CULTURAL WORK AND TRANSFORMATIVE ARTS

The model of cultural work undertaken by the Amber Film and Photography Collective represents a radical challenge to the insecure and de-politicised world of cultural work that has long been the norm within the arts. Our paper, which explores the collective's diverse forms of cultural work, including paid labour, collective labour, gift labour and creative labour, argues that cultural work can be imbued with moral commitments and egalitarian ideals. The Amber collective functioned as much like a social movement organisation or a social economy enterprise as a cultural group: it was dedicated to creating alternative cultural networks and a new material foundation for cultural work. We emphasise how these shifting forms and strategies of cultural work underpinned substantial transformations within the Amber group itself.     

Moral barriers between work/life balance policy and practice in academia

ABSTRACT

Despite the proliferation of work/life balance policies in Australian universities, academic staff continue to report experiences of time pressure, anxiety, and over-work. This paper contributes to the research of academic time and career planning by exploring how early career academics engage with work/life balance policies, utilising a critical reading of Richard Sennett’s work on the corrosion of character in late capitalist economies. We find that policy engagement is tied into academics’ professional identities and perceptions of ‘good’ conduct. Drawing on interviews from a sample of 25 Australian early career academics, we argue that the failure of early career academics to use formal work/life balance policies is partially explained by the presence of workplace cultures that reward demonstrations of commitment to work roles. The use of work/life balance policies hence carries a moral cost, which participants report reflects on their character. This paper contributes to an understanding of how work/life balance policies are enacted at the level of department and individual, and argues that future research projects would benefit from attending to the construction of worker ideals within workplace cultures.     

MEDIATIONS IN FASHION

This paper deals with the relations between the sociality of cultural economies and the cultural objects traded in them. It argues that the study of cultural economies must work up new methodologies that can account for both. The paper suggests the concept of the ‘mediator’ as a way of highlighting how cultural objects and sociality are co-constituted. The ‘mediator’ is formulated as a methodological tool for by-passing the academic divide between cultural-aesthetic objects and their social contexts.     

The Supply of Arts Labour : Towards a Dynamic Approach

Earlier work on the supply of labour of artists has shown that, whenever workers derive satisfaction from the process of work, which is usually the case for artists, some traditional results are reversed. As their proponents make clear this analysis is essentially static, as it does not take into account the intertemporal dimension of the supply of labour. The paper argues that to provide such a dynamic analysis three routes are available: the human capital approach, the household production approach and the evolutionary approach. The paper, therefore, is aimed at discussing the adequacy of various theoretical approaches to the treatment of a specific question.     

‘TONY SOPRANO ON MANAGEMENT’

This article develops the concept of ‘alternative cultural tourism’ through an in-depth study of the Prague Fringe Festival (PFF). In doing so, it argues that existing approaches to cultural tourism often fail to differentiate between different forms of culture (i.e. alternative versus mainstream), whilst also interrogating the criteria by which festivals can be understood as examples of alternative cultural tourism. Utilising a combination of both quantitative and qualitative data, involving audiences, festival performers and workers/volunteers, it is asserted that the PFF brings together a diverse mix of cultures, and seeks to create a more participatory and engaging tourist experience. Additionally, its more egalitarian organising structure produces different kinds of work and social relations in the production of art and culture – particularly between various groups working within the festival, but also in the creation of different ideas about audience engagement, performer relations, and engagement with the local community (through the idea of the ‘festival participant’). The article concludes by briefly exploring the potential of alternative cultural tourism to provide more meaningful and sustainable models of urban cultural development.     

Three sump concepts: an exhortation to critical social scientists

Do we not find that the repetitive deployment of certain phrases and words in academic language entails a conceptualisation of meaning into objects that are thereafter encountered daily not as thoughts or ideas but merely as a socio-cultural force? Is it not necessary to identify and illuminate them, and to contrive some sort of resistance to their potent, though unrecognised, illocutionary effects? This article concerns the everyday cultural practices of academic life. It is an attempted intervention into the mundane language use of academics in order to impact critically upon the ongoing and constant articulation of certain culturally latent assumptions into political effects. I argue that within the social and human sciences ‘sump concepts’ are those extremely common concepts that recur in analysis and explanation due to their easy accessibility and to the function that they serve in reproducing certain discourses of social power. In particular, they constitute territorialisations of language, linguistic creations that close off polyvocity, contingency and possibility through identity-thinking into sutured and reactionary conceptualisations. I present a selection of three sump concepts that have become thoroughly imbricated into the discursive culture of academic life – Bottom-Up, Evolution, and Concrete – and that are complacently resorted to on a daily basis in social science research and in social discourse. By exploring their potencies, purposes and pitfalls, I demand a more cautious and considered deployment of these concepts in our academic discourses, and advocate for a critical practice of negative dialectics.     

The ‘diaspora advantage’ of Pauline Chan (1956–): from multicultural filmmaker to cultural broker

ABSTRACT

This is the first academic paper to critically introduce and document the 30-year screen career of Pauline Chan, Australia’s highest profile Chinese film director, television actress and media producer. Sydney-based, Vietnam-born, Hong Kong-educated and US-trained, Chan has directed six films, starred in 14 and produced four television series and films. Despite her prolific career, there has been no sustained research on her profile and repertoire. This paper evaluates the evolution of Chan’s career using the diaspora ‘advantage’ as a new approach. Characterised by mobility rather than culturalism, the term refers to the benefits brought by and skills of diaspora groups that have allowed them to flourish as transnational actors able to leverage resources in both their countries of origin and settlement. It begins by elaborating how Chan’s diaspora advantage has allowed her to challenge welfare multiculturalism and extend aesthetic multiculturalism. It further documents her transition from a multicultural filmmaker to a cultural intermediary by leveraging her diasporic advantage across the film sectors in China and Australia, and opening up new industrial routes outside of the confines of policy. Using interdisciplinary methods to screen biography that include interviews with the filmmaker, film archival research, critical cultural policy studies, and studies in Asian Australian cinema and political economy, this paper argues that the new approach of the diaspora advantage turns the deficit associated with the diaspora into a dividend that has the potential to rethink the imaginary between Asia and Australia.     

Introduction: Are We All Cultural Workers Now?

Introducing a themed section entitled ‘Are We All Cultural Workers Now?’, this article explores the relation between precarity and cultural work. It argues that precarity should be understood as an experience rather than a category that allows a mapping of transformations of social class. The article also engages with current debates on cultural work and questions the proposition that changes in this area presage more general shifts in the organisation and exploitation of labour. Finally the piece introduces the four articles that make up the themed section.     

Reassembling the Cultural

The central argument in this paper is that actor-network theory (ANT) does not do ‘cultural economy’ symmetrically: it has had a lot to say about economy but much less to say about culture. This rejection of culture is ontological and epistemological: culture appears in ANT largely as an artefact of modernist thought rather than as an empirical aspect of agents' performances. And yet if ‘economy’ can be critiqued and reinstated as performative, so too can ‘culture’. To explore this, we focus on objects of concern that – unlike the financial markets that have formed the core of ANT-inspired thinking about the economy – are assembled by actors in and through what they themselves understand to be cultural materials, cultural calculations, cultural processes, cultural institutions. In such examples, ‘culture’ is continuously invoked and enacted by actors in constructing their actions, whatever critical sociologists might have to say about its ontological status. It seems paradoxical that a theoretical approach that makes sacrosanct the associations constructed by agents who assemble their own world, generally discusses ‘culture’ only from the point of view of critical epistemology. Bearing all this in mind, we argue that it is time for us to ‘reassemble’ the cultural.     

Knows no weekend: the psychological contract of cultural work in precarious times

ABSTRACT

This article explores the expanded and transformed nature of the psychological work contract for forms of cultural and artistic labour in precarious conditions. The forms of passionate work found within cultural production are argued to form a new model for governing our subjective involvement in and attachment to work. This more expansive and demanding relationship with work has become generalized beyond the specific area of cultural production into employment relationships more generally. In doing so the expanded psychological contract of work comes to operate as a form of logistical media and infrastructural governance, connecting the micropolitics of governing labour with larger structural conditions of precarity and instability. Thus, while work today is less stable in what it offers, it demands even greater psychological investment despite increased uncertainty.     

A Fish out of Water? Management Consultants in Academia

What happens when management consultants enter the academic arena and offer their services to universities? In the following article, we examine this question by drawing on findings from a qualitative study based on a series of 30 interviews with senior management consultants and academic managers in Germany. The aim of this explorative study is, first of all, to provide theoretically informed observations about the working mechanisms of management consulting in academia. A second, and related objective, is to contribute to the ongoing debate on the changing nature, role, and implications of managerial expertise and authority in higher education institutions. We begin our study by providing an overview of the literature on the changing nature of university management. Although these studies show a shift in the power constellation of universities from professional to managerial authority, we argue that they remain suspiciously vague as concerns the way academics and managers actually deal with this conflicting situation. By drawing on the insights of consulting studies, we then explore the stakes of consultancy in academic change projects and determine the analytical factors that will guide our qualitative analysis. Finally, we present and discuss the findings before concluding with more general remarks on the nature of academic management in German universities.     

The neurotic academic: anxiety,casualisation, and governance in the neoliberalising university

Based on empirical research conducted with academic staff working on fixed-term contracts, the article explores the subjective experience of anxiety in the UK’s ‘neoliberalising’ higher education (HE) sector. As HE undergoes a process of marketisation, and the teaching and research activities of academics are increasingly measured and scrutinised, the contemporary academy appears to be suffused with anxiety. Coupled with pressures facing all staff, 34% of academic employees are currently working on a fixed-term contract and so must contend with the multiple forms of uncertainty associated with their so-called ‘casualised’ positions. While anxiety is often perceived as an individualised affliction for which employees are encouraged to take personal responsibility, the article argues that it should be conceptualised in two ways: firstly, as a symptom of wider processes at work in the neoliberalising sector; and secondly, as a ‘tactic’ of what Isin [(2004). The neurotic citizen. Citizenship Studies, 8 (3), 217–235] refers to as ‘neuroliberal’ governance. The article concludes by proposing that the figure of the ‘neurotic academic’ is emblematic of the contradictions facing the contemporary academy.     

Are workers in the cultural industries paid differently?

This article aims to explore wage differentials between employees in three sub-industries of the cultural industries compared with the main (1-digit level) industry to which they belong. We use data from the Wage Indicator Questionnaire 2001/2002, which includes information on 12,757 employees in the Netherlands. We find that workers in these particular sub-industries of the cultural industries are paid differently compared with their respective main industries. Workers in entertainment and publishing and printing (P&P) are less endowed with standard labour market characteristics. However, whereas workers in entertainment face negative price or evaluation-related effects, the opposite holds for workers in P&P. Workers in IT are more endowed with standard labour market characteristics, but they receive lower rewards for their labour market characteristics.     

Postdoctoral Life Scientists and Supervision Work in the Contemporary University: A Case Study of Changes in the Cultural Norms of Science

This paper explores the ways in which postdoctoral life scientists engage in supervision work in academic institutions in Austria. Reward systems and career conditions in academic institutions in most European and other OECD countries have changed significantly during the last two decades. While an increasing focus is put on evaluating research performances, little reward is attached to excellent performances in mentoring and advising students. Postdoctoral scientists mostly inhabit fragile institutional positions and experience harsh competition, as the number of available senior positions is small compared to that of young scientists striving for an academic career. To prevail in this competition, publications and mobility are key. Educational work is rarely rewarded. Nevertheless, postdocs play a key role in educating PhD students, as overburdened senior scientists often pass on practical supervision duties to their postdoctoral fellows. This paper shows how under these conditions, postdocs reframe the students they supervise as potential resources for co-authored publications. What might look like a mutually beneficial solution at a first glance, in practice implies the subordination of the values of education to the logic of production, which marginalizes spaces primarily devoted to education. The author argues that conflicts like this are indicative of broader changes in the cultural norms of science and academic citizenship, rendering community-oriented tasks such as education work less attractive to academic scientists. Since education and supervision work are central cornerstones of any functioning higher education and research system, this could have negative repercussions for the long-term development of academic institutions.     

Confronting Precarity in the Warhol Economy

Normative cultural economy discourse on New York City embraces the creative industries as engines of job creation but neglects the quality of employment within them. This article sets out to both illuminate the precarious conditions of nonstandard workers in New York's vaunted creative sectors and identify emerging collective responses to precarity in this city. Three areas of labour activity are focused upon: fashion industry frictions, art world agitations, and independent worker initiatives. Under each of these headings, the article profiles two organizations that are variously exposing, resisting, and mitigating precarity among flexible labour forces in the arts, the media, cultural industries, and beyond. The discussion of these organizations is informed by interviews with some of their protagonists, by documents produced by the organizations, and/or by media coverage of them. Challenging the assumption that getting by in informal cultural labour markets obliges individual coping strategies, this article reveals scenes from a metropolitan laboratory of precarious labour politics. These initiatives are inklings of a recomposition of labour politics in which flexible workforces in creative industries are important participants.     

University Under Structural Reform: A Micro-Level Perspective

National governments in several countries have promoted and carried out different forms of mergers, consolidations and alliances within their higher education systems in order to increase efficiency, effectiveness and governmental control to ensure that the universities more directly serve the national and regional economic and social objectives. This article sets out to explore structural reforms between and within universities from a micro-level perspective by investigating how academics make sense of and respond to the structural reforms, and how these reforms shape academic cultures, work practices and identities. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 31 Finnish academics working under structural rearrangements, five core meanings of structural reforms are discerned: structural development as part of a flood of changes, expanding bureaucracy, profiling, searching for partners and branding. The paper concludes that structural reforms along with other managerial transformations foster experiences of competition and polarization at the departmental and individual level of academia, involving redefining what it means to be a successful academic.     

Music in the air: estimating the social return to cultural amenities

If being around smart people makes us smarter and more productive, what can regions do to attract smart people? This paper considers endogenous cultural amenities as a location factor for high-skilled workers. To overcome selection in the provision of cultural amenities, we exploit variation in contemporaneous cultural amenities that is explained by the path-dependence of historical agglomerations of the cultural activities. To assess spillovers from high-skilled workers attracted by cultural amenities, we use a 1% sample drawn from the population of all West German workers under social security during the period 1975–2010. This panel of individual observations allows us to compare wages of similar individuals who work in locations with different levels of high-skilled workers who are attracted by cultural amenities. To account for non-random selection of workers among cities, we use individual-location fixed effects. Our results show that cultural amenities are an important factor in the location decision of high-skilled workers. The positive effect of the local share of high-skilled workers on unskilled, skilled and high-skilled wages indicates strong and productive spillovers.     

Specificities of the artistic cultural labor market in Brazilian metropolitan regions between 2002 and 2010

This paper analyzes the singularity of artistic cultural sector workers in the Brazilian metropolitan labor market, considering the job satisfaction of artists that Throsby proposes in his work preference model of artist behavior (1994). We also examine the effect of public expenditures on the income of workers in the cultural sector. Using 2002 to 2010 data from the Monthly Employment Survey (PME) and administrative records from Finance of Brazil (FINBRA), we estimate a probit model and a wage equation. In our model, we estimate wages as a function of: (1) sociodemographic characteristics of workers, (2) a variable for informal jobs, (3) the number of working hours, (4) a variable for the worker having another job, (5) per capita expenditures on culture interacted with a dummy for artistic cultural workers, (6) interactive binary variables involving place of residence and artistic cultural workers and (7) the predicted probability obtained by the probit model. This probability is estimated based on the likelihood of working in a creative activity, considering both workers from the cultural sector and other workers, controlled by: (1) sociodemographic characteristics of workers, (2) characteristics of their jobs, (3) dummies for the metropolitan regions and (4) willingness of creative workers to work additional hours interacted with the number of hours worked. Our results show that workers in the cultural sector are likely to work longer hours when compared to workers in other sectors. For our wage equation, the results suggest that women earn relatively less than men and blacks earn less than whites. Furthermore, earnings increase with age and the level of education. Formal workers obtain higher earnings when compared to informal ones. Finally, an increase in the per capita public expenditure on the cultural sector raises the income of workers in artistic cultural occupations.