UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Avatars of the Work Ethic: The Figure of the Classical Musician in Discourses of Work Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/71g9n4gd Author Sim, Yi Hong Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO Avatars of the Work Ethic: The Figure of the Classical Musician in Discourses of Work A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication by Yi Hong Sim Committee in charge: Professor Robert Horwitz, Chair Professor Akosua Boatema Boateng Professor Amy Cimini Professor Nancy Guy Professor Daniel Hallin Professor Stefan Tanaka 2019 The Dissertation of Yi Hong Sim is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California San Diego 2019 iii EPIGRAPH On one side, the artist is kept to the level of the workingman, of the animal, of the creature whose sole affair is to get something to eat and somewhere to sleep. This is through necessity. On the other side, he is exalted to the height of beings who have no concern but with the excellence of their work, which they were born and divinely authorized to do. William Dean Howells, A Traveler from Altruria (1894) iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ....................................................................................................................... iii Epigraph ................................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ........................................................................................................................ vii Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................. ix Vita ......................................................................................................................................... xii Abstract of the Dissertation ................................................................................................... xiii Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 Three Pictures of (Classical) Musicians in the Popular Press .......................................... 1 Overview of the Chapters ................................................................................................ 7 The New Spirit of Capitalism and the Problem of the “Artistic Critique” ....................... 9 Chapter 1. Working for the Common Good: Classical Music Metaphors for Work and Organization, 1946-2015 ...................................................................................................... 12 Avatars of the Work Ethic and the Spirits of Capitalism ............................................... 19 Method ............................................................................................................................ 26 Analytical Methods: Metaphor and Frame ................................................................ 30 General Findings I: Orchestras and String Quartets as Metaphors for Teamwork and Coordination ............................................................................................................ 35 General Findings II: Working Together for the Common Good .................................... 40 The Orchestra Metaphor as Reconciler of Change ........................................................ 47 The Jazz Metaphor as Counterpoint in the Early 1990s ................................................. 62 Connective Threads and the Web of Culture ................................................................. 70 A Couple Final Observations ......................................................................................... 73 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 75 Chapter 2. Avatars of the Work Ethic: The Figure of the Artist from Bohemian to Entrepreneur ........................................................................................................................... 77 Avatars and the Work Ethic ............................................................................................. 80 The Bohemian Ethos ........................................................................................................ 81 Entrepreneurial Capitalism: The “Gig,” the “Creative,” and the Economy .................... 110 The Artist in the Creative Industries ................................................................................ 122 The Entrepreneurial Ethic ................................................................................................ 139 The Political Geography of the Calling ........................................................................... 147 Avatars of the Work Ethic ............................................................................................... 150 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 153 v Chapter 3. “In Service of Art, Community, and Self”: Entrepreneurship Education, the Classical Music Artpreneur, and the Ventriloquizing of Neoliberal Politics ........................ 155 New Institutionalism and the Affective Discourses of Avatars ....................................... 159 The Rise of Entrepreneurship Education as an Institution of American Higher Education ................................................................................................................... 164 Classical Music Entrepreneurship Education .................................................................. 177 Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and the Problem of the “Traditional Intellectual” ..... 189 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 201 Chapter 4. Blue Collar Tuxedo: The Entrepreneurial Work Society in Mozart in the Jungle ..................................................................................................................................... 203 The Figure of the Bohemian Artist and the Entrepreneurial Work Society .................... 210 Synopsis of Mozart in the Jungle ..................................................................................... 212 “I Wouldn’t Trade It for Anything”: The Romance of the Work Ethic ........................... 216 The Avatar Manages Up .................................................................................................. 222 The Avatar Becomes Indignant ....................................................................................... 227 The Avatar Perturbed ....................................................................................................... 232 The Avatar as Worker-Entrepreneur ................................................................................ 239 The Classical Musician as Avatar of the Work Ethic ...................................................... 251 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 252 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 254 Appendix A ............................................................................................................................ 259 Appendix A1: Breakdown of Data Corpus by Scholarly Discipline ............................... 259 Appendix A2: Data Collection ......................................................................................... 261 Appendix A3: Codebook ................................................................................................. 265 Appendix A4: Music Frames Counted Towards Second versus Third Spirits of Capitalism ........................................................................................................................ 274 Appendix B ............................................................................................................................ 276 Appendix B1: Excerpts from the 2008 Kauffman Panel report, “Entrepreneurship in American Higher Education” ........................................................................................... 276 Appendix B2: Excerpts from the 2013 Kauffman report, “Entrepreneurship Education Comes of Age on Campus: The Challenges and Rewards of Bringing Entrepreneurship to Higher Education” ........................................................................... 279 References .............................................................................................................................. 283 Chapter 1 Primary sources from content analysis data corpus ........................................ 291 Chapter 3 Primary sources ............................................................................................... 295 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Raw number of English-language academic articles in Business Source Complete containing orchestra or string quartet metaphors