This book is an investigation of the role of creative labor and the five senses in Rainer Maria Rilke’s prose works, including his “Primal Sound” essay, the Stories of God, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and his monograph on Auguste Rodin. It is about several protagonists’ quest to achieve creative labor by reconnecting spirit or the unconscious to the hand. There are many difficulties in the way, however, illustrated by Rilke’s essays, tales, and monographs. In the process (...) of overcoming these impediments, the five senses are expanded and refined. Rilke’s characters undergo a transformation that not only allows them to do true creative labor, but also brings them into a new relationship with themselves, the world around them and other people. (shrink)

Our article relocates the debate about creative labour to the terrain of peer-to-peer interneting as the paradigmatic form of nonmarket – social – production. From Yann Moulier Boutang we take the point that creative labour is immaterial; it is expressed through people connected by the internet. Drawing on two social systems thinkers, Francis Heylighen and Wolfgang Hofkirchner, we transpose this connectedness up to a conception of creative labour as a supra-individual collective intelligence. This intelligence, (...) we argue, is one of the internet’s emergent properties. We then present a model of internet development that flags the potential of digitally-evoked collective intelligence to facilitate what the Marxist philosopher George Caffentzis calls ‘postcapitalist commoning’. Yoking together systems theorizing about the internet and socialist envisioning of social transformation, we identify two sets of internet tools for coordination that can assist with the convivial reconstruction of society along the lines of peer-based production. (shrink)

In keeping with the focus of this special section, we concentrate initially on some of the problems of autonomist Marxist concepts such as `immaterial labour', `affective labour' and `precarity' for understanding work in the cultural industries. We then briefly review some relevant media theory (John Thompson's notion of mediated quasi-interaction) and some key recent sociological research on cultural labour (especially work by Andrew Ross and Laura Grindstaff, the latter drawing on Hochschild's concept of emotional labour), which (...) we believe may be more useful than autonomist concepts in developing empirically informed critique. The main body of the article then consists of an ethnographic account of working on one particular television programme, an account that aims to build on these theoretical debates. We analyse how the power to provide exposure or not to individuals in the talent show genre in contemporary television (a feature that derives from the symbolic power of producers to make texts that are then circulated to massive numbers of people) and disputes between commissioners and independent producers about how best to go about doing so (an organizational issue) are registered in the form of stress, anxiety and sometimes poor working relations among project teams of young television researchers (a matter of working conditions and experiences). We especially focus on how additional pressures are borne by these workers because of the requirements to undertake emotional labour, involving the handling of strong emotions on the part of talent show contributors, and to maintain good working relations in short-term project work, requirements generated by the need to ensure future employment. Ultimately, then, we support the view that creative work is `precarious' — but we go beyond the generalizations involved in concepts such as immaterial labour and affective labour to show the specific ways in which precariousness is registered and negotiated in the lives of young workers in one industry. (shrink)

This paper is a complete student-led, student-edited collective writing project (CWP) conducted virtually in Spring 2022 throughout the course Knowledge Socialism taught by professor Michael Peters for the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal university. The CWP involves 4 international, 5 domestic Ph.D. students, and 2 senior Western scholars as reviewers, revealing their thoughts, arguments, understanding, and criticisms towards the creative economy status in East Asian countries (Japan and China mostly) higher education as reflected in the knowledge socialism narratives. Xiyuan (...) as the lead author, co-editing with Woraport and Stefan, assigned each section to other authors and successfully devoted themself to organizing, proofreading, and revising the paper. Through a month of collective work, the final version of the paper elaborates on the contribution of East Asian creative universities and the economy as a whole to the knowledge socialism through co(labor)ation, with implications to the creative labors cultivation and shifted roles of students. (shrink)

There are different ways of defining science, but I should like to examine it primarily as one of the forms of mental labor. In this connection it is appropriate to recall Marx's words: "A distinction must be made between universal labor and cooperative labor. Each plays its own role in the process of production. They overlap, but there is also a distinction between them. Every scientific work, every discovery, every invention is universal labor. It is made possible partly by cooperation (...) among contemporaries and partly by making use of the work of those who have gone before. Joint labor presumes direct cooperation among individuals." What is subsumed here under "cooperative labor," according to Marx, is "directly associated labor," which, to put it in other terms, is "direct labor.". (shrink)

Marx developed a sophisticated theory of labour under capitalism’s expanding reproduction but wrote little specifically on immaterial labour. This paper reflects on how to build from Marx’s writings a more comprehensive theory of immaterial labour. Integral to this theorisation is bringing in young Marx’s writings on alienation and human nature, and praxis read as the ‘point of knowledge is to change the world’. Integrating the young and mature work into a single perspective that highlights the actively causal (...) dimension of human creativity and knowledge for the making of history critically adds to and thereby transforms the naturalism and structural determinism of orthodox readings of Marx’s Marxism. We relate this theorisation specifically to the project of liberating academic labour from the shackles of its neoliberal containment by making ‘knowledge socialism’. (shrink)

Studies of creative industries typically contend that creative work is profoundly precarious, taking place on a freelance basis in highly competitive, individualized and contingent labour markets. Such studies depict creative workers as correspondingly self-enterprising, self-reliant, self-interested and calculative agents who valorise care-free independence. In contrast, we adopt the ‘ethics of care’ approach to explore, recognize and appreciate the communitarian, relational and moral considerations as well as interpersonal connectedness and interdependencies that underpin creative work. Drawing on (...) in-depth interviews with creative workers in a range of marginal socio-cultural contexts, we argue that creative workers cultivate and sustain a diverse array of practices of care arising from an affective concern with the well-being of others. Far from being merely individualistic and crudely competitive actors, creative workers enact practical ethical responsibilities and affectivities towards a range of human and non-human others, including families, local communities and neighbourhoods, colleagues, artistic scenes and their adjacent genres, and surrounding national and linguistic cultures. In emphasizing the fundamental and structuring role of care in contingent labour markets our approach accords with recent trends in the social sciences that ‘affirmatively’—as opposed to ‘negatively’ and ‘suspiciously’—recognize that mutuality, solidarity and affectivity are powerful drivers of action on a par with or even exceeding market-driven self-centredness. (shrink)

Since the launch of applications such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, generative artificial intelligence has been controversial as a tool for creating artwork. While some have presented longtermist worries about these technologies as harbingers of fully automated futures to come, more pressing is the impact of generative AI on creative labour in the present. Already, business leaders have begun replacing human artistic labour with AI-generated images. In response, the artistic community has launched a protest movement, which (...) argues that AI image generation is a kind of theft. This paper analyzes, substantiates, and critiques these arguments, concluding that AI image generators involve an unethical kind of labour theft. If correct, many other AI applications also rely upon theft. (shrink)

Increasing numbers of marketers are turning to the crowd—members of the public engaged with brands via the Internet—to develop marketing and advertising campaigns. Some marketers use social media to connect directly with customers, while others use crowdsourcing agencies to harness the power of crowd labor. As more members of the public become aware of creative crowdsourcing, they look to the media to understand more about it. As a result, it is important to examine how the media currently frame (...) class='Hi'>creative crowdsourcing to the public, particularly when numerous ethical issues about crowdsourcing have been identified. This study examines media coverage of creative crowdsourcing to examine how benefits and challenges are presented. Informed by a framework developed by Swain, results indicate that most media coverage focuses solely on benefits to the industry: benefits to the ‘crowd’ are rarely discussed, yet drawbacks to the crowd are mentioned more frequently than drawbacks for the industry. This provides a skewed vision of what creative crowdsourcing is and may affect participation in the practice. (shrink)

Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an (...) assistant or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. (shrink)

In a historical perspective, what is novel about computer games is that they are not pure games but cultural objects which allow the playful desires identified by Caillois to be fused with craftsmanship, the desire to do a job well for its own sake (Sennett). Play is often defined in opposition to work, for example by Huizinga and Caillois, but craftsmanship has two qualities which can be found in both. Firstly, craftsmanship entails creative attention to the material at hand (...) pleasurably and patiently built up through rehearsal (cf. Sennett on “material consciousness”)—“creative” is used in a sense read from Bergson which is almost synonymous with “possibility-widening”. Secondly, craftsmanship entails the satisfaction of seeing the end result of one's labours. Both qualities are essential to human well-being (Marx, Sennett, Smith). (shrink)

Nowadays creativity is fashionable. Writers on management and organisation, for example, mention creativity as vital to entrepreneurship.1 They consider it to be as important as land, labour and capital, which form the traditional factors of production.2 And related terms such as ‘genius’ are in use again. An example of this is the widely read book Built to Last.3 Moreover, creativity and rationality are presented as alternatives. To be creative, managers are urged to put rationality aside: ‘being reasonable does (...) not win the day’ they are assured4 and ‘all progress depends on the unreasonable man’.5 This view that rationality and creativity oppose each other is, however, unsatisfactory involving, as it does, a form of epistemological schizophrenia. One excludes the other only if we adopt a simplistic concept of rationality and an esoteric view of creativity. This article, therefore, sets out to clarify the relationship between the concepts of creativity and rationality. Three ideal-type concepts of rationality will be introduced (algorithmic, judgemental, reflective) and their tolerance of novelty discussed. Then two modes of creativity (explorative and transcendentive) are distinguished, followed by a discussion of whether rationality can enhance creativity. I conclude by reviewing some factors involved in creativity, such as tolerance for ambiguity, playfulness and attentiveness, and with a short discussion of the relationship of creativity to power.6. (shrink)

The following paper continues discussions within this journal about how the work of Delueze and Guattari can inform radical pedagogy. Building primarily on Noel Gough's 2004 paper, we take up the challenge to move towards a more creative form of 'becoming cyborg' in our teaching. In contrast to work that has focused on Deleuzian theories of the rhizome, we deploy Guattari's work on institutional schizoanalysis to explore the role of group creativity in radical pedagogy. The institutional therapies of Felix (...) Guattari's schizoanalytic practice in the 1950s and 1960s and, before him, the Francophone educationalist Celestin Freinet, who founded the Modern School Movement, are explored and used to illuminate examples of some of our own attempts to set the classroom up as a space for collective engagement. We conclude by exploring how this understanding of the class as subject group may be used to mobilise action and de-stabilise the coordinates of existing academic divisions of labour. (shrink)

Simone Weil’s political thought on labour and political community by comparing it with that of liberal and republican thinkers. Her consideration of the human need for private property and on the way that labouring produces a feeling of belonging resonates with the liberal political thought of John Locke. Locke’s thought emphasizes labour’s capacity to transform land held in common into private property and the need for political community to protect individual property rights. Weil, however, emphasizes labour’s capacity (...) to transform individuals by increasing their sensitivity to the world and capacity to attend to the needs of others. Further, the purpose of political community for Weil is to nurture human spiritual needs, including a sense of obligation to others, more than the protection of individual rights. If as C.B. Macpherson argues, liberal political thought is based on possessive individualism, then Weil’s is based on an attentive individualism. Her critique of the language of rights brings her close to a strand of republican thinking, found in Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt, which values the activation and development of human capacities through participation in political community. While Weil affirms the vital necessity of collectivity for human flourishing, she maintains a critical concern with the overvaluation of the collective in relation to the individual. In significant respects, Weil’s political thought is neither liberal nor republican and as such enables us opportunities for critical and creative reimagining of inherited political ideologies. (shrink)

For Marx, work is the fundamental and central activity in human life and, potentially at least, a ful lling and liberating activity. Although this view is implicit throughout Marx’s work, there is little explicit explanation or defence of it. The fullest treatment is in the account of ‘estranged labour’ [entfremdete Arbeit] in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts;1 but, even there, Marx does not set out his philosophical assumptions at length. For an understanding of these, one must turn to Hegel. (...) Marx is quite explicit about his debt to Hegel in this respect. (shrink)

Recently, heated discussions about artificial intelligence, creativity, and work have re-emerged. Despite the dominant focus on the novelty of this entanglement, it is rich with history. In this paper, I will first introduce creativity as a historical and socio-culturally embedded concept, looking at how and why we have invented creativity in the guises we have. The focus will mostly be on the political and ideological backdrop of these historical processes–for instance how creativity was repeatedly cast as the positive counterimage of (...) (industrial and bureaucratic) alienated labour, and hence stood in a complex relationship to automation, robotization, and so on. Based on this I will then discuss a series of scenarios that are related to the (perhaps) forthcoming automation of creativity, more specifically four ways in which automation might in different ways impact (the fields of) creative practices and labour. (shrink)

The recent emergence of generative AI software as viable tools for use in the cultural and creative industries has sparked debates about the potential for “creativity” to be automated and “augmented” by algorithmic machines. Such discussions, however, begin from an ontological position, attempting to define creativity by either falling prey to universalism (i.e. “creativity is X”) or reductionism (i.e. “only humans can be truly creative” or “human creativity will be fully replaced by creative machines”). Furthermore, such an (...) approach evades addressing the real and material impacts of AI on creative labour in these industries. This article thus offers more expansive methodological and conceptual approaches to the recent hype on generative AI. By combining (Csikszentmihalyi, The systems model of creativity, Springer, Dordrecht, 2014) systems view of creativity, in which we emphasise the shift from “what” to “where” is creativity, with (Lievrouw, Media technologies, The MIT Press, 2014) relational-materialist theory of “mediation”, we argue that the study of “creativity” in the context of generative AI must be attentive to the interactions between technologies, practices, and social arrangements. When exploring the relational space between these elements, three core concepts become pertinent: creative labour, automation, and distributed agency. Critiquing “creativity” through these conceptual lenses allows us to re-situate the use of generative AI within discourses of labour in post-industrial capitalism and brings us to a conceptualisation of creativity that privileges neither the human user nor machine algorithm but instead emphasises a relational and distributed form of agency. (shrink)

The philosophical understanding of scientific creativity cannot be limited to the analysis of cognitive abilities or ways of solving problems. It is always anthropologically-laden, based on a historically specific image image of a human being that acquires knowledge. The problem of creativity also articulates a well-known paradox of novelty: the new does not arise from the old, since it is significantly different from it, but it cannot arise from nothing, because then it remains incomprehensible. Paul Feyerabend criticizes such a “mysterianic” (...) concept of scientific creativity, which emphasizes its emergent character, i.e. its suddenness and inexplicability. The distance between subject and object, man and nature, knowledge and reality in this case remains insurmountable. To solve this problem, it is necessary to place creativity in the space between the uniqueness of the creative personality and the mechanisms of social recognition. This, in turn, requires rethinking of the ontological content of creativity, as well as the concept of “labor” with reference to its treatment by Karl Marx’ rethinking of it as the production of not only material goods, but also of the person itself. Moreover, creativity does not just form a person: it is a way of cultivating the entire social space. An unexpected move is provided by an appeal to a new social group – the precariat, which in science gives a lesson in openness to novelty and theoretical freedom. As a result, a deeper understanding of the social base of creativity arises, and a new strategy for the interaction of the scientific community with extra-paradigm groups and marginal individuals is being built. (shrink)

This chapter offers a brief characterization of creativity, followed by a review of some of the reasons people have been skeptical about the possibility of explaining creativity. It surveys some of the recent work on creativity that is naturalistic in the sense that it presumes creativity is natural, as opposed to magical, occult, or supernatural, and is therefore amenable to scientific inquiry. The chapter divides into two categories. The broader category is empirical philosophy, which draws on empirical research while addressing (...) questions that have traditionally been regarded as philosophical. The second category is experimental philosophy, a special branch of empirical philosophy in which experiments are designed by philosophers with the explicit purpose of addressing philosophical questions. This categorization is admittedly somewhat artificial, but it is a familiar one in the prevailing division of intellectual labor, and it will be a useful organizational tool for the chapter. (shrink)

At the end of 1907 within a couple of months Lunačarskij met both Gor’kij and Brzozowski in Italy and found many important points of contact with each. To compare Lunačarskij’s thought at that time with Brzozowski’s “philosophical program” of 1907 casts some new light on the great variety of interpretations that enlivened Easter European Marxism at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, it explains Lunačarskij’s “economism” as distinct both from Brzozowski’s extreme anthropologism and Gor’kij’s “cosmism”; on (...) the other, it shows that Lunačarskij’s “philosophy of labour” promoted a violent attitude of conquest and humankind’s domination of nature. Although he criticized Brzozowski’s sympathies with German Idealism, Lunačarskij shared with him a deep appreciation of human creative power, which is evident in his peculiar form of collectivism as well. (shrink)

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things.""I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."In the wake of the November 2016 presidential election, countless commentators recognized what Richard Rorty knew in 1998, that the U.S. democratic system would crack under the weight of social and economic inequalities and inequities— (...) and that those cracking the safe would be not the historically marginalized but the historically privileged. Hear Rorty nearly 20 years ago: [M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled... (shrink)

The world today is characterized by intercultural diversity. More and more communication takes place between people with different linguistic as well as cultural backgrounds. This happens because of contacts within the areas of business, science, education etc. but also because of immigration brought about by labour shortage or unstable political situation. The globalisation of the economy with increased appreciation by companies that managing cultural differences properly can be a key factor in getting things done effectively across borders. With increased (...) contact of personnel and customers from diverse cultural background, there is a growing demand for businesses to understand and manage the diverse values, perceptions, business worldviews and behaviour of corporations, staff, and its customer. Intercultural communication and management is an interdisciplinary human resources field concerned with faciliting communication, management and effective interaction of personnel and customers across borders. The starting point for understanding consumer behaviour is really important. Marketing and environmental stimuls enter the consumer’s conscioussnes, and set of psychological processes combine with certain consumer characteristics to resault in decision processes and purchase decision. The marketer’s task is to understand what happened in the consumer’s consciousness between the arrival of the outside marketing stimuli and the ultimate purchasedecision. Four psychological processes are motivation, perception, learning and also memroy, fundamentaly influence consumer responses. Understanding consumer behaviour may often be complicated since many different factors influence the behaviour and sicnce many different forms of behaviour exist. Paper describe fuzzy concept for evaluation of some cros-cultural impact and compare it with other type of measurements presented in literature. (shrink)

The world of wage labour seems to have become a soulless machine, an engine of social and environmental destruction. Employees seem to be nothing but 'cogs' in this system - but is this true? Located at the intersection of political theory, moral philosophy, and business ethics, this book questions the picture of the world of work as a 'system'. Hierarchical organizations, both in the public and in the private sphere, have specific features of their own. This does not mean, (...) however, that they cannot leave room for moral responsibility, and maybe even human flourishing. Drawing on detailed empirical case studies, Lisa Herzog analyses the nature of organizations from a normative perspective: their rule-bound character, the ways in which they deal with divided knowledge, and organizational cultures and their relation to morality. The volume examines how individual agency and organizational structures would have to mesh to avoid common moral pitfalls and develops the notion of 'transformational agency', which refers to a critical, creative way of engaging with one's organizational role while remaining committed to basic moral norms. The volume goes on to explore the political and institutional changes that would be required to re-embed organizations into a just society. Whether we submit to 'the system' or try to reclaim it, Herzog argues, is a question of eminent political importance in our globalized world. (shrink)

With the economy deindustrialized and the working class decentralized, a call for alternative horizons for resistance: the university and the art world. What was once the factory is now the university. As deindustrialization spreads and the working class is decentralized, new means of social resistance and political activism need to be sought in what may be the last places where they are possible: the university and the art world. Gerald Raunig's new book analyzes the potential that cognitive and creative (...) labor has in these two arenas to resist the new regimes of domination imposed by cognitive capitalism. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's concept of “modulation” as the market-driven imperative for the constant transformation and reinvention of subjectivity, in Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity, Raunig charts alternative horizons for resistance. Looking at recent social struggles including the university strikes in Europe, the Spanish ¡Democracia real YA! organization, the Arab revolts, and the Occupy movement, Raunig argues for a reassessment of the importance of cultural and knowledge production. The central role of the university, he asserts, is not as a factory of knowledge but as a place of creative disobedience. (shrink)

Evidence from industry reports, labor union data, and interviews with producers and union officials indicates that while the demand for media products and the number of productions continues to rise, much of the increase in demand is in low-budget features and extremely low-budget production for cable networks. In this production environment, the conglomerates are pressuring producers to reduce labor costs and produce a larger number of low-cost products. Producers are using various strategies to reduce costs, including requiring more flexibility from (...) the production workforce with respect to the length of workdays and working conditions. This article examines how production trends, influenced by conglomerate domination of production and distribution, are affecting the media workforce. In particular I look at three tendencies. The first is a widening split between core workers and peripheral workers employed in industry projects. The second is a change in professional and craft identities as a result of technological specialization by freelancers and the loss of union control over production projects, especially at the low end of the budget spectrum. Finally, there is the persistence of `hard-wired' social and economic networks to reduce worker and employer risk. These networks foster and reinforce labor segmentation among women and men, and among ethnic groups, restricting access to job opportunities and careers. (shrink)

What was once the factory is now the university. As deindustrialization spreads and the working class is decentralized, new means of social resistance and political activism need to be sought in what may be the last places where they are possible: the university and the art world. Gerald Raunig's new book analyzes the potential that cognitive and creative labor has in these two arenas to resist the new regimes of domination imposed by cognitive capitalism. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's concept (...) of "modulation" as the market-driven imperative for the constant transformation and reinvention of subjectivity, in Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity, Raunig charts alternative horizons for resistance. Looking at recent social struggles including the university strikes in Europe, the Spanish ¡Democracia real YA! organization, the Arab revolts, and the Occupy movement, Raunig argues for a reassessment of the importance of cultural and knowledge production. The central role of the university, he asserts, is not as a factory of knowledge but as a place of creative disobedience. (shrink)

What a sublime and, at the same time, sordid vocation this theological discipline has. My major concern is an unfamiliar Antonio Negri, one who engages in some biblical criticism in his recently translated The Labor of Job (2009), a detailed philosophical exegesis of the “marvelous” biblical book of Job.1 Two features of Negri’s analysis stand out: the oppositions of kairós and ákairos, and measure and immeasure. However, before I explore those oppositions in some detail, two preliminary comments are needed. At (...) the heart of the book is what I would like to call a radical homiletics. A discipline much neglected these days, homiletics is really the art of connecting a text like the Bible with the realities .. (shrink)

This book provides a hermeneutical reflection on the biblical notion of labor, combining texts from the book of Genesis with the conceptions of work in psychoanalysts and philosophers such as Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx.

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 3-20, February 2022. As graduate labour market conditions have become increasingly challenging, higher education institutions have intensified their focus on ‘employability’ via strategies such as work placements. Focusing on work placements in the media and creative industries, this article identifies and analyses three key discourses that animate the pedagogical literature in these sectors: work placements as facilitating a ‘smooth transition’ to the labour market; work placements as (...) a place in which inequalities in the labour market are produced; and work placements as a space for fostering resilience and adaptation to labour market precarity. The article argues that critiques of inequalities based on race, class or gender are marked by a transformative impulse that is largely absent in critiques of those based on worker precarity. This highlights a need to adopt pedagogies that similarly unnaturalise the economic conditions of neoliberal capitalism to discursively construct work in new, more socially just, ways. (shrink)

Julie Taymor is an exemplary artist who has successfully made the transition from avant-garde director of live theatre in the 1980s to become a Broadway director for Disney Corporation with The Lion King, and, more recently, a film director with Sony’s nostalgic look at the music of the Beatles in Across the Universe. Highlights of her career—spanning the latter half of the twentieth century—offer excellent examples of the changes in the economics of creativity and artistic labor for a case study (...) in cultural and aesthetic values under global capitalism. Through interviews, newspapers and financial annual reports, specific moments in Taymor’s oeuvre reveal key distinctions between cultural and intercultural values, between aesthetic and financial exchange values, and highlight themes and limitations in the legacy of the Marxist labor theory of value. (shrink)

This article aims to raise education researchers’ self-reflection about their treatment of teachers as workers through introducing the term “creative work ethic.” At its core, the creative work ethic is the belief that good work entails innovation. Additional features of this ethic are the prizing self-motivation, work done individually, and a flexible schedule that mixes labor with leisure activities. The danger of the creative work ethic is a tendency for self-exploitation and devaluing workers who do not fit (...) into the ethic. After defining the features of the creative work ethic and describing its drawback, the paper reads closely three education papers in order to show how this ethic colors their analysis of teachers’ work or their prescription for better teaching. (shrink)

Material and nonmaterial cultural values are the forms that the social division of labor takes in its results, which embody qualitatively different forms corresponding to various human needs. Therefore, the question of the emergence of the comprehensively developed human being in communist society is also a question of the social division of labor. The conditions of labor of a developed socialist society are the results of the world historical development of social praxis, in which the subject is not the individual (...) standing alone but "the creativity of the masses," social labor in combination. In this connection the social division of labor in the process of development toward communism must be seen not merely as the condition for production of things differing in the way they are consumed but also primarily as the production of individuals themselves: of their capacities and talents for creative, socially useful labor. (shrink)

As states grapple with the forces of liberalization and globalization, they are increasingly pulling back on earlier levels of welfare provision and rhetoric. This article examines how the eclipsing role of the state in labor protection has affected state–labor relations. In particular, it analyzes collective action strategies among India’s growing mass of informally employed workers, who do not receive secure wages or benefits from either the state or their employer. In response to the recent changes in state policies, I find (...) that informal workers have had to alter their organizing strategies in ways that are reshaping the social contract between state and labor. Rather than demanding employers for workers’ benefits, they are making direct demands on the state for welfare benefits. To attain state attention, informal workers are using the rhetoric of citizenship rights to offer their unregulated labor and political support in return for state recognition of their work. Such recognition bestows informal workers with a degree of social legitimacy, thereby dignifying their discontent and bolstering their status as claim makers in their society. These findings offer a reformulated model of state–labor relations that focuses attention on the qualitative, rather than quantitative, nature of the nexus; encompasses a dynamic and inter-dependent conceptualization of state and labor; and accommodates the creative and diverse strategies of industrial relations being forged in the contemporary era. (shrink)

The work of Herbert Marcuse, unlike that of certain of his colleagues at the Institut für Sozialforschung, is most often maligned as being excessively positive and identitarian. His work on Freud, for example, is criticized for being grounded in a crude biological determinism which points towards an ultimate reconciliation of both psychic and social conflict. This essay will attempt to counter such readings by critically juxtaposing Marcuse’s concept of non-repressive sublimation with Cornelius Castoriadis’s understanding of psychic socialization. It will be (...) suggested that the affinities between Marcuse and Castoriadis’s appropriations of Freudian metapsychology reveals the degree to which the former can be read as a radical democratic thinker affirming the values of autonomy and creativity. This reading demonstrates that Marcuse has much to contribute to contemporary debates on the role of the aesthetic and the sensuous in democratic theory. (shrink)

In 2003, the concept of precarity emerged as the central organizing platform for a series of social struggles that would spread across the space of Europe. Four years later, almost as suddenly as the precarity movement appeared, so it would enter into crisis. To understand precarity as a political concept it is necessary to go beyond economistic approaches that see social conditions as determined by the mode of production. Such a move requires us to see Fordism as exception and precarity (...) as the norm. The political concept and practice of translation enables us to frame the precarity of creative labour in a broader historical and geographical perspective, shedding light on its contestation and relation to the concept of the common. Our interest is in the potential for novel forms of connection, subjectivization and political organization. Such processes of translation are themselves inherently precarious, transborder undertakings. (shrink)