De-westernizing creative labour studies: The informality of creative work from an ex-centric perspective

Abstract

Creative labour studies focus almost exclusively on Euro-American metropolitan 'creative hubs' and hence the creative worker they theorize is typically white, middle-class, urban and overwhelmingly male. This article outlines the contours of a de-Westernising project in creative labour studies while introducing a special journal issue that examines the lived dynamics of creative work outside the West. The article advocates an 'ex-centric perspective' on creative work. An ex-centric perspective does not merely aim at multiplying non-West empirical case studies. Rather, it aims at destabilizing, decentring and provincializing the taken-for-grantedness of some entrenched notions in creative labour studies such as informality and precarity. An ex-centric perspective, we contend, offers a potential challenge to many of the claims about creative work that have taken on the status of general truths and universal principles in spite of them being generated from limited empirical evidence gleaned from research sites situated almost exclusively in the creative hubs of Euro-America.

The work of hope: Spiritualizing, hustling and waiting in the creative industries in Ghana

“…With this article we contribute learnings from the South to mainstream studies of work in the creative industries. Mainstream creative work studies draw universal conclusions from empirical evidence gathered predominantly in Euro-American creative hubs (Alacovska and Gill, 2019). Accordingly, these studies examine experiences of precarity in sole reference to the neoliberal logic of socio-economic development positioning creative workers as prototypes of individualized, self-enterprising, and self-expressive future-oriented selves (Mackenzie and McKinlay, 2020).…”

“…Likewise, the role of religiosity and spirituality in creative work has received scant attention, in spite of failure being a widespread industrial norm in the creative economy and of success having always been described as 'radically uncertain ' and precarious (McRobbie, 2016), all of which are conditions that have elsewhere been strongly correlated with the prevalence and importance of divination and prayer in the economy (Guyer, 2017;Meagher, 2009). Such negligence is related to the failure of mainstream studies of creative industries to engage with creative work outside of a handful of core Euro-American creative metropolises -an oversight that has hampered theoretical innovation and advancement in the field (Alacovska and Gill, 2019;De Beukelaer, 2017). Our study does not merely seek to add yet another disjointed empirical case of a less-studied geographic region, however; rather we hope our findings will contribute to 'a theory of the South' that is deeply entrenched in situated, 'ex-centric' empirical realities (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2012), whose analysis intervenes in and decentres the entrenched assumptions of dominant (mainstream) research agendas in cultural and creative industry studies.…”

Revenue, access, and engagement via the in-house curated Spotify playlist in Australia

“…While policy to support local content within the streaming format was under discussion, interviews focused on how new technology affected everyday practice and strategy for promoting the artist brand within the existing promotional infrastructure of intermediaries and technological tools. Noting concerns raised by several scholars about applying research with creative workers in highly developed markets to the rest of the world (Alacovska & Gill, 2019;De Beukelaer, 2015;Morgan, 2019), the findings of this paper should be linked to Australian cultural market conditions.…”

Introduction: Creative labour in East Asia

“…The critical language used often directs all discussion of ‘inequality’, ‘precarity’ and ‘self-exploitation’ of creative labour towards a critique of ‘neoliberalism’, thus running the risk of overlooking different socio-political contexts. As Alacovska and Gill (2019) note, ‘creative labour studies are notoriously centred on Euro-American metropolitan “creative hubs” and hence the creative worker they theorize is frequently white, middle-class, male and urban’ (p. 2). The global hierarchy of creative industries and the specific regional context of political economy often affect the condition of creative labour and make the discourse of creativity function in different ways (Fung, 2016; Lin, 2019).…”