EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - The politics of cultural work

The politics of cultural work

Introduction

According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sports, the cultural industries form a significant contributor to the UK economy. They account for 7.9% of GDP, and are growing significantly faster than the economy as a whole. Recently, leisure and culture have become important elements in the competition for economic growth in European cities. But creative work is not only promoted as a stimulant of economic growth. Its informal and 'creative' working structures are celebrated as the future of work for all professions. However, much remains unclear about labour in the cultural industries. In his book 'the politics of cultural work', Mark Banks, Reader in Sociology at the Open University UK, provides a sociological discussion of the theories of cultural work. In that way, the book gives a first insight into the political organisation and practice of cultural work.

Proposition

How to theorise the cultural workplace and the creative cultural worker?
What forms of cultural work will emerge in the future?

Description

In his book, Mark Banks discusses three intellectual traditions in order to provide further insight into the organisation and patterns of cultural work:

critical theory
governmentality
liberal-democratic approach

The book devotes specific attention to the fact that creative cultural workers are (also) workers, even though they are often addressed and viewed as being something else. By introducing this matter, Banks also touches upon the tension between artistic creation and economic accumulation that is present in the cultural industries.

The book consists of seven chapters:

1. Introducing Cultural Work
2. Culture Industry and Cultural Work
3. Governmentality and Cultural Work
4. The Construction of Creativity
5. Choice, Reflexivity and 'Alternative' Cultural Work
6. Space, Place and Cultural Work
7. Cultural Work and Moral Futures

Conclusions

The cultural industries are often addressed as 'alternative' cultural economies, but the question remains in how far they really differ from, or challenge the capitalist practices they are believed to undermine.

Traditional left critics state that capitalism absorbs and commodifies any alternative movement or initiative, including (alternative) cultural/creative production. Hereby the system hollows out the value and meaning of cultural produce. Banks applies a less pessimistic approach and points at the fact that aestetic production always contains intrinsic value, in the sense that it is a symbol of human creativity. He moreover stresses that cultural workers do not only play a role in generating profit, but also create political interventions and social benefits, within the capitalist system. The rejection of cultural workers of market-led capitalism, might, according to Banks, result in the emergence of a subject more concerned with breaking with the capitalist system and its social relations. He concludes the book by "evaluating the ways in which existing and emergent forms of cultural production are providing the route-maps towards 'remoralized' futures beyond capitalism."

Contact info

Open University UK
Mark Banks (Reader in Sociology)

Publication date

//2007

Researcher

Mark Banks

Article info
ISBN: 978-0-230-01921-8

Links

For more information or to order, please visit the Palgrave website

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment > Urban economy

Keywords

Specific sectors