Readers of the list will be interested in hearing about a new book by
Prof Angela McRobbie, published by Polity.
"Be Creative Making a Living in the New Culture Industries”, Polity
Press
(2015)ps:/https://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745661940/www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745661940la
McRobbie charts the ‘euphoric’ moment of the new creative economy, as
it rose to prominence in the UK during the Blair years, and considers
it from the perspective of contemporary experience of economic
austerity and uncertainty about work and employment.
McRobbie makes some bold arguments about the staging of creative
economy as a mode of ‘labour reform’; she proposes that the dispositif
of creativity is a fine-tuned instrument for acclimatising the
expanded, youthful urban middle classes to a future of work without
the raft of entitlements and security which previous genera-tions had
struggled to win through the post-war period.
Adopting a cultural studies perspective, McRobbie re-considers
resistance as ‘line of flight’ and shows what is at stake in the new
politics of culture and creativity. She incisively analyses ‘project
working’ as the embodiment of the future of work and poses the
question as to how people who come together on this basis can envisage
developing stronger and more protective organisations and
associations. Scattered throughout the book are excerpts from interviews
