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Quoting M Andre Primus (the founder and director of RocShare) in his TEDx Talk on "What is sharing economy and why does it matter?", it is defined  as "is what happens when you love your neighbour as yourself". Sharing economy, in his context, are a support system created by a community to assists and engage with each other. According to Primus, people who power the sharing economy has expand much farther; they use their resources to benefit their entire community, and they rely on the community to meet their needs (video - see below).

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This interdependent culture is a typical culture in most rural community social network. It is nothing new in Sarawak - as stated by Kong in her article in the BorneoPost - but it is presently gaining a whole lot more attention globally following the success of companies such as AirBnB, Uber etc. People in the cities now are renting out their personal vehicles, properties and even preparing food for strangers because of the fluidity of this sharing economic activity. 

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The concept of resource and space sharing are the norm in the social system of most indigenous communities in Sarawak. Linda Jaivin of The Monthly wrote ‘culture coheres around shared history, legend or songlines, and communities function on the basis of shared social, political and religious responsibilities’. Sharing, in other words, has long existed outside the sphere of business models and monetisation. Long before the existence of AirBnB, people have been offering their bilik in the rumah panjai and share their local delicacies like alcoholic beram or tuak with travellers and tourists. People offer space in their 4WD Toyota Hilux  to travellers to go up to or down the Ba'kelalan Highland, offer to cart up gas tanks and rations from Miri for their relatives and neighbours back in Baram and offer ojek services for visitors from the nearby Kalimantan village near Kampung Biawak in Lundu. That is the custom of the local informal sharing economy that can be found practiced by the rural communities in Sarawak.

 

In this interconnected world, people everywhere have access to hundreds of applications and social network platforms, be it on their computers or on their mobile devices. Our aim for this part of the research is to get a holistic view of the community's livelihood strategies in Baram and to observe their usage of ICT in their local economic practices, or what they could potentially be used for.
 
The Baram river (second longest river in Sarawak), was (and is still) the lifeline for numerous communities living along the river. Most people in this interior area still rely on the river as their waterway to commute from one village to another. Presence of formal and informal trade activities or traditional sharing economic activities might (or might not) still be done through this commuting process with the aid of ICT and the development of communication infrastructure.  
 
On our upcoming trip to Baram in August 2016, we will be investigating the local economy system of several villages by looking more in-depth into the barriers, constraints, and the strategies that they use for getting by and ultimately how communication technologies and the internet enables change in the community's livelihood practices. 

Interested parties are definitely welcome to join us for our next exciting adventure trip upriver :)

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