Working Group 4 Meeting in Edinburg
The Working Group 4 - “Mechanisms to Activate and Support the Collaborative Economy” - has had a very productive meeting oriented toward the collaborative production of the edited book “On becoming a platform in Europe, or on the governance of the collaborative economy” -- see here the Call for Chapters. The goal of the book is to answer the overarching question “what does it mean to have a European platform for a caring economy --that is, a collaborative economy rooted in the promotion (not the disruption) of social relations based on caring and cooperation? How can the comprehension and design of platforms reflect its roots in the European social texture?”.
During the meeting, the bottom-up process that brought to the call has been described, in relation to previous meetings in Zagreb, Rome, and Vilnius, and the main concepts part of the call have been explored. After the introduction, some participants to the action have presented ideas for potential chapters looking for cross-country and multi-disciplinary collaborations in the spirit of the COST networking ambitions. The debate has been lively and lovely and it has touched on many aspects, from the solidarity economy to innovation and scaling, passing through the legal aspects of the collaborative economy, just to mention a few.
The Call for Chapters will be circulated among the action participants and beyond its boundaries to achieve high quality in the accepted chapters. During the next meeting in Limerick (May 2020), peer-reviewed draft chapters will be discussed in order to make the book a result of vibrant collaboration.
