[csaa-forum] Cultural studies of work/ Mark Banks - June 4

[Melissa Gregg]

The Department of Gender and Cultural Studies
and Media and Communications present
 
Cultural studies of work: An afternoon symposium
 
featuring
 
Mark Banks (Open University, CRESC) 'Cultural Work ­ Then and Now'

with Melissa Gregg (GCS) & Justine Humphry (MECO)
 
Monday, June 4, 2-5pm
Venue: Woolley Common Room, University of Sydney
 
Abstract: Cultural Work ­ Then and Now
 
While much has been written about the rise of cultural and/or creative
workers as key and distinctive contributors to post-industrial economies,
much of this work has failed to a) consider its object in an appropriate
historical/temporal context and b) track longitudinally the biographical
development of cohorts of workers within the current conjuncture. This paper
seeks to do both, firstly by considering the extent to which the cultural
worker represents a continuation or break with historical cultural work, and
secondly - taking a cue from Lisa Adkins¹ recent reading of the alleged
transition from 'clock' to 'event' time - through the use of new in-depth
interviews with workers first interviewed over a decade ago, assessing the
ways in which personal experiences and biographical narratives of
cultural/creative work have developed or transformed in the recent period.
By comparing and contrasting workers 'before¹ and 'after¹ accounts, the
paper offers some much needed empirical data on the nature of change in the
(UK) creative industries and the changing - and continuous - temporalities
of work.
 
Speaker details
 
Mark Banks is Reader in Sociology at the Open University. He is author of
The Politics of Cultural Work (Palgrave 2007) and co-editor of Theorizing
Cultural Work: Labour, Continuity and Change in the Creative Industries
(with Rosalind Gill and Stephanie Taylor, Routledge forthcoming). Mark
convenes the research strand on Cultural Industries in the context of the
Reframing the Nation Theme 2 of the ESRC Centre for Research on
Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). His current research examines notions of
autonomy, craft, ethics and practice in the cultural industries, including
work on cultural ownership, policy and labour in the context of the Open
University's AHRC funded project 'What is Black British Jazz?'
 
Melissa Gregg works in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the
University of Sydney. Her book Work¹s Intimacy (Polity 2011) shares findings
from her ARC Fellowship 'Working From Home: New media technology, workplace
culture and the changing nature of domesticity'. Based on interviews
conducted in four organizations, this research analyses the landscape for
work in the networked knowledge economy - its proliferating locations and
pressures. The coercive dimensions of communications platforms are shown to
combine with new management practices to produce the anticipatory affects of
professional 'presence bleed'.
 
Justine Humphry completed her PhD at the University of Western Sydney on the
daily use of ICT by professional knowledge workers and cultures of mobility
and flexibility. She is currently Lecturer of Digital Cultures at the
University of Sydney and has previously taught media and communications at
the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and Macquarie University. She was
the founder and managing director of an IT company Tilda Communications from
1998 until 2004. Her research interests include the discourse and practices
of new media technologies and their social, organisational and environmental
implications.
 
Enquiries: melissa.gregg at sydney.edu.au



MELISSA GREGG | Senior Lecturer
Gender and Cultural Studies | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
J406, Quadrangle A14 | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
T +61 2 9351 3657 | F +61 2 9351 3918 | M +61 408 599 359
E melissa.gregg at sydney.edu.au | W http://sydney.edu.au