Contingent proletarianization of creative labor: Deskilling in the Xianyou classical furniture cluster

Abstract

Champions of creative economy maintain that, unlike labor in manufacturing, labor in the creative industries is independent and innovative. They also claim that we are witnessing a linear transition from a manual to a creative labor-based economy. We argue against this idea of a sweeping, historical transition and instead posit that the labor process can easily switch from one to the other, depending on market conditions. We illustrate this theoretical point through an empirical study of the classic furniture industry cluster in Xianyou, China. Until around 2005, the region housed a typical low-skill, low-value added manufacturing cluster of small size. Since then it quickly transformed into a creative industry cluster where a small number of craftsmen performed both creative and manual work. However, the recent growth in the demand for classic furniture has enabled firms to mechanize the production process thereby creating new divisions of labor and turning the majority of the workforce into simple manual workers. At the same time, those who specialize in what remains creative in the production process are now liberated from manual work and enjoy greater creative freedom and higher status. Based on these findings, we conclude that, the transformation between creative and non-creative labor is reversible, industry-specific, and contingent upon the market rather than irreversible and economy-wide.

Uma Nova Forma de Precariedade (da Prática)? A Descompetencialização Profissional no Centro do Sequestro da Qualidade no Jornalismo

“…In fact, Gamst (2015) states that professional deskilling occurs when there is a continuous loss of competences which, for Ferris et al (2010), can also affect the cognitive dimension. A loss of skills that leads precisely to a proletariat dispossessed of expertise, reflecting the constraints, especially external ones (Chen & Sonn, 2019), imposed by capitalism and the deregulation of labour markets (Martinaitis et al, 2021;Wood et al, 2019). Braverman (1974) had already pointed out that professional deskilling, which is a new historical phase of capitalism, results in a complete inversion of the quality of trade work, and is therefore a mechanism for the degradation or dequalification at work.…”

“…For Abel (2001) and Carroll and Mentis (2008), such a fate began its course with 18th and 19th century relations of production and which, for Chen and Sonn (2019), is essentially the effect of a contingent proletarianisation of the labour market and the professions that comprise it. A premise that goes so far as to contradict the paradigms of linear transformation and transition from a manual economy to an economy based on creative labour (Chen & Sonn, 2019).…”

Social factory as prosaic state space: Redefining labour in China’s mass innovation/mass entrepreneurship campaign

“…Calling their entrepreneurial practices ‘informal’ jobs that will ‘liberalise’ them from the ‘formal’ jobs in the IT companies, mentees give more weight to self-actualisation than to economic calculation in their effort of practising entrepreneurship. The romanticisation of entrepreneurship has lured workers to conceive the new working relationship as an egalitarian project (Chen and Sonn, 2017; Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011). The entrepreneurial labour internalised the risk of market failure to the workers themselves (Merrifield, 2014; Neff, 2012b) and contributed to the decline of workplace democracy in a wider context of socio-spatial constructions of the work regime (Hochschild, 2003; McRobbie, 2002a).…”

“…The rise of mass entrepreneurship has material consequence for the politics of production, which concerns the labour process and the political apparatus of production. Compared to the fruitful studies on the shop floor in highly industrial Fordism (Burawoy, 1982; Chan et al., 2015; Lee, 1998), studies on mass entrepreneurship based upon post-Fordist production are still emerging, given that major structural changes have challenged traditional wisdom.…”

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“…This entailed not only underestimating institutional changes, but also ignoring the social mentality. These shortcomings, accompanied by specific mistakes in the implementation of certain measures, certainly impaired the pace of development of the Kazakh economy (Chen & Sonn 2017;Ivanov et al 2019, p. 169-180).…”