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https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/04/26/book-review-be-creative-making-a-living-in-the-new-culture-industries-by-angela-mcrobbie/>
"The author emphasises the dilemma of Cultural Studies: taught nowadays for its
instrumental role in understanding subcultures and styles as business
opportunities, but with a longstanding political role in critiquing capitalism
and its way of co-opting creative practices for market purposes. McRobbie
proposes that neoliberal labour reform, particularly in the UK, is succeeding
by encouraging young people to ‘Be Creative!’, convincing them that the
pleasure and status received for freelance, non-permanent, low- paid jobs with
almost no social security are enough. The author makes a call to recover the
‘W’ word – ‘welfare in work’ (13) – in order to resist the imperative to be
creative.
In Chapter Two, ‘Unpacking the Politics of Creative Labour’, McRobbie examines
conceptually the idea of creativity by dissecting ‘the romance of being
creative’ (33) as a new form of governmentality; or, how young creative
professionals believe in passion and happiness in the workplace as compensation
for precarious jobs. In the current labour market, for example, the role of
unions is diminished and has been replaced by skills of ‘self-management’ to
achieve success in an uncertain market of creative labour; this entrepreneurial
or start-up mentality is part of the professionalisation of being creative and
a marker of middle-class status. This chapter is key to understanding
McRobbie’s perspective on the ideological role of creativity in the changes to
the cultural economy in the UK since the late 1990s."
Via Muse.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
