‘Burnt out by all the exploitation’: Involuted labour in creative fields

Abstract

This article develops a neo-Bourdieusian analysis of how creative workers respond to the pressures of freelance, contract and project-based cultural production. Using data from 15 in-depth interviews with independent ‘creatives’ we enrol Bourdieu's fields and Clifford Geertz's account of involution – internal over-elaboration – to investigate the tendencies, nuances and outcomes of creative labour's production practices. To answer the field's piecemeal funding and limited market rewards three broad strategic involution strategies are outlined: ‘hard driving’ of resources; reworking and hybridization of existing cultural forms; and uncodified intricacy within the social relations of production. This theorization illustrates how iterative internal complexity aids the economizing of cultural production oriented to gaining recognition while, due to the social intricacy of creative processes, inducing a tendency towards emotional and physical fatigue. Rather than promote a meritocratic productivity imagined by policy discourses, involuted labour produces burnout and thus contributes to the churn of creative talent.