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Masters of None? How Cultural Workers Use Reframing to Achieve Legitimacy in Portfolio Careers

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  • Allyson Stokes

Abstract

This article examines how cultural workers interpret and respond to reputational challenges they encounter when leading portfolio careers. Specifically, the portfolio career model involves the cultivation and signalling of adaptability through broad competencies and diverse portfolios comprised of boundary-spanning work. These practices conflict with standards of artistic legitimacy and highlight specialist-generalist tensions, since they can make workers appear to be ‘jacks of all trades, masters of none’ – unskilled, opportunistic dabblers, lacking expertise and artistic integrity. The article draws on 56 interviews with cultural producers working as filmmakers, fashion designers and musicians. Findings show how workers engage in ‘reframing’ to reinterpret the symbolic meanings attached to their behaviours and, in the process, carve out new positions and standards for legitimacy within their fields. Reframing is structured by field and labour market conditions, but also represents the possibility of change as a form of culture in action.

Suggested Citation

  • Allyson Stokes, 2021. "Masters of None? How Cultural Workers Use Reframing to Achieve Legitimacy in Portfolio Careers," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(2), pages 350-368, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:35:y:2021:i:2:p:350-368
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017020977324
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Will Sutherland & Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi & Michael Dunn & Sarah Beth Nelson, 2020. "Work Precarity and Gig Literacies in Online Freelancing," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(3), pages 457-475, June.
    4. Giuseppe Delmestri & Fabrizio Montanari & Alessandro Usai, 2005. "Reputation and Strength of Ties in Predicting Commercial Success and Artistic Merit of Independents in the Italian Feature Film Industry," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(5), pages 975-1002, July.
    5. Zuckerman, Ezra W. & Kim, Tai-Young & Ukanwa, Kalinda & James, von Rittmann, 2003. "Robust Identities or Non-Entities? Typecasting in the Feature Film Labor Market," Working papers 4291-02, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
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