Care is fundamentally necessary work for the healthy reproduction of humans and ecosystems, but i... more Care is fundamentally necessary work for the healthy reproduction of humans and ecosystems, but it is often invisible in a growth-driven economy. This paper proposes an unconditional Universal Care Income as a core part of the EU's Care Deal for Europe. It is a vision of prosperity beyond growth that seeks to re-balance the care burden across genders, and centres both social and environmental care.
5.3.2 Social decision model 5.4 Sharing in urban Spain and rural Bulgaria 5.4.1 Data 5.4.2 Regres... more 5.3.2 Social decision model 5.4 Sharing in urban Spain and rural Bulgaria 5.4.1 Data 5.4.2 Regression model 5.4.3 Empirical results for Barcelona 5.4.4 Empirical results for Bulgaria 5.5 Discussion 5.6 Conclusions 6. Conclusions 7. Appendix 1. Questionnaire on happiness and extreme climate events conducted in Barcelona and Bulgaria Chapter 1.
In order to untangle the meaning of success, or rather, thriving, for community-based initiatives... more In order to untangle the meaning of success, or rather, thriving, for community-based initiatives (CBIs) that embody and prefigure degrowth, we bring sustainability transition, prefigurative politics, and degrowth scholarships in conversation with group facilitation practice and living systems theory. The article puts forward a model of organizational thriving grounded in the achievement of results while attending to organizational processes and members’ needs. We explore the trajectories of five CBIs located in the province of Barcelona (Spain), looking into the ways such model is reflected, performed, and experienced by each of these. A key insight of our nine-year research is that ‘care’ is core to success. Sustainability transition, and degrowth organizing thus need to acknowledge that ‘success’ does not only stem from the realization of tangible
results but from the consideration of members’ needs and the quality of group communication, cohesion, inclusion and decision-making processes inasmuch as reaching targets.
The Governance of Nature-based Solutions in the City at the Intersection of Justice and Equity Introduction to the Special Issue, 2021
While renaturing cities through Nature-Based Solutions can enhance the well-being of a large frac... more While renaturing cities through Nature-Based Solutions can enhance the well-being of a large fraction of the global population, we argue here that the way such outcome is being imagined and enacted faces two major challenges. The first concerns the tight link between environmental deterioration, and urban/economic growth, mostly because the way NBS are conceptualized and implemented in policy and practice often explicitly pursues economic growth. The second and bigger challenge is represented by the social facets of urban greening and the way they are constituted and governed in cities, marked by exclusivity and unequal power relations intersecting lines of class, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, to name a few. Those two concerns frame the empirical and theoretical pursuits of this special issue (SI).
While renaturing cities via Nature-based Solutions can enhance the well-being of a large fraction... more While renaturing cities via Nature-based Solutions can enhance the well-being of a large fraction of the global population, we argue here that the way such outcome is being imagined and enacted faces two major challenges. The first concerns the tight link between environmental deterioration, and urban/economic growth, mostly because the way NBS are conceptualized and implemented in policy and practice often explicitly pursues economic growth. The second and bigger challenge is represented by the social facets of urban greening and the way they are constituted and governed in cities, marked by exclusivity and unequal power relations intersecting lines of class, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, to name a few. Those two concerns frame the empirical and theoretical pursuits of this special issue (SI).
We show below that certain changes in the psychological, social and environmental domains cannot ... more We show below that certain changes in the psychological, social and environmental domains cannot be offset by reciprocal changes in monetary terms. Ecosystem and global climate services cannot be fully expressed or captured in financial terms. The same holds for degrowth. Degrowth cannot be measured in monetary units, not even in physical terms alone. The actors of degrowth are engaged in setting a diversity of narratives and pathways to achieving social and environmental sustainability, while stressing the importance of self-criticism, self-reflection and debate. Degrowth is not about diversity without interconnectedness, but a diversity of working together bottom-up to build new (diversal or pluriversal) narratives and pathways (Schneider 2015). Degrowth provides a frame and a number of conditions that help deconstruct the outgrown concepts and open spaces for creating different “imaginaries” (Videira et al. 2014). Its multidisciplinary and multi-source approach comes from the rea...
Potential to identify and cultivate forms of post-capitalism in tourism development has yet to be... more Potential to identify and cultivate forms of post-capitalism in tourism development has yet to be explored in depth in current research. Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and hence ...
The present study bridges the field of happiness economics with the economics of climate change, ... more The present study bridges the field of happiness economics with the economics of climate change, based on two research questions. One is related to the effects of (extreme) climate events on individual happiness and their qualitative measurement. The empirical method to analyze this relation includes the identification of proxies of extreme climate events and studying their relationships with well-being for the impacted population. Here floods, and to some extent forest fires, are taken as an approximation of extreme climate events. The second research question concerns the way happiness studies can inform climate policy and how stringent climate policy would affect well-being. Assuming that effective climate abatement implies a reduction in the rate of economic (income) growth and carbon intensive consumption, I look at how income decline influences subjective well-being in the context of the economic crisis in Spain. To explore the happiness effect of a wider range of climate chan...
This article explores the potential to “scale up” socialization of the global tourism industry in... more This article explores the potential to “scale up” socialization of the global tourism industry in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and hence a powerful global political and socio-economic force. Yet numerous problems associated with conventional tourism development have been documented over the years, problems now greatly exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Calls for sustainable tourism development have long sought to address such issues and set the industry on a better course. Yet such calls tend to still promote continued growth as the basis of the tourism industry’s development, while mounting demands for “degrowth” suggest that growth is itself the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed in discussion of sustainability in tourism and elsewhere. Given that incessant growth is intrinsic to capitalist development, and hence to tourism’s role as one of the main forms of global capitalist expansion, pursuing touristic degrowth would necessarily entail postcapitalist practices aiming to socialize the tourism industry. Recent calls to foreground socialization in tourism development largely focus on community-level initiatives. While this is important, the bulk of the tourism industry remains translocal in scale, and hence not easily addressed by privileging community-level organization. Drawing on a series of principles for conceptualizing post-capitalist and degrowth-oriented tourism development outlined in previous works, this analysis applies these principles to a series of case studies at multiple scales to explore their potential to contribute to an overarching strategy of ‘eroding capitalism’ as the basis for touristic degrowth in a post-COVID-19 world.
espanolDecrecimiento es la traduccion literal de "decroissance", una palabra francesa q... more espanolDecrecimiento es la traduccion literal de "decroissance", una palabra francesa que significa reduccion. Lanzada como lema por activistas en 2001 como un desafio al crecimiento economico, se convirtio en una palabra-misil que desencadeno un debate controvertido sobre el diagnostico y el pronostico de nuestra sociedad. El "Decrecimiento" se convirtio en un marco interpretativo para un nuevo (y antiguo) movimiento social en el que convergen numerosas corrientes de ideas criticas y acciones politicas. Este articulo analiza la definicion, los origenes, la evolucion, las practicas y la construccion del decrecimiento. El objetivo principal es explicar las multiples fuentes y estrategias del decrecimiento, a fin de mejorar su definicion basica y evitar las criticas reduccionistas y los conceptos erroneos. Con este fin, el articulo presenta las principales fuentes intelectuales del decrecimiento, asi como sus diversas estrategias (activismo de resistencia, construc...
The collection of articles reviewed in this editorial presents an eclectic sample of the best con... more The collection of articles reviewed in this editorial presents an eclectic sample of the best contributions from the Second international conference on degrowth, exemplifying recent debates in the field and touching on different aspects of the multi-dimensional transition at stake. Moving beyond theory and the construction of the degrowth proposal, the articles in this special issue look at particular applications, new methodologies and fresh policy options. For example, social enterprises are evaluated as primer candidates for a sustainable degrowth economy in the North. Lessons are also drawn from very different parts of the world, such as Cuba's experience with an oil and commodity shock, to which it adapted through the introduction of ecological labour-intensive agriculture in urban regions.This Special Issue approaches from a degrowth perspective important sectoral issues in agriculture, resource consumption and water. The unsustainable fuel-dependence of the Spanish agrari...
Degrowth is the literal translation of 'decroissance&... more Degrowth is the literal translation of 'decroissance', a French word meaning reduction. Launched by activists in 2001 as a challenge to growth, it became a missile word that sparks a contentious debate on the diagnosis and prognosis of our society. 'Degrowth' became an interpretative frame for a new (and old) social movement where numerous streams of critical ideas and political actions converge. It is an attempt to re-politicise debates about desired socio-environmental futures and an example of an activist-led science now consolidating into a concept in academic literature. This article discusses the definition, origins, evolution, practices and construction of degrowth. The main objective is to explain degrowth's multiple sources and strategies in order to improve its basic definition and avoid reductionist criticisms and misconceptions. To this end, the article presents degrowth's main intellectual sources as well as its diverse strategies (oppositional activism, building of alternatives and political proposals) and actors (practitioners, activists and scientists). Finally, the article argues that the movement's diversity does not detract from the existence of a common path.
Care is fundamentally necessary work for the healthy reproduction of humans and ecosystems, but i... more Care is fundamentally necessary work for the healthy reproduction of humans and ecosystems, but it is often invisible in a growth-driven economy. This paper proposes an unconditional Universal Care Income as a core part of the EU's Care Deal for Europe. It is a vision of prosperity beyond growth that seeks to re-balance the care burden across genders, and centres both social and environmental care.
5.3.2 Social decision model 5.4 Sharing in urban Spain and rural Bulgaria 5.4.1 Data 5.4.2 Regres... more 5.3.2 Social decision model 5.4 Sharing in urban Spain and rural Bulgaria 5.4.1 Data 5.4.2 Regression model 5.4.3 Empirical results for Barcelona 5.4.4 Empirical results for Bulgaria 5.5 Discussion 5.6 Conclusions 6. Conclusions 7. Appendix 1. Questionnaire on happiness and extreme climate events conducted in Barcelona and Bulgaria Chapter 1.
In order to untangle the meaning of success, or rather, thriving, for community-based initiatives... more In order to untangle the meaning of success, or rather, thriving, for community-based initiatives (CBIs) that embody and prefigure degrowth, we bring sustainability transition, prefigurative politics, and degrowth scholarships in conversation with group facilitation practice and living systems theory. The article puts forward a model of organizational thriving grounded in the achievement of results while attending to organizational processes and members’ needs. We explore the trajectories of five CBIs located in the province of Barcelona (Spain), looking into the ways such model is reflected, performed, and experienced by each of these. A key insight of our nine-year research is that ‘care’ is core to success. Sustainability transition, and degrowth organizing thus need to acknowledge that ‘success’ does not only stem from the realization of tangible
results but from the consideration of members’ needs and the quality of group communication, cohesion, inclusion and decision-making processes inasmuch as reaching targets.
The Governance of Nature-based Solutions in the City at the Intersection of Justice and Equity Introduction to the Special Issue, 2021
While renaturing cities through Nature-Based Solutions can enhance the well-being of a large frac... more While renaturing cities through Nature-Based Solutions can enhance the well-being of a large fraction of the global population, we argue here that the way such outcome is being imagined and enacted faces two major challenges. The first concerns the tight link between environmental deterioration, and urban/economic growth, mostly because the way NBS are conceptualized and implemented in policy and practice often explicitly pursues economic growth. The second and bigger challenge is represented by the social facets of urban greening and the way they are constituted and governed in cities, marked by exclusivity and unequal power relations intersecting lines of class, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, to name a few. Those two concerns frame the empirical and theoretical pursuits of this special issue (SI).
While renaturing cities via Nature-based Solutions can enhance the well-being of a large fraction... more While renaturing cities via Nature-based Solutions can enhance the well-being of a large fraction of the global population, we argue here that the way such outcome is being imagined and enacted faces two major challenges. The first concerns the tight link between environmental deterioration, and urban/economic growth, mostly because the way NBS are conceptualized and implemented in policy and practice often explicitly pursues economic growth. The second and bigger challenge is represented by the social facets of urban greening and the way they are constituted and governed in cities, marked by exclusivity and unequal power relations intersecting lines of class, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, to name a few. Those two concerns frame the empirical and theoretical pursuits of this special issue (SI).
We show below that certain changes in the psychological, social and environmental domains cannot ... more We show below that certain changes in the psychological, social and environmental domains cannot be offset by reciprocal changes in monetary terms. Ecosystem and global climate services cannot be fully expressed or captured in financial terms. The same holds for degrowth. Degrowth cannot be measured in monetary units, not even in physical terms alone. The actors of degrowth are engaged in setting a diversity of narratives and pathways to achieving social and environmental sustainability, while stressing the importance of self-criticism, self-reflection and debate. Degrowth is not about diversity without interconnectedness, but a diversity of working together bottom-up to build new (diversal or pluriversal) narratives and pathways (Schneider 2015). Degrowth provides a frame and a number of conditions that help deconstruct the outgrown concepts and open spaces for creating different “imaginaries” (Videira et al. 2014). Its multidisciplinary and multi-source approach comes from the rea...
Potential to identify and cultivate forms of post-capitalism in tourism development has yet to be... more Potential to identify and cultivate forms of post-capitalism in tourism development has yet to be explored in depth in current research. Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and hence ...
The present study bridges the field of happiness economics with the economics of climate change, ... more The present study bridges the field of happiness economics with the economics of climate change, based on two research questions. One is related to the effects of (extreme) climate events on individual happiness and their qualitative measurement. The empirical method to analyze this relation includes the identification of proxies of extreme climate events and studying their relationships with well-being for the impacted population. Here floods, and to some extent forest fires, are taken as an approximation of extreme climate events. The second research question concerns the way happiness studies can inform climate policy and how stringent climate policy would affect well-being. Assuming that effective climate abatement implies a reduction in the rate of economic (income) growth and carbon intensive consumption, I look at how income decline influences subjective well-being in the context of the economic crisis in Spain. To explore the happiness effect of a wider range of climate chan...
This article explores the potential to “scale up” socialization of the global tourism industry in... more This article explores the potential to “scale up” socialization of the global tourism industry in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and hence a powerful global political and socio-economic force. Yet numerous problems associated with conventional tourism development have been documented over the years, problems now greatly exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Calls for sustainable tourism development have long sought to address such issues and set the industry on a better course. Yet such calls tend to still promote continued growth as the basis of the tourism industry’s development, while mounting demands for “degrowth” suggest that growth is itself the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed in discussion of sustainability in tourism and elsewhere. Given that incessant growth is intrinsic to capitalist development, and hence to tourism’s role as one of the main forms of global capitalist expansion, pursuing touristic degrowth would necessarily entail postcapitalist practices aiming to socialize the tourism industry. Recent calls to foreground socialization in tourism development largely focus on community-level initiatives. While this is important, the bulk of the tourism industry remains translocal in scale, and hence not easily addressed by privileging community-level organization. Drawing on a series of principles for conceptualizing post-capitalist and degrowth-oriented tourism development outlined in previous works, this analysis applies these principles to a series of case studies at multiple scales to explore their potential to contribute to an overarching strategy of ‘eroding capitalism’ as the basis for touristic degrowth in a post-COVID-19 world.
espanolDecrecimiento es la traduccion literal de "decroissance", una palabra francesa q... more espanolDecrecimiento es la traduccion literal de "decroissance", una palabra francesa que significa reduccion. Lanzada como lema por activistas en 2001 como un desafio al crecimiento economico, se convirtio en una palabra-misil que desencadeno un debate controvertido sobre el diagnostico y el pronostico de nuestra sociedad. El "Decrecimiento" se convirtio en un marco interpretativo para un nuevo (y antiguo) movimiento social en el que convergen numerosas corrientes de ideas criticas y acciones politicas. Este articulo analiza la definicion, los origenes, la evolucion, las practicas y la construccion del decrecimiento. El objetivo principal es explicar las multiples fuentes y estrategias del decrecimiento, a fin de mejorar su definicion basica y evitar las criticas reduccionistas y los conceptos erroneos. Con este fin, el articulo presenta las principales fuentes intelectuales del decrecimiento, asi como sus diversas estrategias (activismo de resistencia, construc...
The collection of articles reviewed in this editorial presents an eclectic sample of the best con... more The collection of articles reviewed in this editorial presents an eclectic sample of the best contributions from the Second international conference on degrowth, exemplifying recent debates in the field and touching on different aspects of the multi-dimensional transition at stake. Moving beyond theory and the construction of the degrowth proposal, the articles in this special issue look at particular applications, new methodologies and fresh policy options. For example, social enterprises are evaluated as primer candidates for a sustainable degrowth economy in the North. Lessons are also drawn from very different parts of the world, such as Cuba's experience with an oil and commodity shock, to which it adapted through the introduction of ecological labour-intensive agriculture in urban regions.This Special Issue approaches from a degrowth perspective important sectoral issues in agriculture, resource consumption and water. The unsustainable fuel-dependence of the Spanish agrari...
Degrowth is the literal translation of 'decroissance&... more Degrowth is the literal translation of 'decroissance', a French word meaning reduction. Launched by activists in 2001 as a challenge to growth, it became a missile word that sparks a contentious debate on the diagnosis and prognosis of our society. 'Degrowth' became an interpretative frame for a new (and old) social movement where numerous streams of critical ideas and political actions converge. It is an attempt to re-politicise debates about desired socio-environmental futures and an example of an activist-led science now consolidating into a concept in academic literature. This article discusses the definition, origins, evolution, practices and construction of degrowth. The main objective is to explain degrowth's multiple sources and strategies in order to improve its basic definition and avoid reductionist criticisms and misconceptions. To this end, the article presents degrowth's main intellectual sources as well as its diverse strategies (oppositional activism, building of alternatives and political proposals) and actors (practitioners, activists and scientists). Finally, the article argues that the movement's diversity does not detract from the existence of a common path.
A short book presenting the structural mechanisms through which the World Bank Group, as one of t... more A short book presenting the structural mechanisms through which the World Bank Group, as one of the largest providers of long-term development finance for Southern countries, has influenced and shaped their economies and eventually social realities.
A report pointing at the conditionality politics of the World Bank Group, and its democratic lega... more A report pointing at the conditionality politics of the World Bank Group, and its democratic legacies, while suggesting an approach to addressing issues of structural economic domination through disinvestment actions.
We show below that certain changes in the psychological, social and environmental domains cannot ... more We show below that certain changes in the psychological, social and environmental domains cannot be offset by reciprocal changes in monetary terms. Ecosystem and global climate services cannot be fully expressed or captured in financial terms. The same holds for degrowth. Degrowth cannot be measured in monetary units, not even in physical terms alone. The actors of degrowth are engaged in setting a diversity of narratives and pathways to achieving social and environmental sustainability, while stressing the importance of self-criticism, self-reflection and debate. Degrowth is not about diversity without interconnectedness, but a diversity of working together bottom-up to build new (diversal or pluriversal) narratives and pathways (Schneider 2015). Degrowth provides a frame and a number of conditions that help deconstruct the outgrown concepts and open spaces for creating different “imaginaries” (Videira et al. 2014). Its multidisciplinary and multi-source approach comes from the realization that no practice or policy could come into being in an environmentally and socially just way without combining various concerns and theoretical perspectives. Our earlier examples illustrated that consumption decrease could bring improvements in the level of subjective well-being and environmental conditions only in a context of changing reference standards, provision of public goods and opportunities for accessing social economy networks.
Degrowth is a rejection of the illusion of growth and a call to repoliticize the public debate co... more Degrowth is a rejection of the illusion of growth and a call to repoliticize the public debate colonized by the idiom of economism. It is a project advocating the democratically-led shrinking of production and consumption with the aim of achieving social justice and ecological sustainability.
This overview of degrowth offers a comprehensive coverage of the main topics and major challenges of degrowth in a succinct, simple and accessible manner. In addition, it offers a set of keywords useful for intervening in current political debates and for bringing about concrete degrowth-inspired proposals at different levels - local, national and global.
The result is the most comprehensive coverage of the topic of degrowth in English and serves as the definitive international reference.
More information at: vocabulary.degrowth.org
Tags: degrowth vocabulary, PDF, Full book, Download for free, PDF, download
Sustainable consumption has long lost its environmental glamour. Rather than fostering sustainabl... more Sustainable consumption has long lost its environmental glamour. Rather than fostering sustainable degrowth sustainable consumption has turned into a green hype with little transformational power. In view of the multiple, extremely successful, cooptation efforts by marketing agencies and corporate organizations, one way of addressing this trend would be to deny engaging with the term. An alternative, or simultaneous, path could be to rediscover existing social patterns and practices which do not always have an explicit ‘sustainable consumption’ tag, while upholding the basic premises of the term. The present paper takes this latter avenue, surveying sharing as non-commercial, non-market-based form of using physical resources or goods. Sharing in the form of collaborative and sustainable consumption is increasingly popular among the educated middle-class. It is however also present among low-income groups, in traditional rural societies and in urban city contexts. While sharing carries less risk of serving social recognition, it can be commercialized and subject to rebound effect. Sharing can be also marked by a social stigma. The present article builds upon a database on various common practices of (non-commercial) sharing drawn from one urban city set-up (from Barcelona, Spain) and multiple rural areas (in Northern part of Bulgaria). Analysis is based on a schematic theoretical hypothesis on the key drivers of sharing. One of its initial premises is that sharing would be socially beneficial (and therefore preferred) when monetary and time savings are positive, uncooperative behaviour is not too strong impediment, rebound effect is negligible and savings on natural resources and environmental degradations are generated. The article proceeds with an econometric analysis of the social and economic factors behind people’s willingness to share and the practice of house-sharing, car-sharing, electro-domestic appliances and tool-sharing. One stylized finding emerging from the results is that the sharing of cars, housing, tools and electro-domestic appliances is strongly influenced by time constraints and age, while less by the level of personal income. As predicted in the theoretical representation, sharing is more likely to take place in a context of trust, generosity and established social bonds. In the Bulgarian models, living in a town, as opposed to living in a village, and regularity of watching television bear a negative relation with sharing.
Sustainable consumption has long lost its environmental glamour. Rather than fostering sustainabl... more Sustainable consumption has long lost its environmental glamour. Rather than fostering sustainable degrowth sustainable consumption has turned into a green hype with little transformational power. In view of the multiple, extremely successful, cooptation efforts by marketing agencies and corporate organizations, one way of addressing this trend would be to deny engaging with the term. An alternative, or simultaneous, path could be to rediscover existing social patterns and practices which do not always have an explicit ‘sustainable consumption’ tag, while upholding the basic premises of the term. The present paper takes this latter avenue, surveying sharing as non-commercial, non-market-based form of using physical resources or goods.
Uploads
Papers by Filka Sekulova
results but from the consideration of members’ needs and the quality of group communication, cohesion, inclusion and decision-making processes inasmuch as reaching targets.
results but from the consideration of members’ needs and the quality of group communication, cohesion, inclusion and decision-making processes inasmuch as reaching targets.
This overview of degrowth offers a comprehensive coverage of the main topics and major challenges of degrowth in a succinct, simple and accessible manner. In addition, it offers a set of keywords useful for intervening in current political debates and for bringing about concrete degrowth-inspired proposals at different levels - local, national and global.
The result is the most comprehensive coverage of the topic of degrowth in English and serves as the definitive international reference.
More information at: vocabulary.degrowth.org
Tags: degrowth vocabulary, PDF, Full book, Download for free, PDF, download
An alternative, or simultaneous, path could be to rediscover existing social patterns and practices which do not always have an explicit ‘sustainable consumption’ tag, while upholding the basic premises of the term. The present paper takes this latter avenue, surveying sharing as non-commercial, non-market-based form of using physical resources or goods.
Sharing in the form of collaborative and sustainable consumption is increasingly popular among the educated middle-class. It is however also present among low-income groups, in traditional rural societies and in urban city contexts. While sharing carries less risk of serving social recognition, it can be commercialized and subject to rebound effect. Sharing can be also marked by a social stigma.
The present article builds upon a database on various common practices of (non-commercial) sharing drawn from one urban city set-up (from Barcelona, Spain) and multiple rural areas (in Northern part of Bulgaria). Analysis is based on a schematic theoretical hypothesis on the key drivers of sharing. One of its initial premises is that sharing would be socially beneficial (and therefore preferred) when monetary and time savings are positive, uncooperative behaviour is not too strong impediment, rebound effect is negligible and savings on natural resources and environmental degradations are generated.
The article proceeds with an econometric analysis of the social and economic factors behind people’s willingness to share and the practice of house-sharing, car-sharing, electro-domestic appliances and tool-sharing. One stylized finding emerging from the results is that the sharing of cars, housing, tools and electro-domestic appliances is strongly influenced by time constraints and age, while less by the level of personal income. As predicted in the theoretical representation, sharing is more likely to take place in a context of trust, generosity and established social bonds. In the Bulgarian models, living in a town, as opposed to living in a village, and regularity of watching television bear a negative relation with sharing.