Moving western neighborliness to east a study on local exchange in Bangladesh

This paper focuses on the main question whether so- cial 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 fo- cus groups to study the factors which may affect the adoption of these social media in Bangladesh, a de- veloping country that exhibits characteristics such as strong young unemployment, gender-oriented underem- ployment, 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.