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Gift or Data Platform? Capitalist Hospitality and Couchsurfing’s New Paywall

Like most major corporations, Couchsurfing.com is a C Corporation, for-profit and subject to corporate taxes, though it was a non-profit from 2003 to 2011. Hosts on the platform offer free accommodation to travelers. However, lately it seems to have taken a turn toward becoming yet another scheme to extract money from online users. In mid-May […]

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It takes one to mobilize one: Polish tenants’ movement as an example of a mobilizing organizational structure

This article demonstrates how cultural dispossession preventing the Polish marginalized from collective action can be reversed by organizations, which mobilize the grassroots. Based on the case of mobilization within Warsaw tenants’ movement, Kasia Gajewska analyzes the process of mobilisation, the role of the organisations in it, and the profile of the organisers. In his ethnographic […]

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The real life of law: Polish lessons on housing activism in the postcommunist context

Abstract In this paper, I analyze the content and practice of law enforcement in the domain of tenants’ protection in Warsaw to draw lessons from Polish examples on the strategy for housing activism in the postcommunist context. The local public administration is quite weak, as it has limited financial and human resources capacities, which undermines […]