brandon 2002; Sheller 2004; Miller 2001b; Motavalli 2001; Sachs 2002). In a similar vein, this paper shows how different transportation modes can be associated with a whole range of socio-economic and phenomenological meanings.

Formal pooling thus enters a highly-saturated context, where people have tightly formed relationships with different modes of transportation. Formal pooling practices relying on a car as a vehicle are thus entangled in webs of meaning that reach beyond the realm of mobility and transportation. An understanding of how formal pooling fits into one urban landscape or another, cannot be achieved without looking at social, cultural and emotional factors surrounding each journey.

It is important to emphasize from the outset that the theoretical and ethnographic contribution of this paper does not attempt to address the whole body of “sharing economy” debate, nor does it offer an in-depth discussion of anthropology of mobility. What it seeks to do instead, is explore the liminal spaces and shifting perspectives shaping people’s relationships with transportation modes, mobility marketplace, and with each other: spaces between private and public, teleological and experiential, freedom and ownership. What we find is a continuous oscillation between what’s perceived to be public and private spaces, the social grammars that go with them; a compromise between the practical, logistical elements of a journey, and the embodied experiences of it; a choice between being and having, using and owning. These tensions come to define people’s perceptions and experiences of formal pooling. By shifting perspectives between these categories, we hope to move away from a discussion of sharing economy that is too broad and controversial to have much use in applied ethnography. Instead, we focus on a very specific yet increasingly relevant and fascinating instantiation of urban mobility, which involves sharing resources, spaces and responsibilities.

In this paper, we argue for the need to focus on how car sharing is conceived and practiced by family and friend groups, colleagues, strangers and drivers; how it is transforming the mobility landscape and how it is reconfiguring our relationships with cities and with each other. With this approach, we hope to get closer to a more fluid understanding of this specific form of sharing practice, and glance at what the future of pooled mobility might look like.

To fully understand why and how attitudes to car ownership are changing and why formal pooling services like UberPool are successful in some cultural geographies and not in others, we will start by exploring three mobility landscapes, outlining the limitations of existing public transportation services, tracing pain points experienced by local commuters, and exploring existent practices of informal and formal pooling. We will then look at the wide spectrum between the functional “why’s” and “how’s” of pooling, and look at the cultural, social, and emotional factors affecting people’s choices.

In this study, we looked at formal and informal pooling practices and attitudes across three cities: London (UK), Ahmedabad (India) and São Paulo (Brazil). Over a period of three weeks we conducted 45 interviews mixed with immersive travel and commuting activities, participant observation and interactive exercises. Our research focused on documenting and investigating different commute and travel modes, seeking to understand existing cultural, social, economic, functional and logistical drivers and barriers to pooled mobility, as well as already established practices of short and long distance informal vehicle share.

Hugely different but comparably vast, populous and congested, the three cities have unique and intricate mobility landscapes, across which millions of people navigate daily, to work and to home, to shops, hospitals, schools and night clubs, constantly trading off different needs and priorities, negotiating between being a driver and a passenger, an owner and a user. Often locked in by circumstances, commuters are seeking creative and elaborate ways to traverse their cities, making sense of formal pooling, as more and more car sharing solutions emerge in the market. In some places, formal pooling is a practice that doesn’t have clear rules of engagement, causing significant tensions among unaccustomed users, who are yet to learn pooling’s do’s and don’ts. In others, people find that they are already “fluent” in the grammar of car sharing. To have or have not, to own or to share, to be or to seem – these are but a few questions they are facing. Exploring these granularities of ownership and use, sharing and exchange, is key to situating formal pooling in the urban mobility landscape, if we are to avoid politicising the discourse and instead get at its ethnographically rich core.

A TALE OF THREE CITIES

London

A commuter’s journey – It is 7:10am in London and Chris is getting in the car to take his sons to the tube station (sometimes he would get a minicab, to avoid having to find parking). At 7:20am he picks up a friend’s son James, who goes to the same school as his boys. At 7:30am he drops them off at the Ruislip Garden station. They take the Piccadilly line to their school in Ealing. Chris parks his car somewhere in between Ruislip Garden and Ruislip Manor stations – this is where he can find a free parking place: closer to the station is always full, and is £8-12 a day. He then walks to Ruislip Manor station and continues his journey to work, using public transport – he would never drive into London because of how bad the inner-city traffic is.

Chris is married with two sons (aged 12 and 15). He lives in Ruislip, a green suburb 16 miles northwest of Central London (45-60 mins travel by public transport). He is known to his friends and neighbours as the “Uber-dad”, as he is always picking up and dropping off kids, his own and others’. He spends every Sunday afternoon planning for the week ahead. While the kids’ routine is fixed, the parents’ afternoon schedules are often changing which is why it’s important to make a new plan every Sunday.

There are five stations near his home, however each is 15-20 minutes’ walk away, with no public transport solution. He has to plan bringing and picking his sons up from the station, as well as figure out transportation for their social and sporting activities. Chris has different streams of communication that are directly related to car sharing arrangements. He uses texts with his sons and his wife to agree on bringing and picking up the kids. These are one-on-one relationships that are “strictly functional” and informative. He is also a member of a WhatsApp group where kids’ afterschool and weekend activities are arranged by the parents. This group has a livelier social dynamic and interactions; run by parents who have known each other for years, it mainly revolves around football activities for the kids. Because social activities are malleable and can change, the dynamic nature of conversation allows for more flexibility.

Public transport – Finding first and last mile solutions, arranging school runs, working on the go – are tasks many Londoners have to deal with in one way or another. Greater London is home to 8.6 million people. Over four fifths of the city’s workforce commutes into work from within this area, heavily relying on the extensive network of public transport services operating across the city’s six fare zones. The established public transportation system has a wide reach, and is generally seen to be good and reliable. This means that Londoners have high expectations towards the transportation system. It needs to work, and it needs to be reliable, as punctuality is critical for professionals, especially in the peak morning hours.

Private cars – Roads, on the other hand, are something Londoners have very little faith in. Since utility and efficiency are the key drivers behind modal choices, most would never consider commuting into work by car, as roads are considered to be “broken” and the city is seen as “not a place to drive”. Presently, London’s 2.56 m cars equate to 0.3 cars per adult². An increasing number of households opt out of having a car, particularly those living in Inner London³, where congestion is at its worst and parking is excruciatingly expensive and difficult to find. As inner city is heavily congested, cars are not seen as a viable option for peak hour commute. A parent like Chris might be doing a pooled school run locally in the early hours of the morning, picking up neighbours’ kids, counting on the favour to be reciprocated. Nevertheless, while Chris loves his car, he will not be driving into the city to work, nor would he be Uber pooling to cover the last mile to a client’s office. Reliability and punctuality are the priorities for Londoners – they can therefore not leave chances to congestion when being somewhere on time is at stake.

Taxis – Despite the congestion, the number of taxis, including traditional black cabs, various mini cab services and tap and ride apps like Uber, continues to grow⁴. Uber, having entered the scene just before the 2012 Olympics, now accounts for 40,000 drivers (twice as many as black cab drivers), increasingly putting the old-school black cab drivers out of jobs. While considered a different experience altogether in comparison to black cabs – cars less comfortable, drivers “don’t know where they are going” – the 30 percent lower fares nevertheless contribute to Uber’s ever-growing popularity. Black cabs are a luxury, used by few, or on special occasions. Ubers, on the other hand, are becoming part of the weekly routine for many.

Informal pooling – Well-established in the suburbs, informal car sharing is not generally widespread, and is mostly done within very close circles of friends, neighbours and colleagues. School runs, commutes shared between colleagues, neighbourhood pooling with “strangers that we know” – are some examples of where informal pooling fits into Londoners’ lives. Two respondents working in creative industries told us how producers typically encourage them to carpool together – to save costs and get everyone to arrive at the same time.

Pooled trips with colleagues are better value, however, are not necessarily the most pleasant way of travelling for some, particularly on the journey home. Andrew, a police officer living in Dunstable, used to share the car with a colleague twice a week, when they worked at the London Heathrow Airport. While journeys to work were perfectly enjoyable (and saved them both money), on the way home he missed the opportunity to “unwind” and de-stress. The need for personal space, particularly at the end of a long day, was a re-occurring theme amongst Londoners, whether in informal or formal pooling. “You need to be British and say hi, make small talk. It’s not relaxing, definitely not a moment for myself” – Liz summed up the way many Londoners felt about having to talk to strangers (or even people they knew) at the end of a long day.

Formal pooling – Since UberPool was introduced in London in December 2015, the city’s residents are still figuring out how it fits into their travel routine and habits, still unsure of the “rules of the road” and the social grammar of pooling with strangers. The transition to formal pooling struggles to draw on the rules established in informal pooling – particularly as the latter is not too widely practiced by many Londoners in the first place. As a result, UberPool experience is typically measured against the experience of Uber X, or other taxi services.

Hopping on an UberPool goes very much against what people were taught as children. “I was always told to never get into cars with strangers”, Molly, 71, laughed, when remembering her times ridesharing in California where she was travelling in her mid-twenties. It felt a dangerous activity then, it still makes little sense to her today. Londoners are thus hesitant when it comes to the social dynamics of travelling in cars with strangers. What came naturally to Paulistanos, causes tensions and awkwardness amongst Londoners, who are unsure whether to behave as if they are on public transport (i.e. no talking) or in a private car (talking required).

“We are British, we don’t like talking to strangers” was a sentiment many shared, particularly older respondents. “In a car, you have to talk to people” – Andrew complained to us, and many others living in and around London echoed his sentiment. However, worse than talking to strangers in cars was not actually knowing whether you are supposed to talk to them or not; the uncertainty makes for an awkward, stressful experience.

The physical space of an UberPool vehicle (typically a not very spacious Toyota Prius) is another challenge, even though it is an improvement on a crowded tube carriage in the rush hour. Because it’s a car, the expectations are different. “I don’t want to be crammed in with strangers in a car. But on the bus, you tolerate it, don’t you?” Alison, a 32-year old school teacher living in North London relied on buses heavily in her daily commute, however had a different view on bodily proximity in a car, where she wanted privacy and personal space. She admitted this was double standards, but that didn’t change the way she felt about the two modes of transportation.

Younger users are by far the ones most open to the idea of formal pooling; some are indeed attracted by a sense of adventure and serendipity. Nitika loves to take an UberPool home after a night out, and not just because of the reduced cost. “It’s so much fun, there is always banter. Always a Tinder guy who’s moody because his date wouldn’t go home with him. It’s hilarious, I love it”. Vishal similarly enjoys the serendipity of pooling: “It’s fun, like a game. Every time I order it I always wonder who I am going to meet. My friend once met a hot girl on an UberPool and got her number. You get this thrill of meeting strangers”. The “thrill” of pooling can be emotionally exciting and attractive. But it can also be awkward and uncomfortable.

Ahmedabad

A commuter’s journey – It’s 9:45 in the morning and already hot, as Shivam, a 23-year-old student and a freelancer, walks down from his house in Vasna to meet up with four other friends going to the university in Motera, 16 km away. Everyone is on time and the journey begins. A few of Shivam’s friends have cars, so they take turns – it is always the car’s owner that gets to drive. While Shivam has a car, it’s reserved for special family occasions, temple visits and festivities – he cannot use it in commuting context. Shivam and his friends take turns paying for petrol, rather than splitting the cost each time in between them. In Ahmedabad, where value is prioritised over time efficiency, it’s important for the costs to be kept low. Sharing space with friends also helps them bond and have a good time: taking turns at driving on different days makes it a fun social activity where responsibility is shared by all equally.

Half an hour later, they arrive at the Chandkheda University. In the past, Shivam used the AMTS, the official state bus service, until he found a set of then strangers who appeared to be taking a similar route to his and they agreed to carpool. Pooling with his new friends works out better than using AMTS, as he doesn’t have to wait at the stop on hot days and deal with crowds at the stop or during the journey. He is guaranteed a seat, A/C, and shelter from the weather, with intense heat and heavy rains making most other modes of commute stressful. Besides, the bus would take 45 minutes. Driving not only saves time, however, but is also a more pleasant and sociable experience, which gives him the opportunity to chat to friends instead of being crushed in a crowd. Despite being less comfortable, however, the AMTS was an important milestone in Shivam’s life, as it allowed him to meet strangers and experience the reality of the city.

Public transport – The largest city in Gujarat and the seventh largest in India, Ahmedabad is dominated by private transport (mainly two wheelers and rickshaws): only one sixth of its 6.3 million inhabitants use public transport for getting around. This reflects on the rigid hierarchy of transport modes: with walking at the very bottom, followed by public services, private vehicles are always at the top.

The city has plenty of mobility options, however, they often struggle to address the pressing needs of Ahmedabadi commuters. AMTS (Ahmedabad Municipal Transportation System) has a fleet of 540 buses, operating 250,000 daily trips – these, however, are considered to be at the very bottom of the transport hierarchy, offering neither comfort nor flexibility: crowded, hot, and infrequent, they are not a pleasant way to get across the city. BRTS (Bus Rapid Transport System) was introduced in 2009, presently running 160 buses (of which 59 have A/C) along dedicated bus corridors across the city. Originally intended as a fast, comfortable and inclusive service that should attract poorer commuters, only few of these shifted from rickshaws over to BRTS, which offered neither flexibility, nor covered all the routes.

New developments are underway, supplementing AMTS and BRTS buses and holding a promise of better options and connectivity in the future. MEGA (Metrolink Express Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad) construction started in 2015, aiming to offer a better integration of BRTS with railway services and state-wide buses. As things stand, however, public services do not offer the point-to-point connectivity of private vehicles (highly desirable due to hot weather and heavy rains), nor do they afford the much-wanted status that comes with owning a car.

Private cars – Offering the best point-to-point connectivity, cars are linked to social status and are highly aspirational, even if regular usage is low: parking is a nightmare, and streets in the old town are often too narrow for cars to get through. Car usage is therefore often limited and associated with leisure and family occasions, rather than regular commuter journeys. Individual space and ownership remain highly desirable amongst the rising middle class and continue to be main drivers for buying cars. A car offers a protective bubble, a shelter and a refuge. Decorating and accessorising the car is a common practice, suggesting that the car space is a cherished project for the owner. For those not able to afford a car, scooters give a first taste of personal mobility. For women, it’s a mobility solution that enables independence, freedom and empowerment. Such attitudes mean that formal pooling with strangers is automatically associated with “not doing well in life”, regardless of its convenience and value.

Taxis – Prior to Uber and Ola entering the scene, Ahmedabad had no history of taxis comparable to São Paulo and London. Rickshaws are the closest equivalent, and by far the most common vehicle for individual and shared rides – typically resorted to for short rides and during peak hours. They are widely available and easy to access anywhere in the city and are commonly referred to as “autos”. A well-established and common practice, they are considered a safe option for female passengers as well as male: because of their open layout, everyone can see what goes on inside.

Informal pooling – Informal pooling is typically limited to known circles of friends and family. Pooling with friends, family and colleagues makes the journey itself an important part of the experience: catching up, spending quality time together, planning ahead. In the context of family trips, pooled travel has a positive association with “care and love for immediate others as well as care for others within wider social networks” (Maxwell 2001). Tesh, a 38-year old school teacher, told us how he missed being able to take his wife and his parents on weekend trips to the temple. Since he sold his car, he has had to share his scooter with his wife, getting an Uber or an Ola for his parents. While logistics of it work out just fine, it takes away the fun of a shared journey. In much the same way, Shivam enjoys the chance to bond with his new friends while travelling to university. Arjun told us of community based pooling – also widely practised: “There are more than twenty of us going to this show tonight”. Religious, recreational and ceremonial events are typical occasions for community members to share vehicles.

Pooling with strangers is welcome for short rickshaw rides even for women. Arjun’s wife told us that “sharing an auto after the Sunday market is very normal and happens a lot – it makes sense for drivers to pick up more people”. A well-established and common practice, it is considered cheap and accessible. The open layout of a rickshaw vehicle gives passengers a sense of security, allowing them to pick who they get into the rickshaw with in the first place.

Formal pooling – Formal pooling services are often met with doubt and hesitation, as they don’t have the natural feel of their closest alternative – shared rickshaw rides. Conventions in shared rickshaw journeys rely on immediate visibility. Furthermore, as rickshaws are ubiquitous, they are easy to jump on without having to use an app and wait. On the other hand, apps help create transparency and reduce haggling friction. Despite offering cost efficient travel in a city where value is king, formal pooling is a source of heated debates in the rest of the country, struggling against rising safety and legal concerns.

While informal pooling is as much about socialising as it is about travel, in the context of formal pooling with strangers, Ahmedabadis are keen to maintain socio-economic distance. Khevana, a 39-year old teacher, says she doesn’t like “sitting too closely to people from different backgrounds”; the lack of choice she has over who she travels with in a formal pooling context is a clear drawback. Similarly, drivers operating formal pooling rides don’t feel comfortable offering mixed gender shared rides. One of them told us that each time there is a female passenger he would tell her to move to the front seat: “You never know and I don’t want to take risks in my car”.

Local formal pooling services are aware of these tensions, and are seeking to resolve them. Ola Share, for instance, seeks to address safety and social proximity concerns by offering an option to choose co-riders. “You share your ride with the people you choose” – an in-app function allowing people to choose friends, co-students and colleagues to carpool with. Ola is thus beginning to operate more as an open platform than a dedicated service, allowing people to form their own pooling groups and to connect to their wider networks of “known strangers”. This kind of message shows a clear appreciation of local values as well as an understanding of the passengers’ need for a service that reconciles logistical requirements with those of emotional comfort.

Overall, UberPool and Ola Share can be said to have a more practical, and less of a socio-emotional dimension for people: they solve mobility needs while under-indexing on the symbolic dimension. They provide the comfort of a car without its social standing. For some, it’s a compromise. For others, it’s better than nothing. Despite Uber being highly standardised (the Uber app in Ahmedabad works exactly like everywhere else), and Ola seeking to be as “local” as possible, addressing the above-mentioned tensions, there is little loyalty to either of the providers (or to any other local competitors) – the only loyalty being to the best price. In reality, this means that people employ a wide range of formal mobility apps, using these depending on which happens to have the best offer at the time.

LIMINAL SPACES AND SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES IN “STRANGER SHARING”

How various formal pooling services fit into a city’s mobility landscape undeniably depends on a number of “hard” factors, such as the state of existing mobility infrastructure, available public transportation services, citizens’ disposable income and various sets of rules and regulations that affect formal pooling services. Thus, formal pooling may not always be a positive choice, but one brought about by the lack of alternatives. In a city like São Paulo, due to poor network coverage and undersupply of public transport, formal pooling is a major logistical addition to the city: it may not tick all the boxes, but it’s better than what people currently have. In London, on the other hand, where people have plenty of transport options, it becomes merely another option for those who want to experiment with a new, sociable way of travelling. In Ahmedabad’s hot and temperamental climate, comfort and shelter offered by formal pooling vehicles is attractive; on the other hand, formal pooling encounters a number of strong socio-cultural barriers.

Differences in existing mobility landscapes and needs inevitably lead to formal pooling playing qualitatively different roles and fitting into different lacunae in urban travel in the three cities. Nevertheless, the way formal pooling is conceptualised by commuters in each cultural geography bears similarities. A Londoner may have a completely different approach and attitude to getting around their city than a Paulistano; the tensions they face when making their transport choices, however, have certain things in common.

Firstly, the positioning of formal pooling gets caught between the private and the public transportation modalities. Formal pooling thus becomes a liminal activity; it sits betwixt and between the established categories and behaviours – it’s not mass transit and it’s not taxi or private car. As a result, it can be hard to know for certain which “rules of the road” apply, or who is in charge. Formal pooling may be viewed as an upgraded bus (with the public elements prevailing) or a downgraded taxi (with privacy and extra comfort still being key). The way people conceive of public and private spaces is therefore essential for how attitudes to formal pooling develop.

Secondly, Londoners’, Paulistanos’ and Ahmedabadis’ conceptions of travel swing on the pendulum between the teleological and the experiential aspects of the journey: it is all about prioritising and compromising, picking and choosing between the rational considerations such as cost, efficiency, speed, convenience, and a wide range of emotional, cultural, aesthetic and sensory factors that often go against the grain of rational choices. Millions of commuters around the world are constantly negotiating which matters most: the teleological “destination” or the experiential “journey”. Travel – pooled or otherwise – is rarely just about getting from A to B: how one gets there, in what company, temperature, environment, ambience – plays a significant role in the decision-making process.

Thirdly, formal pooling exposes the dichotomy of freedom and ownership, particularly in geographies where car ownership still holds sway over the values and aspirations of the rising middle class. Sharing a car can feel constraining – to those who strive towards individual ownership associated with elevated socio-economic status. But it can also feel liberating – to those who’ve had enough stress associated with owning a car, and would like a more affordable alternative to traditional taxis – with a bit of serendipity and sociality thrown into the bargain. Where the scale tips in any given context can come to define whether formal carpooling will catch or fail amongst different demographics.

By looking at these tensions in the following section, we hope to illustrate the complexity, granularity and multimodality of the shared mobility phenomenon, moving away from the all too broad economic discourse that has prevailed in anthropological writing on collaborative consumption in recent years. To fully uncover the cultural, emotional and phenomenological aspects of formal pooling, we need to keep shifting perspectives between the public and the private, the teleological and the experiential. Last but not least, we need to see how the balance shifts between these categories, depending on the point of view of actors involved – drivers and passengers, owners and users, old and young, male and female.

Freedom/Ownership

One of the biggest emotional benefits that can be derived from owning a car is the feeling of socio-economic achievement. Purchasing a car has traditionally been associated with becoming a part of the middle class; it is attractive “to the young and the poor because of the sense of displayed personal identity it conveys” (Stradling et al 2001). Such attitudes, witnessed both in Ahmedabad and São Paulo (however not in London) support classical theories describing the world of old mobility, where car owners are seen to view their vehicles as prosthetic extensions of their bodies and souls, life aspirations and fantasy worlds (Freund 1993; Brandon 2002).

Emotional investments in cars inevitably makes formal pooling seem less attractive. Despite being more comfortable and private than public transport alternatives, pooling with strangers doesn’t convey the much-desired socio-economic status and therefore has little cultural appeal for the aspiring middle classes, who still perceive ownership as the main means of capital accumulation, “a way to provide a sense of personal independence and security” (Snare 1972).

Over the last decade, however, the idea of ownership as the only means to a very singular socio-economic end has received considerable amount of critique for being somewhat problematic in an increasingly liquid society (Bardhi & Eckhardt 2012; Bauman 2007). The “coercive freedom of driving” (Sheller and Urry 2000) stands in stark contrast to the freedom from owning things and the freedom to move in the greatest variety of ways (Montgomery 2013). With the responsibilities (and liabilities) removed, people can become free from having to plan ahead and spend money on maintenance. As ownership becomes less attainable (Cheshire et al 2010), formal pooling finds itself in a space where century-old values clash against new opportunities.

Londoners are furthest away from linking car ownership to financial aspirations. Only the older respondents still displayed a sense of pride in owning a car: “I’m very territorial about my car – it’s like my second home” – Molly, a 72-year-old part time secretary living in North London, told us. The majority of Londoners we spoke with, however, didn’t see the appeal. “Our generation is not into possessions but into experiences. Car is a responsibility I don’t want to bear” – Vishal explained to us how congestion, parking costs and the stress of driving make owning a car undesirable. Buying a car demonstrates a sense of commitment he isn’t ready for; an attitude to life that doesn’t match his desire to feel young and free. Formal pooling enables younger commuters like Vishal to “differentiate themselves from owners of vehicles that entail many liabilities” (Bardhi & Eckhardt 2012). It is freedom from owning things – “freedom distilled” (Britton in Montgommery 2013) – that urban dwellers are beginning to aspire to, trading in the ideal of ownership which is starting to feel constraining and old-fashioned.

In São Paulo, younger generations are slowly beginning to arrive at similar conclusions. Older generations, nevertheless, still reminisce over getting their first vehicle, the act marking their passage into adulthood. “You never forget your first car”, Jose, a 68-year-old accountant told us, with a sentimental, almost romantic longing in his voice. He acknowledged that the age of the car was behind. “For my sons, it’s different. It’s a just car. These days they often just hop on an Uber because it’s less hassle. Increasingly, I do the same”. Historically an urban rite of passage, a sign of status and success, car ownership is slowly but steadily losing its status as the ultimate expression of consumer desire in the context of mobility (Chen 2009, Marx 2011). Instead, flexibility, freedom from constraints and responsibilities, and, last but not least, practicality, are beginning to outweigh the desire for ownership (Bauman 2000; Levine 2009). Marcela told us: “I sold my car years ago. Many of my friends still have theirs, but hardly ever use them. It just takes up too much of your time and is stressful”. Andre had a similar experience himself. “I got my first car and a driving license when I was still at high school. I felt like a cool kid. But soon it wore off. I grew up and decided I’ve had enough of driving. The same happened to a lot of my friends”.

In Ahmedabad, however, car ownership still significantly outweighs car usage, a result of the social image most citizens are eager to project: a car owner is an economically successful and independent individual. Buying a car is highly aspirational for the rising middle class. “What’s my own is my own” – Ruchit, a 30-year-old appliances salesman, told us. Ruchit doesn’t currently have a car, nor would he have anywhere to park one if he did (he would have to store it in the other side of town at a family member’s garage). For him and for many others, a car is something that signifies status. Arriving in a private vehicle would signal to others that he was a successful young man. Hardik, a 36-year-old businessman went even further, arguing that “you can build a personality by having a car”. Car owners spend great amounts of time decorating and personalising their vehicles, conveying their own identity onto the much-cherished car space – a second home; a shelter from the world.

Even in Ahmedabad, however, a shift from ownership to flexibility is slowly taking place. Modi, a 36-year old hospital supervisor, told us she would not have bought a car if services like Uber and Ola were available five years ago. Tesh sold his car due to serious parking challenges in his part of the city: he now relies on a combination of scooter, public transportation and formal pooled services. Even in locations where ownership is highly aspirational, flexibility that comes with freedom from owning things is often far more practical.

The increased flexibility and freedom that come with the “new” freedom from ownership, comes at a cost. Aggregation of people inevitably means aggregation of unknown people, and the unknown creates a reduction of control amongst riders – something we witnessed across all three cities. Herein lies one of formal pooling’s key departures from its informal counterpart. A distinguishing characteristic of car sharing, “interdependency between participating consumers, demonstrating a high level of consumer involvement” (Bardhi & Eckhardt 2012) – disappears in a context where even the driver has to give up control – for the algorithm to take over. The latter, of course, is not only blind to cultural, social and emotional needs of the passengers, but more often than not also to the landscape, character and life of the city.

Losing he freedom to choose the route and the co-riders is the price many struggle to accept. Urban commuters in the twenty first century may not want to own a car, but they want to “own” the journey; they also want to feel safe. In-app surveillance and command controls in formal pooling contexts are welcomed by female riders in particular, supporting McGrath’s (2004) controversial conclusion that big brother control models can be beneficial to consumers in the context of negative reciprocity transactions (Sahlins 1972), where goods and services are exchanged with one side always benefitting at the cost of the other.

In London, this tension doesn’t get resolved: passengers begrudgingly learn to accept the lack of control over the route and the drop offs, resorting to vocalising their annoyance when diversions get too big. “People get annoyed if they get in first and get dropped off last. They feel like their time is being wasted, and they think it’s my fault” an Uber driver in London complained. Liz, a 33-year old actress living in East London, shared a similar experience: “People always feel that if they get on first they should be dropped off first, there is no way of changing that”. In Ahmedabad, the need for control is so high, that formal pooling app developers are swiftly reacting, by giving passengers the ability to choose their co-riders (discussed above). However, the route is still decided by algorithms that tap and ride services so heavily rely on. In São Paulo, riders resorted to social media to create, at the very least, a semblance of agency. Whether checking someone’s Facebook profile or reporting to one’s family on one’s whereabouts on WhatsApp actually resulted in increased safety, is hard to tell. Nevertheless, these kinds of actions helped people alleviate the feeling of losing control. Negotiating between freedom from and freedom to is not an easy process. As mobility landscape across the world changes, people are beginning to keenly engage in those kinds of negotiations in order to make sense of what mobility is about in their cities.

FINAL WORDS

By exploring the differences in how formal car sharing is experienced across the three markets, this paper sought to highlight the ethnographic value of shifting perspectives between liminal spaces that such practices occupy; and between different players in formal carpooling. We came along on our respondents’ daily journeys; we immersed ourselves in the crowds and the queues, in the heat and the rain, and in a number of agonizing traffic jams; we travelled at the back and at the front of cars, carriages, buses and rickshaws. In doing all this and much more, we tried to understand mobility from the point of view of the passenger as well as the driver, witnessing first-hand how formal pooling practices are shaped. This method proved extremely useful not only for understanding the complex sociality of transportation, but ultimately for tying this new knowledge back to the mobility industry, and generating valuable strategic insights.

On the one hand, we looked at tensions and contrasts that come to define users’ attitudes towards pooling. Ethnographic method allowed us to repeatedly shift the focus from private to public positioning; from teleological to experiential aspects of the journey; and from aspirations of freedom and ownership, to those of flexibility and control. It allowed us to explore norms and values, goals and desires, social structures and cultural biases that define people’s relationship to urban travel in general and formal pooling in particular. We have shown how positioning of formal pooling is key to setting up expectations for the experience and helping users master the language of sharing. We have highlighted the compromises and dilemmas between what makes most sense and what “feels good” – choices commuters face daily when choosing between the teleological and the experiential aspects of a journey. Last but not least we looked at socio-economic values and aspirations, and explored the shifts and the transformations people’s perception of urban mobility. As desire for ownership ebbs away in some places (while still holding sway in others), we saw people across continents embrace freedom and flexibility that new mobility brought with it.

By going into the field and participating in embodied travel activities side by side with Uber drivers, early morning commuters and late night “party poolers”, we were able to see how attitudes change depending on one’s role and place in the transaction: male or female, young or elderly, driver or passenger – all had different embodied experiences of formal pooling, which cut across and add further complexity to the socio-cultural context of urban travel. Personal safety and socio-economic status; serendipity and adventure; risks and liabilities – these had different meaning and priorities for different actors.

Like other forms of sharing, car sharing isn’t a new phenomenon. We have contrasted formal pooling against a number of well-established informal pooling practices. We looked at the ways in which these informal practices fit into people lives, and are entangled in nets of close relationships – between families and neighbours, friends and colleagues. As they become formalised, however, culturally intuitive behavioural models and practices inevitably get lost in translation. Interacting with strangers in a confined space, negotiating route diversions, managing various cultural and social uncertainties: to many, formal pooling meant learning a whole new social grammar.

Learning this new grammar of sharing is above all a collective project. It requires all parties’ involvement and time. Examples of long-standing informal pooling practices throughout the paper show that shared social grammars take time to emerge – a fact often ignored by the algorithms behind formal pooling services.

The success of formal pooling depends highly on getting the grammar and the language right, on establishing culturally sensitive rules of engagement all parties are happy to honour: commuters, drivers, public sector policy makers and private sector innovators. But first, they need to be established through active involvement and participation on behalf of drivers and passengers alike.

Moving away from broad and overarching definitions such as the “sharing economy” we attempted to outline a more fluid but also more focused perspective on practices that involve sharing and economic transactions. Shifting between categories, and between actors involved, has allowed us to glance at the granularities of formal car sharing practices, and the different roles these come to play across continents, cities, and people’s lives. To have and have not, along with many other dilemmas faced by today’s urban dwellers, is a question that does not have a clear answer. As the perspectives shift, and we experience pooling through the eyes of drivers, passengers, men and women, the young and the old – needs and desires change as well. Mobility needs to be studied “in motion”, as it were – always moving from person to person, from back seat to front seat, and even to driver’s seat. By exploring these shifting perspectives, we hope to have presented a fresh, ethnographically rich and critical perspective on sharing practices in the context of an industry in flux.

Anna Zavyalova is an ethnographic consultant at Stripe Partners. She holds an BA in Archaeology & Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Social Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen.

NOTES

I would like to express my gratitude to Renault Nissan, who commissioned this research. I thank Rachel Nguyen, Kenji Izumi, Luc Jamet, Josh Westerhold and Megan Neese who came along on this ethnographic journey and provided insights that greatly assisted the study. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Stripe Partners, Simon Roberts, Yuebai Liu and Tom Rowley for their hard work and invaluable expertise in shaping this study and developing insights presented in this paper. Last but not least I thank my EPIC curators, Tiffany Romain and Jamie Sherman for their incredibly helpful feedback and comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

¹ São Paulo Public Safety Secretariat, Reuters

² Transport for London, Road Task Work – Technical Note 12, 2012

³ LSE Cities, Towards New Urban Mobility, 2015

⁴ Department for Transport, Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Statistics: England 2015