Unfinished Business: The Cultural Commodity and its Labour Process

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2010

Abstract

In what follows I am going to argue that the rise of the creative industries has in general been understood too narrowly. This narrow understanding has had implications for the way that a politics of management and labour in the creative industries has been framed and contained, and it has held back an analysis of class struggle in the creative industries. To elaborate an understanding of labour in the creative industries I am going to revisit some insights related to the development of British cultural studies, and try to link these insights to what Stuart Hall calls the conditions of possibility for the creative industries today (1973/1980). These conditions of possibility require a different conception of labour, infusing the circuits of production in what Italian post-workerist theorists call the social factory. Such an elaboration of the work of culture allows us to reframe the questions of labour struggle and management control in the creative industries. The method of this article will of necessity be somewhat speculative and its scope broad, but where possible I will try to give examples of what I mean in order to focus on the possibilities for developing a politics of labour under the expanded conditions considered here.

Discipline

Arts Management | Strategic Management Policy

Research Areas

Strategy and Organisation

Publication

Cultural Studies

Volume

24

Issue

3

First Page

431

Last Page

444

ISSN

0950-2386

Identifier

10.1080/09502381003750401

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

Additional URL

https://roundtable.kein.org/node/771

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