CULTURAL WORK The great achievement of this collection is to bring together academics and cultural workers who can write eloquently about the vitally important but shamefully neglected topic of cultural work. The results are always interesting, often enlightening and sometimes brilliant. David Hesmondhalgh, The Open University Why do studies of film, popular music and television frequently talk about consumers rather than those who produce the work? And what do we actu- ally know about those involved in the creative industries? Cultural Work examines the conditions of the production of culture. It maps the changed character of work within the cultural and creative indus- tries, examines the increasing diversity of cultural work and offers new methods for analyzing and thinking about cultural workplaces. Cultural Work brings together a mixture of practitioners and scholars to think about the production of culture in an industrialized context: it includes those who began in the creative industries and now teach and study cultural practices, those who have left academia and are now involved in cultural pro- duction and those who maintain profiles as both educators and practitioners. Cultural Work investigates previously unexplored aspects of the creative industries. Studying television, popular music, performance art, radio, film production and live performance, it offers occupational biographies, cultural histories, practitioners’ evidence, and considerations of the economic environment, as well as new ways of observing and studying the cultural industries. Contributors: Philip Auslander, Andrew Beck, Dina Berkeley, Shirley Dex, Sally Hibbin, Mike Jones, Cathy MacGregor, Graham Murdock, Robin Nelson, Yvonne Tasker, Steve Taylor, Jason Toynbee, Janet Willis. Andrew Beck is head of Communication Culture and Media at Coventry University. He is co-author of AS Communication Studies: The Essential Intro- duction, also published by Routledge. CULTURAL WORK Understanding the cultural industries Edited by Andrew Beck First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2003 Taylor and Francis Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cultural work : understanding the cultural industries / edited by Andrew Beck. p. cm. Essays which had their origins in the cultural work conference that took place at Coventry University in 1988. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Performing arts–Congresses. I. Beck, Andrew, 1952– PN1574 .C85 2002 791–dc21 2002068009 ISBN 0-203-99502-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-28951-3 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-28952-1 (pbk) CONTENTS List of contributors vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: cultural work, cultural workplace – looking at the cultural industries 1 ANDREW BECK PART I Conditions 13 1 Back to work: cultural labor in altered times 15 GRAHAM MURDOCK PART II Practice 37 2 Fingers to the bone or spaced out on creativity? Labor process and ideology in the production of pop 39 JASON TOYNBEE 3 Bodies on the boundaries: subjectification and objectification in contemporary performance 56 CATHY MacGREGOR 4 “I am what I play”: the radio DJ as cultural arbiter and negotiator 73 STEVE TAYLOR v CONTENTS PART III Organization 101 5 Creativity and economic transactions in television drama production 103 DINA BERKELEY 6 Mothers returning to television production work in a changing environment 121 JANET WILLIS and SHIRLEY DEX 7 Catastrophic cycles: film and national culture 142 SALLY HIBBIN 8 The music industry as workplace: an approach to analysis 147 MIKE JONES PART IV Representation 157 9 An orchid in the land of technology: Walter Benjamin and live performance 161 PHILIP AUSLANDER 10 Office politics: masculinity, feminism and the workplace in Disclosure 169 YVONNE TASKER 11 Citizen or TV blip? The politics and pleasure of a televisual semiotic democracy 181 ROBIN NELSON Index 189 vi CONTRIBUTORS Philip Auslander is Professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has contributed critical and theoretical writing on performance to such journals as Art- Forum, Performance Research, Performing Arts Journal, TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies, and Theatre Journal. His books include Presence and Resistance: Postmodern and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance (University of Michigan Press, 1992), From Acting to Perform- ance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism (Routledge, 1997) and Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Routledge, 1999). Andrew Beck is head of Communication, Culture and Media at Coventry University. He teaches about the communication and cultural industries and has research interests in the working conditions and the training of cultural workers. He is the co-author of Communication Studies: the Essential Introduction (Routledge, 2002). Dina Berkeley is currently working at the Public Health Research Unit of the University of Hull, Humberside, evaluating the Hull and East Riding Health Action Zone. She is also visiting professor in the Depart- ment of Social and Clinical Psychology at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. She has researched in the fields of organizational analysis, project management, information systems development, decision making, decision support systems, health care and health promotion systems, media culture and media organizations. She was one of the two principal investigators of the ESRC funded project, Study of Industrial Modes of Production of TV Drama. She is co-author of Software Development Project Management: Process and Support (Ellis Horwood/Simon and Schuster, 1990) and the managing editor of Context-Sensitive Decision Support Systems (Chapman & Hall, 1998). Shirley Dex is an applied economist, currently Senior Research Associate at the Judge Institute for Management Studies at the University of Cam- bridge. Formerly she was Research Professor at the University of Essex vii CONTRIBUTORS and Reader in Economics at the University of Keele. Her research inter- ests include flexible employment, women’s employment, human resource management, equal opportunities policies, family-friendly employment policies and comparative studies of women in the labor market. She has worked with the British Film Institute on an ESRC Grant (R000 237131) analyzing a longitudinal panel data set of television production workers that is the basis of the chapter in this volume. Sally Hibbin is founder member of Parallax Pictures and a founder and board member of the Film Consortium. Amongst the films she has pro- duced are the BAFTA award winning A Very British Coup (1988), the Cannes Critics’ Award winning and Felix European Film of the Year Riff- Raff (1991), the Cannes Jury Prize winning Raining Stones (1992), the Berlin Film Festival Critics’ Award and Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear award winning Ladybird Ladybird (1994), i.d. (1995), Carla’s Song (1996) and Dockers (1999). She is an acknowledged authority on the Carry On and James Bond films. Mike Jones was a member of British pop group Latin Quarter between 1983 and 1997. In that time the group had one hit single in Britain (Radio Africa, 1986) but enjoyed album and live success in Europe. Latin Quarter released four albums for major labels (Arista and RCA) and two for German independent labels (Verabra and SPV). Mike is now Course Director, MBA Music Industries, Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool. Cathy MacGregor is Lecturer in Performance, University of Wolverhamp- ton, and has worked as a performance artist creating work since 1996. Her research interests are contemporary performance, particularly the body in performance and sex in performance, and early modern perform- ance practices. She has contributed to a number of books and journals, most recently “The Eye of the Storm: Edwarda and the Story of the Eye” in The Beast at Heaven’s Gate: Georges Bataille and the Politics of Transgres- sion, edited by Andrew Hussey and Malcolm Pollard (2000), Rodopi Press and “Show and Tell: Performing the Sexual Body” in Live Display, edited by Jim Drobnik and Jennifer Ficher (2000), University of Chicago Press. Among original work she has made are the performance projects In the Factory of Infinite Vanity (Coventry, 1998), Catholic Sex (Arizona, London, New York, 2000), and Scarlett’s Story Part One (Nottingham, New York, Wolverhampton, 2001). Graham Murdock is Reader in the Sociology of Culture at Loughborough University and Professor of Communication at the University of Bergen. He is internationally renowned for his work in the sociology of culture, particularly for his work in political economy. He has been visiting pro- fessor at the universities of California, Brussels, Leuven and Mexico City. viii CONTRIBUTORS