Moving Western Neighborliness to East?: A study on Local Exchange in Bangladesh

This paper focuses on the main question whether social media specifically conceived to enable local exchange trading schema can be adopted in different contexts than the western digitized society, where those systems have been considered a feasible alternative to money-based capitalism. We report a qualitative study employing focus groups to study the factors which may affect the adoption of these social media in Bangladesh, a developing country that exhibits characteristics such as strong young unemployment, gender-oriented underemployment, aging population, but also a reduced access to the service economy due to the lack of spare time. The benefits of local exchange seem to be particularly fitting the urban and social structure of Bangladesh.

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