IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v25y2020i4p571-588.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“There’s No Way That You Get Paid to Do the Arts†: Unpaid Labour Across the Cultural and Creative Life Course

Author

Listed:
  • Orian Brook
  • Dave O’Brien

    (University of Edinburgh, UK)

  • Mark Taylor

    (University of Sheffield, UK)

Abstract

Unpaid labour is an important element of how precarity has been theorised. It is also an issue that is often seen as endemic to cultural and creative work. Questions as to the role of unpaid work, including but not limited to unpaid internships, have become central to understanding how the social exclusiveness of many cultural and creative jobs is reinforced through their precarity. This article uses survey and interview data to outline the differing experiences of unpaid labour in cultural jobs. It contrasts the meaning of ‘free’ work over the life courses of a range of creative workers, showing how it is stratified by social class, age, and career stage. By exploring the stratification of unpaid work as a form of precariousness in cultural jobs, and of who describes their experiences of unpaid work as benign, the article offers new empirical evidence for those challenging the negative impacts of precarious working conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Orian Brook & Dave O’Brien & Mark Taylor, 2020. "“There’s No Way That You Get Paid to Do the Arts†: Unpaid Labour Across the Cultural and Creative Life Course," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 25(4), pages 571-588, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:571-588
    DOI: 10.1177/1360780419895291
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1360780419895291
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1360780419895291?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Greig de Peuter, 2014. "Confronting Precarity in the Warhol Economy," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 31-47, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mattia Vacchiano, 2022. "Nine Mechanisms of Job-Searching and Job-Finding Through Contacts Among Young Adults," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 27(2), pages 361-378, June.
    2. Giovanni Colavizza, 2022. "Seller-buyer networks in NFT art are driven by preferential ties," Papers 2210.04339, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:571-588. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.