Introduction: Imagining Equitable Working Life in the Creative Industries – Constructions,Challenges,Contradictions

Abstract

This special issue of the Journal of Sociology explores ‘Equity in the creative industries’ in the context of a changing employment landscape in Australia. Inequality is central to understanding the social consequences and distribution of cultural work. The COVID-19 pandemic, rise of digital cultural production, growth of media sharing platforms, and instability of changes in government (and policy) have both disrupted and re-organised cultural work. This collection of articles aims to develop debate on competing imaginaries of the lived experiences of workers, and to shed light on the struggle and complexities of contemporary creative labour.

Introduction

The creative industries play a significant role in Australia's cultural ecology and in debates about the future of work. They help to shape, connect and support companies and freelancers that make up the workforce, the economy, and the cultural vibrancy of the sector. However, Australia's creative industries face significant challenges with regard to issues surrounding labour and inequalities in the experiences of people who work in the sector. Discussions of equity in the creative industries are timely, given the historical devaluation of the creative and cultural workers in many sectors, the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis on cultural work, and the promises and plans by federal and state governments more recently to revive the cultural industries.

Although a somewhat contentious concept, the idea of creative industries has captured the sociological imagination of authors in this special issue, who unpack policymakers’ attention and lack of attention in bringing to the fore the inequities facing cultural workers in the present and future. In this special issue we aim to understand equity and the nature of work and labour in the creative industries, and the challenges and debates about inequalities that construct working experiences, as well as highlighting the value of sociological inquiry into social and labour policies. The special issue aims to explore, identify, discuss and uncover research issues, puzzles and interests in emergent and contemporary issues in the sociology of work and labour in the creative industries, such as universal basic income (UBI) in the music industry, precarity, diversity and inequality, identity work, ecosystems lens, virtual production industry and funding. Seven articles are included to shed light on the positive and negative aspects of contemporary creative labour. The issue foregrounds workers and issues of equity that are often hidden from view, and in doing so, it underscores the complexity of working life in the creative industries.

Contextualising Equity in Working Life in the Creative Industries in the 21st Century

To contextualise this special issue's contributions and to broaden and deepen understandings of how equity in the creative industries is framed, we first present a sketch of the sociology of work and labour with a focus on equity, as a backdrop against which authors present their analyses and interpretations. While it is impossible to give comprehensive consideration to historical discussions and employment landscapes in all their various aspects, we attempt here to highlight some general trends in the sociology of work and labour depictions of equity in creative industries in Australia in the 21st century.

The sociology of work provides an important lens for understanding the widening of inequality in the creative industries. This field has undergone significant development in recent years, alongside contemporaneous developments and insights from cognisant and varied fields such as the anthropology of work, cultural and media studies, political economy and labour geography, to name some key examples. Earlier, as a generation of social and labour movements emerged to confront the effects of neoliberal capitalism in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the field turned its gaze towards the predominant influence of insecure and precarious work, with scholarship focusing variously on the emergence of poor quality or poorly matched jobs (Kalleberg, 2009; 2011), on precariousness – or precarity – as a more general condition of labour (Bourdieu, 1998), on precarity as a general condition of life (Butler, 2004; Ettlinger, 2007), or on the emergence of precarity as a new categorisation of social class structures (Standing, 2011). In the 2010s, debates about the utility of these different approaches (Alberti et al., 2018; Millar, 2017; Paret, 2016) intersected with a splintering of focus among researchers. Reviving an older concern of organisation theorists (Bailey et al., 2019), some scholars pushed to elevate the importance of meaningful work as a parallel concept (Graeber, 2018; Laaser and Karlsson, 2022; Patulny et al., 2020), reminding contemporary studies that the underutilisation and misrecognition of skill has long been an important issue for sociological studies of insecure work (Gallie, 2009).

In drawing out a distinction between the social attributes of workers and the defining features of workers’ jobs (Campbell and Price, 2016), a second focal point for researchers placed greater emphasis on the backgrounds and living conditions of workers as well as their work and employment situations. Among these scholars, attention shifted from the nature of jobs to the key characteristics of workers’ lives, including social, political and institutional settings in the places people lived and worked, such as the extent of social protection from national welfare systems as well as the influence of different immigration systems – in short, attention shifted from precarious work to precarious lives (Kalleberg, 2018). Scholars recognised that individual capabilities were tied to workers’ social backgrounds, including their age, ethnocultural background, gender and immigration status as key points of distinction (Anderson, 2010; McDowell et al., 2009; Vosko, 2010). In terms of age groups, some researchers overlapped with youth studies in focusing on the challenges facing younger workers (Antonucci, 2018) while others overlapped with studies of ageing and gerontology to focus on the problems faced by older workers (Lain et al., 2019). A crossover literature focused on ties between rising economic precariousness in workers’ lives and the debate about the relative merits of UBI as a policy alternative (Spies-Butcher et al., 2020).

A third strand of research with important implications for studies of the creative industries intersected with the rise of digital technologies, leading to the emergence of platform-enabled work, the widespread nature of digitally mediated remote working arrangements, and the jobs of the so-called ‘gig economy’ (Veen et al., 2020; Wood et al., 2019). Sub-elements of this oeuvre included studies on employer and state-driven attempts to classify people as entrepreneurs or as self-employed workers, thereby questioning people's identity as workers (Barratt et al., 2020), studies on the use of algorithms to recruit and manage workers’ performance (Aloisi and De Stefano, 2022), as well as studies once again drawing attention to migrant workers in positions of vulnerability and maltreatment (van Doorn et al., 2023). Most recently, this subfield of research on the intersections between precarious work and technology has responded to the renewed challenges of rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI) as a set of technologies with the potential radically to transform the meaning and effects of work for people in the creative industries (Crawford, 2021).

These strands of research, each of which represent substantial and interdisciplinary literatures in their own right, have important theoretical and methodological implications for the study of work and workers in the creative industries – implications drawn out by the articles in this special issue. In this sector, the generative overlap between the concepts of precarious work and meaningful work is revealed in the tension between the personal fulfillment, self-expression and skill utilisation exhibited in workers’ creative activities and projects, on one hand, and the socioeconomic conditions of work on the other hand, including widespread labour market insecurity, poorly remunerated work, and inadequate social protection. Dynamic interactions between precarious work and precarious living are exhibited by the relative capabilities and socially conditioned willingness of workers to endure the conditions of precarious jobs that remain prevalent in the sector (see article by Ingersoll, Fitzgerald and Burgess in this special issue).

The foray of precarity-oriented studies into policy development is echoed in the importance of state institutions and regulatory frameworks for the reproduction of creative activities (see article by Verhoeven, Coate and Eltham). In this context, the current Australian Labour Governments’ national cultural policy, known as ‘Revive,’ has again brought the issue of equitable access to cultural and creative work to the fore of public debate (Commonwealth of Australia, 2023). This is also a key question taken up in this special issue (see paper by Eltham, Gu and Badham). Creative practices, from music performance to film and television production, to cultural events and the arts, have been subjected to structural transformations through digitalisation (Hughes et al., 2016), including in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic (Pennington and Eltham, 2021; Strong and Cannizzo, 2020).

These developments in policy also raise critical questions about the categorisation of the sector itself, including the need for reflection on previous governments’ classification of creative and cultural work in term of ‘creative industries’ (Banks and O’Connor, 2009; Flew and Cunningham, 2010). Recent research has re-focussed political will on the equity, diversity and inclusiveness of these economic sectors (Screen Australia, 2016; Support Act, 2022). Furthermore, and despite the implementation of a ‘gender matters’ gender equality policy by Screen Australia since 2015, the gendered nature of precarity more generally remains a key question for the sector (see paper by Barnett, Erhart and Dooley). A further key area of policy debate concerning relations between insecure work and contested policies of income support, including UBI, are explored in papers by Whiting and Daughtry as well as Cannizzo, Strong and Whiting.

The articles assembled for this special issue epitomise new research on the complex, multifaceted relationships between work, workers and the jobs and occupations categorised together as ‘creative.’ The sociology of work, and its interlocutions with interdisciplinary studies of precarity, inequality and policymaking, can thus provide a fruitful basis through which new ideas and understandings can be developed. Whether through the critical study of policies, institutions, ideas, socioeconomic structures, social relations or social processes, the frameworks provided by this broad field help us to frame and understand the problems and challenges facing people engaged in a wide range of creative fields from fine arts to performance to literature, film-making, music and beyond. Whether expressed as precariousness, invisibility, inflexibility, or intersectional disadvantage, the creative industries continue to be sites of inequalities in search of long-term change.

The Articles in this Special Issue

This special issue presents contributions to a number of debates about how to identify and address inequity in cultural and creative industries. The first two contributions describe practices of discrimination and challenges to gender equity in these industries. The first contribution, ‘Through a glass darkly: researching workplace discrimination using an identity meta-perception (IMP) lens’ by Deb Verhoeven, Bronwyn Coate and Ben Eltham, explores how structural inequalities in the Australian screen industry can be understood through the lens of workplace identity. Through drawing on a survey of camera department employees, the authors argue that workplaces make greater demands of employees with complex identities (at the intersection of gendered, ethnic, and ability norms). The experiences of camera operators offer insights into how workplace identities are constructed through meta-perception (‘what we believe other people think about us’) that is itself a form of power/knowledge. These intimate social experiences intersect with workplace interventions that seek to promote governmentality centred on ‘self-belief’ and ‘self-improvement.’ The workplace policies that promote these values are revealed by the researchers as unable to recognise the more complex experiences of selfhood and identity dissonance. Discrimination is masked by workplace interventions that would displace the complex self with an idealised, self-governing subject.

In ‘Virtually inclusive: the promises and experiences of women and gender diverse people in virtual production workplaces,’ Tully Barnett, Julia Erhart and Kath Dooley advance an analysis of gender diversity and inclusivity in the screen sector, comparing the relatively under-researched virtual production sector with Screen Australia's (2015) analysis of the more traditional screen industries. They assess whether the growth of a virtual production sector presents opportunities for redressing work patterns in the cultural industries, which favour younger, able-bodied persons without caring responsibilities. The cultural industries have also tended to be more male-dominated, less ethnically diverse and demographically skewed towards persons of a higher socioeconomic background, than the population in general. Understanding the practices and experiences of virtual production workers is therefore valuable for determining whether this form of cultural labour helps to address inequities or perpetuates them.

The next two contributions describe the precarious and exploitative work practices that characterise project-based workers in cultural and creative industries. In ‘“On location”: The realities of precariousness on labour mobility for independent film-makers in the Australian screen industry,’ Louise Ingersoll, Scott Fitzgerald and John Burgess explore the precarity experienced by 24 Australian independent film-makers through a geographical lens. Operating outside of the studio system, independent film-makers face financial and artistic challenges in being ‘on location’ for filming. The (un)affordability of accommodation, the expectation that they will be mobile, and lack of sustainable career development opportunities present financial and artistic challenges to independent film-makers. This analysis of the meaning of ‘career’ for those working beyond the studio system reveals a number of ‘professional compromises,’ in which financial stability and working standards are compromised in pursuit of an idea of a ‘career’ in independent film-making.

In the next contribution, ‘“Burnt out by all the exploitation”: involuted labour in creative fields,’ Michael Scott and Christopher Woods draw on Boudieu's concept of the ‘field’ to develop an account of how creative workers react to project-based cultural production. Their contribution is exceptional in theorising how the phenomenon of burnout experienced by cultural workers may be conceptualised as a systemic feature of cultural practices located in particular social fields. Drawing an analogy to Clifford Geertz's (1969) account of ‘involution’ in post-colonial agriculture, the authors identify the production of internal complexity in forms of creative, cultural work. To compete in cultural fields, workers attempt to squeeze more out of their creative work, reproduce the familiar, and draw on social networks for support, thereby intensifying work practices. In this context, burnout is experienced as a challenge not only to one's mental health, but to one's sense of self as a creative worker. Burnout is a consequence of fields that are ‘unable to generate the scope and scale of material and symbolic resources needed to fulfil a wider cultural belief in meritocracy’ as the authors argue.

The final three contributions explore the role of cultural and economic policy in achieving greater equity in creative and cultural industries. In ‘“Artists as workers”?: re-imagining cultural policy for insecure and precarious artists and cultural workers,’ Ben Eltham, Xin Gu and Marnie Badham interrogate the aims of recent Australian cultural policy through an analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data. They argue that current policies favour large firms and employers at the expense of cultural and artistic workers. The neoliberalisation of cultural policy, in focussing on the economic value of cultural work, is identified as a hindrance towards the explicated state objectives of treating ‘artists as workers’ by improving working conditions. The presence of competing governing rationalities within cultural and economic policy (i.e. economic management competing with the improvement of workers’ welfare) presents a challenging policy arena. The authors propose policy reform and the advancement of labour market interventions proposed by the Australian federal government as means to tip the scales of policy competition in favour of workers’ welfare.

In the following paper, ‘Cultural labour, income support, and the welfare state: the role of non-arts funding in funding the arts,’ Sam Whiting and Steph Daughtry interrogate the working conditions of cultural labourers. Their approach draws on a theorisation of cultural labour as having the intrinsic objective of producing culture, hence informing what cultural policy should aim to do. They identify the absence of resourcing for a specific form of labour as key to understanding the inequities experienced by cultural workers: what Bourdieu (1990) described as ‘skhole,’ or unimpeded time to pursue work. The authors claim that skhole has been sought by workers through various ad-hoc means, such as unemployment insurance, education stipends, and government income support schemes, but that a more equitable approach would be a standardised form of funding, such as a basic income for artists (BIA). The authors situate the BIA approach in the context of international basic income schemes, ultimately arguing that economic reform and intervention is necessary to produce more equitable outcomes for cultural workers.

The final contribution, ‘Basic income for creative justice: weathering inequity in the creative industries during COVID-19,’ also addresses the role of a basic income in fostering greater equity among the cultural and creative industries. The authors, Fabian Cannizzo, Catherine Strong and Sam Whiting, draw on a mixed-methods study of music industry workers during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic to explore systemic forms of inequity that were amplified during the public health crisis (Strong and Cannizzo 2020). They draw on Mark Banks’ (2017) concept of ‘creative justice’ to explore how the everyday experiences of distress, financial loss, uncertainty, and insecurity, reflected systematic forms of injustice facing the creative industries and their case study of music industry workers. Taking Banks’ framework as a means of identifying the limitations of economic support measures enacted during the 2020 period, the authors evaluate the utility of a basic income (BI) in offering a more effective pathway towards equity for cultural and creative workers.

Overall, discussions of equity in creative industries, and calls for change in the contributions in this special issue, via lived experiences and cultural sector policy, were diverse in recommendations and strategies, and common in the issues driving the call for reforms. Income inequality, gendered biases, ableism, racialised and ethnic privilege, and the deep investment that cultural workers make in their art forms were at the forefront of the discussions. Diverse theoretical approaches were considered, and celebrated, in this body of work as a kind of alarm bell to keep equity in the creative industries on the agenda. It is hoped that through this special issue the variety of research on equity can find a common project for policy development and improvement of the lives of creative and cultural workers. Such work is ongoing.