Inequality talk: How discourses by senior men reinforce exclusions from creative occupations

Brook, Orian; O’Brien, Dave; Taylor, Mark

doi:10.1177/1367549419886020

Cited by 20 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(96 reference statements)

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“…Yet despite the significant advantages enjoyed by those from middle-class backgrounds, there is strong evidence that such individuals tend to downplay (Sherman, 2017), misrecognise (Khan, 2011) or elide (Brook et al, 2019) such privilege. Indeed, it is these individuals who tend to believe most strongly that ‘hard work’ is the key determinant of career success (Mijs, 2019) and are least likely to acknowledge the role of coming from a privileged background (Hecht et al, 2020: 16–19).…”

Section: Meritocracy Class Identity and British Exceptionalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

2021

Self Cite

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Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with those working in professional and managerial occupations, 36 of whom are from middle-class backgrounds but identify as working class or long-range upwardly mobile. Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ which act to downplay interviewees’ own, fairly privileged, upbringings and instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories. Yet while this ‘intergenerational self’ partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts – we argue – as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege. By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, we show how these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success ‘against the odds’ that simultaneously casts their progression as unusually meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory.

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Section: Meritocracy Class Identity and British Exceptionalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

2021

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“…However, the simultaneous deployment of more self-serving valuations (aesthetic, and especially reputational and economic) suggests that certain people are less able to control the circulation of valuations, which has consequences for the extent to which they can feel authentically included in organizational contexts (Sayer 2000). More cynically, the circulation of moral valuations of marquee quotas may in some instances align more closely to the idea of "inequality talk," where the rhetorical commitment to diversity replaces more impactful interventions of inter-organizational change and may operate as a means for upholding pre-existing exclusionary boundaries (Brook et al 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historically, there has been a lack of research on the valuation and commodification of race and ethnicity in cultural production, (Hesmondhalgh and Saha 2013;Saha 2018), and inequality in creative industries more broadly (Brook et al 2021). However, this has changed in recent years, with some attention being paid to diversity initiatives.…”

Section: A Racism and Diversity Initiatives In Creative Industriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valuations of diversity: The role of marquee quotas in creative industries (Working Paper)

Stuart¹,

Laat²

2021

Preprint

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We examine how creative industry workers engage with diversity, absent a formal organizational mandate to do so. Through in-depth interviews with independent music industry personnel (N=50), we find that marquee quotas -- racially diverse representation on rosters and festival bills -- guide how diversity is sought and implemented. Such quotas are justified via four distinct valuations of diversity: aesthetic, economic, reputational, and moral. Both racialized and white participants justify the importance of diversity on moralistic grounds. By contrast, white participants more often justify the value of diversity by making claims about the aesthetic, economic and reputational benefits of marquee quotas. The deployment of these more self-serving valuations has consequences for the extent to which people of colour can be authentically included. Our analysis contributes to critiques of the socio-economic role and consequences of diversity initiatives, within the context of a creative industry.

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“…In this way, little differs between performing artists (our focus) and wider society in the pre-existing inequalities, the uneven impacts of COVID-19 and government inattention in recovery planning. However, pre-COVID-19 research shows us that cultural work demonstrated deeper levels of inequality than other types of work (Brook et al, 2019; Hofman, 2015; Morcom, 2013; Saha, 2018; Tarassi, 2018), and radical change is needed to avoid the reinforcement of such injustice (see also Comunian and England, 2020).…”

Section: Artistic Precarity Within Cultural Ecologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making it up: Adaptive approaches to bringing freelance cultural work to a cultural ecologies discourse

FitzGibbon

Tsioulakis

2022

European Urban and Regional Studies

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In this article, a transdisciplinary cultural labour perspective is used to examine the evolving and spontaneous networks and grassroots collective movements of performing arts freelancers in two contexts: Belfast (Northern Ireland) and Athens (Greece) in response to the outbreak of COVID-19. With a principally methodological contribution, the article proposes that evolving cultural ecologies research should mirror the ecologies it studies by adopting more collaborative and improvisational research approaches, drawing on inclusive research methods from disability studies and decolonising approaches within anthropology to reveal deeper knowledge and offer mutual benefit. Furthermore, it proposes that artists, overlooked in cultural ecologies research to date, bring knowledge from their practice beyond lived experience of value to such inquiry. The researchers collaborated with practitioner experts, revealing insights to freelancers’ milieu; their alternate systems for inclusion, representation and radical mutual care; and their increasing vulnerability in the face of ongoing exclusion from cultural recovery strategies and wider political and policy apathy to their concerns. This raises important moral and ethical questions for how cultural ecologies research and researchers engage with practitioner knowledge and the purpose of research in rendering such groups as creative freelancers visible within research and in the implicit and explicit urban and regional recovery planning in different locales. In addition, it proposes the inter- or transdisciplinary nature of cultural ecologies research may be better served by keeping its boundaries fluid, not just in the potential strength of blending research disciplines but also in its boundaries between the formal academy and practice.

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Inequality talk: How discourses by senior men reinforce exclusions from creative occupations

Cited by 20 publications

References 49 publications

Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

Valuations of diversity: The role of marquee quotas in creative industries (Working Paper)

Making it up: Adaptive approaches to bringing freelance cultural work to a cultural ecologies discourse

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