Core activity

Abstract

Contemporary discussions of cultural change and crisis in the role of intellectuals require a sociology of intellectual labour. Life-history interviews were undertaken with a group of Australian intellectual workers whose jobs require them to deal reflexively with culture. Their careers are conditioned by global marginality and changing gender relations. Their labour process is partly collectivized, with a wide spectrum of engagement with technology. Individualized work survives and a market-oriented ‘ bricoleur’ pattern is seen. A pervasive sense of anxiety is found, sometimes amounting to a sense of crisis, and uncertainty about the ‘core activity’ of intellectual workers. There are indications of cultural crisis, but they do not take the form suggested by postmodernist theory. Rather they reflect the impact of the neo-liberal market agenda, which in reshaping institutions and labour processes tends to make traditional intellectual identities unsustainable.