Cultural Work and Creative Subjectivity

This book critically investigates the declining status of creative workers in contemporary societies following changes associated with the neoliberal creativity discourse - from the distribution of resources around cultural production to consumption, and from the management of 'labour time' to 'life time'. These changes have narrowed career pathways for creative workers, resulting in exploitative working conditions for both professionals and amateurs. The contemporary cultural industries accentuate entrepreneurialism, informed by 'social network markets' and a capacity to engage technologised consumer culture. This book suggests that a radically different view is needed to understand how creative workers justify their continued participation in the cultural industries. It pays particular attention to the identities of marginalised cultural workers (underpaid or under-rewarded) and argues that cultural work cannot be understood as a route into entrapment by self-exploitation (sacrificial labour) nor as an abstract form of creative autonomy. Creative workers must engage the 'artist critique' to re-claim the social values of making culture as 'public labour'. Bringing together theory and practice via contemporary case studies, this book is a significant contribution to research on the cultural economy and will be of interest to researchers in this field and practitioners in the management of cultural work.

Xin Gu is Director of the Master of Cultural and Creative Industries and Senior Lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, Australia.

1. Introduction: cultural work and creative subjectivity Part 1. Paradigms of creative subjectivity 2. The 'artist critique' of cultural work 3. The 'social critique' of cultural work 4. Consumer culture and social network market Part 2. Researching creative subjectivity 5. Co-option of the social by independent designer fashion in Manchester 6. Differentiation and justification of creative careers by visual artists and writers in Shanghai 7. Constitution of creative subjectivity of artisan makers in Melbourne 8. De-professionalisation: freelancers and consumer labour in the digital media industry in Manchester and Shenzhen Part 3. Creative subjectivity and cultural policy 9. Beginning after the end: critical cultural policymaking 10. Conclusion: key findings and future research

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