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Cultural Industries and Environmental Crisis: An Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

9. Creative Labour, Metabolic Rift and the Crisis of Social Reproduction

Author : Frederick Harry Pitts

Published in: Cultural Industries and the Environmental Crisis

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Drawing on interviews with freelancers and creatives at graphic design, branding and advertising agencies in London and Amsterdam, this paper explores the pressures placed upon the management and performance of creative labour by sectoral and geographical contradictions centred on the urban dynamics of the creative industries. It suggests that what goes on in creative workplaces is conditioned by a web of relations external to those workplaces. These relations support the social reproduction of the workers and firms that perform and engage it, of which cities are a crucible of contestation, conflict and manifold contradictions.

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previous chapter Towards a New Paradigm of the Creative City or the Same Devil in Disguise? Culture-led Urban (Re)development and Sustainability
next chapter ‘You’re Always On, and You’re Always Lively’: Young People and Creative Work
Footnotes
1
These projects are as follows: The Social Validation of Abstract Labour-Time: A Case Study of Billable Hours in the Creative Industries in the UK and the Netherlands (2011–2015, ESRC 1+3 PhD Studentship); E-Rhythms in Freelance Creative Work (2014, EU COST Action IS1202 Dynamics of Virtual Work Short-Term Scientific Mission Funding); Organizing Self-Employed Workers in the Creative Industries (2017–2018, ESRC Impact Acceleration Award). The relevant outputs from these projects are Pitts (2015a, b, c, d, 2016a, b, 2017a, b, 2019). To avoid repetition individual citations are not given each time a finding from these outputs is discussed.
 
2
For a more detailed discussion of Marx’s changing conceptualization of these issues, see Pitts et al. (2019).
 
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Metadata
Title
Creative Labour, Metabolic Rift and the Crisis of Social Reproduction
Author
Frederick Harry Pitts
Copyright Year
2020
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Book
Cultural Industries and the Environmental Crisis

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49383-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-49384-4

Copyright Year: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49384-4_9