The Wageless Life of Creative Workers: Alternative Economic Practices, Commoning and Consumption Work in Cultural Labour

Alačovska, Ana

doi:10.1177/00380385211056011

Cited by 21 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…At the same time there are potentially negative consequences of the use of shared orientations towards culture to build or reinforce a sense of occupational and community identity. As Alacovska (2022) has noted, in a study of communities of cultural workers that do not rely on marketised or financialised forms of value and exchange, barriers to entry can render cultural production highly exclusive. As much as shared tastes can welcome and include, they are also ways of drawing boundaries.…”

Section: Why Taste Matters For Cultural Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This sense of community is important in a labour market characterised by networked and project-based forms of employment, and in the context of cultural production being associated with ‘scenes’ or ‘worlds’ (Alacovska, 2022; Becker, 1982; Crossley, 2019; McAndrew & Widdop, 2021). In a precarious and highly uncertain labour market, associated with harsh competition for resources and status (Brook et al, 2020a), the bonds of a shared orientation towards arts and culture (and their importance) are crucial in positively sustaining the vocational sense of self for creative workers (Gerber, 2017).…”

Section: Why Taste Matters For Cultural Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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New forms of distinction: How contemporary cultural elites understand ‘good’ taste

O’Brien

Ianni

2022

The Sociological Review

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Taste is a subject of longstanding academic interest. The question of how cultural interests and preferences are socially stratified is at the heart of the sociology of culture. This article adds to this literature by examining the tastes of a specific social fraction, those working in cultural and creative occupations ( N = 203). The analysis finds that, in keeping with existing quantitative research on changing cultural hierarchies, cultural workers are open and eclectic in their expressions of taste. They are reflexive, able to play with, and question, ideas of taste alongside conceptions of artistic or cultural legitimacy, connecting their understandings to broader questions of social division and distinction. At the same time, this ‘emerging’ form of cultural capital is a new dividing line, substantiated by modes of consumption, depth of appreciation, and willingness to articulate commitments to engagement with culture. These distinctive tastes of cultural workers matter because, as creators, commissioners and curators of what ends up on stage, page and screen, cultural workers’ tastes shape the cultural hierarchies of which they are a part. In the context of cultural and creative industries, we can expect that these new forms of distinction will serve to create group identities, providing yet another way that cultural elites are socially closed, in addition to well-known exclusions based on demographics such as race, class, gender, age or disability.

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Section: Why Taste Matters For Cultural Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Why Taste Matters For Cultural Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

New forms of distinction: How contemporary cultural elites understand ‘good’ taste

O’Brien

Ianni

2022

The Sociological Review

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“…In terms of the field of cultural production, and particularly in terms of the DIY spaces that are the sites of the research projects discussed below, neo-liberal capitalism has slowly but systematically divested artists of the resources needed to create ‘the new’, where welfare and arts funding have been decimated leaving the relatively privileged to dominate creative spaces (Alkovska, 2022; Brook et al, 2019). For Fisher and others who write from this perspective, this leads to a process of diminishing expectations and acceptance towards popular culture.…”

Section: Youthful Culture In Late Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youthful culture: Immaterial labour, co-optation and the space between IRL young people and their conceptual doppelgangers

Threadgold

2023

DIY, Alternative Cultures & Society

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DIY and alternate cultures are important social spaces to study because they are where young people can find themselves when they feel like they do not fit in and where they can find like-minded peers with whom to work, make and play. DIY and alternative cultures are also key objects of co-optation and value creation, where resistive and creative practices are denuded of their artistry, politics and emotional authenticity, repurposed through immaterial labour, and resold as aesthetics and affects. Beginning by situating the analysis in wider conceptualisations about late capitalism's business ontology, this article contributes to unpacking these processes firstly by making a theoretical/methodological distinction between ‘youth’ and ‘young people’. I then develop the affects of ‘youthful culture’ not only to conceptually rethink how youth cultures still play a role in the lives of young people in terms of identity formation and everyday forms of escape and creativity, but also to highlight processes of co-optation, commercial culture and how figurative distortions of youth create value in late capitalism. As ‘youth’ is conceptually cut loose from age brackets, it becomes an affect operationalised for an array of vested interests. Importantly, what is often left out of considering co-optation are the actual physical bodies and everyday emotions of living, breathing young people from whom these affects are extracted. This article will discuss these aspects using empirical examples from research on punk and hospitality showing how the immaterial labour that ‘youth’ enacts in these spaces is exploited from backs of the physical and creative labour performed by young people themselves, aspects of which they are sometimes reflexively aware and are attempting to negotiate.

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“…While being relatively poor has always been a part of a traditional bohemian lifestyle, young people who move to cities to be part of creative scenes, even those who get degrees and start professional-managerial careers, make decisions to reflexively 'choose poverty' if they want to pursue artistic endeavours (Threadgold, 2018a). Only those with the privilege of material support can get by in the 'wageless life' (Alkovska, 2022) of the 'projectariat' (Szreder, 2021) culture and creative industry labour markets.…”

Section: Rising Materials Inequality and Cultural Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What comes after fields, capitals, habitus? Suggestions for future cultural consumption research in Australia

Threadgold

2022

Journal of Sociology

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This article critically engages with the Australian Cultural Fields project and the book Fields, Capitals, Habitus to make suggestions as to what future research on consumption practices needs to consider, including the place of young people; increased material inequality and its implications for cultural production; the development of consumers participating in cultural production; and the importance of considering emotions and affect in Bourdieusian sociology.

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The Wageless Life of Creative Workers: Alternative Economic Practices, Commoning and Consumption Work in Cultural Labour

Cited by 21 publications

References 60 publications

New forms of distinction: How contemporary cultural elites understand ‘good’ taste

New forms of distinction: How contemporary cultural elites understand ‘good’ taste

Youthful culture: Immaterial labour, co-optation and the space between IRL young people and their conceptual doppelgangers

What comes after fields, capitals, habitus? Suggestions for future cultural consumption research in Australia

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