Creative Control: The Ambivalence of Work in the Culture Industries

Michael L. Siciliano

Published by Columbia University Press 2020

Creative Control

The Ambivalence of Work in the Culture Industries

Michael L. Siciliano

https://doi.org/10.7312/sici19380

Overview
Contents

About this book

Michael L. Siciliano draws on nearly two years of ethnographic research as a participant-observer in a Los Angeles music studio and a multichannel YouTube network to explore the contradictions of creative work. Creative Control explains why “cool” jobs help us understand how workers can participate in their own exploitation.

Author / Editor information

Michael L. Siciliano is assistant professor of sociology at Queen’s University.

Reviews

Jeffrey J. Sallaz, author of Lives on the Line: How the Philippines became the World's Call Center Capital:
Michael Siciliano's book is a must-read for anyone interested in the culture industries. This ethnography documents firsthand how various actors within culture-producing firms grapple over power, profits, and final products. What we create and consume, Creative Control convincingly demonstrates, derives as much from collective control as it does individual creativity.

David Hesmondhalgh, University of Leeds:
Siciliano’s thoughtful, compelling book deserves to be a major reference point in studies of creative labor and in research on work in an age of digital platforms. It combines careful ethnography with an impressive range of reading to provide fresh perspectives on longstanding problems of alienation, exploitation, and control.

Melissa Gregg, author of Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy:
With Creative Control, Michael Siciliano joins the finest of ethnographic traditions—the study of labor in our times. This fresh perspective on cultural work unpacks the reality behind our algorithmically defined entertainment future, the content treadmill that seduced the emotional and professional repertoire of a generation.

Timothy J. Dowd, Emory University:
Some scholars argue that creative work enlivens local economies, while others emphasize that it exemplifies the precarious employment spreading across national economies. Siciliano deftly navigates those divergent depictions by turning to the workers themselves—illuminating the attraction that creativity holds for them, as well as the challenges it brings. As a result, he rightfully moves us from abstract notions of creative work to the embodied and everyday activity that it actually entails.

John T. Caldwell, author of Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film/Television:
Film and media scholars who study industries must read Creative Control. Siciliano leverages cultural sociology and meticulous ethnography to masterfully unpack the considerable contradictions of media creation in the platform era. His focus on creative routinization exposes film studies' exceptionalism as a strawman, ill-equipped to make sense of online media.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Part I. Introductions
Chapter One Creative Control? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
Chapter Two Conflicting Creativities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	28
Part II. SoniCo’s Social Regime
Chapter Three SoniCo’s Positive Pole: Aesthetic Subjectivities and Control Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Chapter Four SoniCo’s Negative Pole: Mitigating Precarity and Alienated Judgment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
Part III. The Future’s Quantified Regime
Chapter Five The Future’s Positive Pole: Platform Discipline, Transience, and Immersion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
Chapter Six The Future’s Negative Pole: Compound Precarity and the (Infra)structure of Alienated Judgment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Part IV. Conclusion
Chapter Seven Toward a Theory of Creative Labor and a Politics of Judgment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
METHODOLOGICAL APPENDIX: ATTENDING TO DIFFERENCE IN SIMILARITY AND THE GENDER OF MY ACCESS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
REFERENCES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Keywords: digital media; creative labor; precarity; cognitive capitalism; sociology of labor

eBook

Published: February 25, 2021
ISBN: 9780231550512