(TAPAS – There Are Platforms as Alternatives) is a research program financed by the French Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Solidarities and Health, led jointly by the CEPN (Centre d’économie et de gestion de l’Université Paris 13 – UMR CNRS 7234) and the association, Coop des Communs.
Created in 2016, La Coop des Communs comprises commons and SSE practitioners, as well as researchers and public actors. Its goal is to help build an ecosystem conducive to the emergence of commons. “Allies, Commons and ESS can constitute, not residual solutions, but real pillars for sustainable development in a pluralist vision of the economy” (La Coop des Communs, 2018). La Coop des Communs is organised into work groups, including the Plateformes en Communs (Platforms in Commons) group. This took shape around digital platforms open to sharing practices in order to “bring together a set of emerging or existing actors who share these values, within an open community” and “build a mutualised toolbox aimed at operationality, and enable the appropriation of the new peer-to-peer possibilities offered by digital technology”(La Coop des Communs, 2017). The group’s objective is to create, run and equip the platform community in line with a code of ethics based on five principles: inclusive governance, equitable sharing of value, data ethics, production of commons, and cooperation among members. By cross-comparing several sampling criteria (including diversity of the development levels of the platform’s activity and the sectors of activity), the team selected nine sharing platforms.
The project is based on the empirical study of nine SSE platforms, analysing substantive, social solidarity economy mechanisms they develop. The results will propose a typology of collaborative platforms according to the economic models on which they are based and modes of treatment of the contributors to the functioning of the platform they propose. Emphasis will be placed on the combination of these two dimensions as well as on socioeconomic solutions and innovations to overcome the obstacles encountered by the actors. Description of the project is in French but the results will be available in English as well.
See more (Fr) : https://cepn.univ-paris13.fr/tapas/
