Convenors:
- Dr. Katja Praznik, State University of New York at Buffalo (USA)
- Dr. Jaka Primorac, Institute for Development and International Relations, Zagreb (Croatia)
- Dr. Dr. Dario Azzellini, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University (USA)
- Dr. Nayan Jyoti, University of Delhi (India)
Outline
In the last two decades, there has been ample research on creative labor in cultural studies, sociology, media and communication and cultural policy studies. However, both art work and more broadly creative labor remain among the most mystified labor processes that tend to be invisibilised and conceived as an act of creation or expression of creative powers rather than in terms of labor. So much so that hegemonic cultural attitudes but also scholarly research and analysis of labor relations in the field of cultural production often uncritically reproduce the ideology of autonomous creativity on account of the labor process. Emphasis on the romantic ideals of autonomy and essentialized creativity along with the historic separation of creativity from the labor process obscures that labor in the field of cultural production is a site of variegated forms of labor exploitation including self-exploitative practices of cultural workers that are often based in privileged socio-economic positions.
The bourgeoise myth of the artist as a creative individual genius persists and it is still present among artists even if it is in contradiction to the artists' increasingly collective appearances. The hegemony of individualistic thinking is in a dialectical relationship with the difficulties in organizing cultural workers, the egocentrism, and the practice of underpaying, which is commensurate with ideals of "personal" recognition in the field of cultural production. Even though “creativity” of art work/creative labor seems to be inimical to the labor process theory and analysis about control and power in capitalist labor processes, creativity has in fact become a lure that invites not only art and cultural workers to offer unpaid work because it is enjoyable and free but has become an overwhelming epitome of the ways in which workers globally perpetuate self-exploitation.
While European historical conception of art work/creative labor (i.e. the process of producing varied forms of art and culture) as a unique creative activity separated work from imagination, innovation and situated art and cultural production on the opposite side of alienated labor, creative labor has since the late 1990s became a model for various forms of unpaid free labor that expands beyond the field of cultural production into many other spheres of work. Moreover, the paradoxical condition of creative work as an elevated, cherished form of labor takes place in economically and socially unprotected and insecure circumstances, often without labor standards and securities. These contradictions about art as labor, cultural workers as workers, and elevated notions of creativity often represent key barriers for organizing and unionizing but also obscure the ways in which artists and cultural workers are vast globally located unpaid workforce.
The discourse of precarity and precarious working conditions in the creative industries is common and established, but the discussion about forms of labor exploitation in the field of cultural production remains on the margins as much as discussions about strategies of labor’s resistance. Nevertheless, in the past decade the field of cultural production has seen a rise in labor organizing and resistance including strikes by art and cultural workers as well as manifold unionizing initiatives, campaigns and policy proposals to counter unpaid labor, exploitation and economically insecure working conditions. Central to the rise of labor’s resistance in the field of cultural production has been a renewed understanding and acknowledgement that artist and cultural workers are in fact workers whose invisiblized labor process is indirectly or directly connected to capital accumulation and thus subject to exploitation as a form of labor.
The special stream is building on the legacy of ILPC’s engagement with creative labor and the labor process theory (LPT) in the creative industries, specifically on the emphasis that creative workers are “sellers of labor power” who enter labor processes to exchange their services, and on the need “to explore the relationship between the sellers and buyers of creative labor” (McKinlay and Smith, 2009). However, the aim of the convenors of this special stream is to foreground a workers’ point of view and to advance the conversation about art work/creative labor as terrain of exploitation from distinct methodological approaches. In particular, from a Marxist feminist critique of unpaid reproductive labor, policy-oriented sociology, cultural studies, labor studies and workers’ self-management perspective, and labor process theory. The convenors share a common concern: to further situate art work and creative labor in the labor process theory and to map regimes of exploitation as well as strategies of resistance.
Therefore, this special stream invites scholars, organizers, activist, art and cultural workers to present research on initiatives, strategies, and tactics devised to counter the exploitation of art work and creative labor as well as theoretical engagements that consider labor process and the exploitative dimensions of the production process in the field of cultural production.
We invite papers that aim:
- to underscore to relevance of situating creative labor within the labor process theory;
- to explore the ways in which worker identities and self-organizing of art workers are shaped based on the structure of the labor process in the field of cultural production;
- to stimulate intellectual exchange and map research about regimes of exploitation in the field of cultural production in its many forms and across the globe;
- to examine the ways in which different online platforms are both contributing to further exploitation of cultural workers but also enabling new resistance strategies;
- to discuss how AI is influencing artistic/cultural work processes;
- to highlight and discuss theoretical and practical strategies aimed to end the exploitative labor practices in the field of cultural production;
- to consider interconnections of creative labor with other forms of labor and industries that organizing efforts make/have made visible.
The list of possible topics includes:
- impact of strikes of creative workers in the film and other creative industries,
- unionizing efforts in various realms of cultural production (museums, gaming industry, animation, freelance art workers, etc.),
- the impact of AI on labor process and art work;
- grass-roots and self-organized policy initiatives and campaigns to curb unpaid labor and promote labor standards in the cultural production,
- new forms of collective organizing of creative workers,
- historical experiences of organizing labor in the field of cultural production, and changes and challenges faced over time
- segmentations within the field of cultural production (and between different hierarchies and segments of cultural workers) that enable invisibilization of creative labor, and how organizing strategies question the same
- analysis of policy instruments enabling better working conditions (universal artistic income)
- policy analysis of working conditions in the field of cultural production.
The stream aims to provide space for new input in the creative labour scholarship from the labour process perspective that has been marginalized in ILPC conference since 2009. While research on creative labor and art work has been present on the ILPC conferences within individual paper sessions they have thus far not been discussed in a specialized stream for more than a decade, similar as in ILPC book series (seminal work McKinley& Smith (eds.) 2009). In the period where the voices of cultural workers such as screenwriters, actors, visual artists, translators etc., are every day louder in their requests for their worker’s rights globally, we consider that the field of cultural production from a labor process perspective is underutilized and should be brought from the margins of academic scholarship. In line with the aim to demystify art work and creative labor in terms of and from the viewpoint of labor process, this stream aims to situate the analysis of exploitative practices in this theoretical perspective and raise the awareness about art as a form of labor among global academic community. The rise of labor resistance in the field and numerous policy proposals and grassroots initiatives related to cultural work and its exploitative labor relations offer an excellent opportunity to put invisible creative work and creativity squarely in the realm of labor process theory. New inputs to the conversation about art work and creative labor from a labor process viewpoint among scholars coming from divergent methodological approaches is needed - not only to challenge the undertheorized effects of creativity impacting labor exploitation but also to expand the labor process theory by including theorization and research that grapples with the ways in which capital accumulation controls and appropriates creative labor to its own end – of course not without artists and cultural workers’ resistance. Hence the aim of organizing this special stream is also to build a network of progressive, labor process oriented scholars, policy makers, organizers and activist in the field of cultural production in order to exchange the knowledge and strategies to counter exploitative practices.