Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor

by Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson

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Precarious Creativity examines the seismic changes confronting media workers in an age of globalization and corporate conglomeration. This pathbreaking anthology peeks behind the hype and supposed glamor of screen media industries to reveal the intensifying pressures and challenges workers face. The authors take on crucial issues and provide insightful case studies of workplace dynamics regarding creativity, collaboration, exploitation, and cultural difference.

Description from LibreTexts.

Subjects
Social Sciences, Sociology
Licence
CC BY 4.0, as LibreTexts states it
Who can read
Teens profiles and older, judged from its title and subjects

Contents

LibreTexts writes equations in TeX, and here they show as TeX; the PDF has them typeset.

  1. Front Matter
  2. TitlePage
  3. InfoPage
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Licensing
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Chapter 1: Precarious Creativity – Global Media, Local Labor
  8. 1.1: Precarious Creativity – Global Media, Local Labor
  9. 1.2: Notes
  10. Chapter 2: Cybertarian Flexibility—When Prosumers Join the Cognitariat, All That Is Scholarship Melts into Air
  11. 2.1: Introduction
  12. 2.2: Television and the Environment
  13. 2.3: Cogenitariat
  14. 2.4: Conclusion
  15. 2.5: Notes
  16. Chapter 3: Spec World, Craft World, Brand World
  17. 3.1: Introduction
  18. 3.2: Craft World, Brand World
  19. 3.3: Production Culture as Spec Work
  20. 3.4: Self-Defeating Labor Tactics
  21. 3.5: Spec Work, Prototypes, Pretesting, Pilots (Brand and Franchise Fodder)
  22. 3.6: Notes
  23. Chapter 4: Film/City- Cinema, Affect, and Immaterial Labor in Urban India
  24. 4.1: Introduction
  25. 4.2: Bollywoodization, Immaterial Labor, and Mass Creativity
  26. 4.3: The Film City and/as the Immaterial Infrastructure of Urban Life
  27. 4.4: Conclusion
  28. 4.5: Notes
  29. Chapter 5: The Production of Extras in a Precarious Creative Economy
  30. 5.1: Introduction
  31. 5.2: The Treme Moral Economy
  32. 5.3: A Little Extra Work for a Lot of Extras
  33. 5.4: To Be (an) Extra
  34. 5.5: Concluding Futures?
  35. 5.6: Notes
  36. Chapter 6: Talent Agenting in the Age of Conglomerates
  37. 6.1: Introduction
  38. 6.2: How Agency Growth Transforms Agenting
  39. 6.3: Lessons from the Rise of the “Indie Film Agent”
  40. 6.4: The “Lost” Art of Agenting?
  41. 6.5: Notes
  42. Chapter 7: Transnational Crews and Postsocialist Precarity – Globalizing Screen Media Labor in Prague
  43. 7.1: Introduction
  44. 7.2: Localized Learning in Global Production Networks
  45. 7.3: Globalizing a Postsocialist Production World – Producers and Production Management as Cultural Interface
  46. 7.4: Multiple Globalizations
  47. 7.5: Career Patterns and Precarity in Transnational Project Networks
  48. 7.6: Conclusion – A Two-Tier, Departmentalized Work World
  49. 7.7: Notes
  50. Chapter 8: The Cost of Business – Gender Dynamics of Media Labor in Afghanistan
  51. 8.1: Introduction
  52. 8.2: Rightful Suspicions
  53. 8.3: Case by Case – Women in For-Profit TV
  54. 8.4: The Noncommercial Sector
  55. 8.5: Conclusion
  56. 8.6: Notes
  57. Chapter 9: “No One Thinks in Hindi Here” – Language Hierarchies in Bollywood
  58. 9.1: Introduction
  59. 9.2: English as a Lingua Franca in the Hindi Film Industry
  60. 9.3: The Precarious Status of Hindi in the Hindi Film Industry
  61. 9.4: Hindi “Indie”
  62. 9.5: Conclusion
  63. 9.6: Notes
  64. Chapter 10: Complex Labor Relations in Latin American Television Industries
  65. 10.1: Introduction
  66. 10.2: A Brief Overview of the Latin American Television Industry
  67. 10.3: Independents in the Contemporary Landscape of Television Industries
  68. 10.4: Genre and Formats Division of Labor
  69. 10.5: The Asymmetrical Relationship Between Indie Houses and Television Networks
  70. 10.6: Labor Struggles, Accommodations, and Strategies of Survival
  71. 10.7: Conclusion
  72. 10.8: Notes
  73. Chapter 11: Labor in Lagos – Alternative Global Networks
  74. 11.1: Introduction
  75. 11.2: The Context – Nollywood the Place
  76. 11.3: Implications of Opaque Distribution
  77. 11.4: Precarity, Repeat Collaboration, and Industry Entry
  78. 11.5: Conclusion
  79. 11.6: Notes
  80. Chapter 12: Creative Precarity in the Adult Film Industry
  81. 12.1: Introduction
  82. 12.2: Contours of the Industry
  83. 12.3: Conditions of and Responses to Precarity
  84. 12.4: Do-It-Yourself Ethics, Class and Boundary Work
  85. 12.5: Notes
  86. Chapter 13: Strategies for Success? Navigating Hollywood’s “Postracial” Labor Practices
  87. 13.1: Introduction
  88. 13.2: Minority Employment – Dismal Data and Industrial Pushback
  89. 13.3: Casting Directors – Precarious Limbo Gatekeepers
  90. 13.4: Three Strategies of Navigating Today's Hollywood
  91. 13.5: Conclusion
  92. 13.6: Notes
  93. Chapter 14: Games Production in Australia – Adapting to Precariousness
  94. 14.1: Introduction
  95. 14.2: They Still Make Games
  96. 14.3: Precariousness as a Function of Policy and Industry Cultures
  97. 14.4: Conclusion
  98. 14.5: Notes
  99. Chapter 15: Redefining Creative Labor – East Asian Comparisons
  100. 15.1: Introduction
  101. 15.2: Problematizing Creativity
  102. 15.3: Subcontracting and Subcontracted Creativity
  103. 15.4: Three Major Production Regions in Asia
  104. 15.5: Modes of Creative Labor
  105. 15.6: Three Modes of Cultural Labor
  106. 15.7: Conclusion – Creative Industries With or Without Creativity
  107. 15.8: Notes
  108. Chapter 16: Unbundling Precarious Creativity in China – “Knowing-How” and “Knowing-To”
  109. 16.1: Introduction
  110. 16.2: Contextualizing Precarious Creativity
  111. 16.3: A Chinese Political Economy Framework
  112. 16.4: Knowledge Capital
  113. 16.5: Media – The Game Changes
  114. 16.6: The Cultural Innovation Timeline Reconsidered
  115. 16.7: Concluding Remarks – The (Precarious) Elephant in the Room
  116. 16.8: Notes
  117. Chapter 17: Revolutionary Creative Labor
  118. 17.1: Introduction
  119. 17.2: Creativity and Labor in Social Movement and Production Studies – A Snapshot
  120. 17.3: Industrial and Revolutionary – Two Types of Creative Labor?
  121. 17.4: Subjectivity and Revolutionary Creative Labor
  122. 17.5: Notes
  123. Chapter 18: Precarious Diversity – Representation and Demography
  124. 18.1: Introduction
  125. 18.2: Problem Space 1 – Employment, Content, and Demography
  126. 18.3: The Current Conjecture
  127. 18.4: Problem Space 2 – Difference and Power
  128. 18.5: Diversity as Quotidian Production Practices
  129. 18.6: Conclusion – From Inventory to Attachment
  130. 18.7: Notes
  131. Chapter 19: The Precarity and Politics of Media Advocacy Work
  132. 19.1: Introduction
  133. 19.2: Media Advocacy as Work
  134. 19.3: Media Advocacy as Media Work
  135. 19.4: Conclusion – The Precarity and Politics of Media Advocacy Work
  136. 19.5: Notes
  137. Chapter 20: Internationalizing Labor Activism – Building Solidarity among Writers’ Guilds
  138. 20.1: Introduction
  139. 20.2: Problems Facing Organized Labor in the Media Industries
  140. 20.3: The Writers Guild of America in the National Context
  141. 20.4: Going Global – Guilds in an Era of Internationalization
  142. 20.5: Conclusion
  143. 20.6: Notes
  144. Back Matter
  145. Index
  146. Detailed Licensing
  147. Back Cover
  148. References
  149. Detailed Licensing