1,721,507 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Researching the social: an introduction to ethnographic research
No full textBeyond Work? New expectations and aspirations
No full textThis chapter considers the extent to which new aspirations and expectations have become attached to work, and the possible emergence of new norms linked to the models of the creative worker and entrepreneur. Through an analysis of interviews with UK artist-makers, the chapter investigates the meanings, values and affect that they attach to their creative practices. The chapter concludes that the creative practices are valued as 'not work' and as offering personal associations and forms of fulfilment which contemporary work is seen as unable to provide. The chapter argues that earlier understandings of work persist, reinforcing negative meanings and affect for even the educated and qualified middle class who might once have expected to find self-actualisation and personal reward through their careers
A new mystique? Working for yourself in the neoliberal economy
Get PDFThis article discusses the growing UK trend of people working for themselves. Beginning with the example of a media representation, it explores the wider implications of a discursive drift by which discourses of entrepreneurialism and contemporary creative work converge on the new figure of the worker who leaves paid employment for the supposed satisfactions of working from home. The article argues that, in contrast to the heroic masculine figures of the entrepreneur and artist, this is a feminised low-status worker. Its celebration is part of a ‘new mystique’ resembling the ‘housewife trap’ described by Friedan (1963) half a century ago, because for increasing numbers of people, both male and female, working for yourself amounts to exclusion to an almost subsistence level of economic activity on the margins of the neoliberal economy
Recommended from our members
New pathways into creative work?
Get PDFThe experience of aspiring creative workers contrasts sharply with Paul Willis’s classic account of entry to working life from almost half a century ago, in his book, Learning to labour (1977). Creative work entails intellectual rather than physical effort. Unlike secure mid-twentieth century manufacturing jobs, creative employment tends to be precarious, badly paid and individualised, without either the support or constraints of a collective workplace culture. The long hours of creative work, the pressure to be flexible and mobile, and the high level of personal investment sit uneasily with the claims of workers’ partners and dependents. However, the emotional labour involved in creative work and the pressure to be continuously positive, disclaiming difficulties, may involve a similar denial of self to that described by Willis, despite the much celebrated association of creativity with self-actualisation, or its appeal to middle-class aspirants. This concluding chapter considers the pathways that are implied in accounts of contemporary creative work. The chapter questions the promise in the aspirational creative discourses of Higher Education and creative workplaces, but also notes the agency of workers in negotiating the ups and downs of creative employment. Finally, it considers the significance of a worker viewpoint of a creative pathway
Recommended from our members
Collection Introduction: The 'New Normal' of Working Lives
No full textLauren Berlant (2011) has written of the need to understand the problem of living contemporary lives, including the 'new normal' and 'new ordinary' (p.261). This collection investigates the new normal of work and employment through international, interdisciplinary research into contemporary worker experience. The introductory chapter sets out the themes of the collection and introduces individual chapters. It argues that the most significant feature to emerge in the studies is the affective weighting attached to personalised and increasingly individualised work, and the shift this provides around how people want to work and organise their lives. Within different employment arrangements, this ambition promotes the intensification of labour and therefore becomes an 'obstacle to flourishing' (p.1) and an example of the 'cruel optimism' discussed by Berlant
Recommended from our members
Evaluating and applying discourse analytic research
No full textThe first chapter of this book presented a guide to conducting a research project and an overview of discourse analysis as one form of social research. In Chapters Two to Seven, six academics have offered detailed accounts of their own discourse analytic research, showing some of the possibilities which exist within this wide-ranging field. I will begin the final chapter of the book by summarizing the work that has been covered, reviewing Chapters Two to Seven briefly with reference to Chapter One. I will then discuss two additional and important aspects of discourse analytic research: the assessment or evaluation of the quality of the research, and its possible applications
Introduction: Cultural work, time and trajectory
No full text[About the book]
In recent years, cultural work has engaged the interest of scholars from a broad range of social science and humanities disciplines. The debate in this ‘turn to cultural work’ has largely been based around evaluating its advantages and disadvantages: its freedoms and its constraints, its informal but precarious nature, the inequalities within its global workforce, and the blurring of work–life boundaries leading to ‘self-exploitation’.
While academic critics have persuasively challenged more optimistic accounts of ‘converged’ worlds of creative production, the critical debate on cultural work has itself leant heavily towards suggesting a profoundly new confluence of forces and effects. Theorizing Cultural Work instead views cultural work through a specifically historicized and temporal lens, to ask: what novelty can we actually attach to current conditions, and precisely what relation does cultural work have to social precedent? The contributors to this volume also explore current transformations and future(s) of work within the cultural and creative industries as they move into an uncertain future.
This book challenges more affirmative and proselytising industry and academic perspectives, and the pervasive cult of novelty that surrounds them, to locate cultural work as an historically and geographically situated process. It will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, cultural studies, human geography, urban studies and industrial relations, as well as management and business studies, cultural and economic policy and development, government and planning
Creative aspiration and the betrayal of promise? The experience of new creative workers
Get PDFThe promise of ‘doing what you love’ continues to attract new aspirants to creative work, yet most creative industries are so characterised by low investment, shifting foci and ongoing technological innovation that all promises must be unreliable. Some would-be creative workers negotiate their own pathways from the outset, ‘following their dream’ as they attempt to convert personal enthusiasms and amateur activities into income-earning careers. Others look to the proliferation of available training and education options, including higher education courses, as possible pathways into creative work. This chapter reviews recent research from the USA, Australia and the UK on the effectiveness – or otherwise – of higher education as preparation for a creative career. The chapter discusses the obstacles that many creative workers, including graduates, encounter on their creative pathways, for instance, as a result of informal work practices and self-employment. The chapter also looks at sources of advantage and disadvantage, such as those associated with particular geographic locations or personal identities. The chapter concludes by introducing the subsequent chapters in the collection. These critically explore the experience of new creative workers in a wide range of national contexts including Australia, Belgium, China, Ireland, Italy, Finland, the Netherlands, Russia and the United Kingdom
- …
