“Essential—Passion for Music”: Affirming, Critiquing, and Practising Passionate Work in Creative Industries

This chapter considers “passion” as an enthusiastic orientation to work within creative worlds: work motivated by intense attachments to the products of work and their conditions of production. Drawing on Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology of critique and justification, the chapter argues that the passionate lens most usefully trains our sights on normative questions: not what or how—but why such work is undertaken. Embedded in research on cultural and creative industries, the contemporary recorded music sector is presented as a “passionate” industry in transformation. Interviews with workers, who both criticize and defend their industry, act as a springboard to explore three possible interpretive approaches: affirmative, critical, and pragmatic. Theoretical flexibility is needed to keep “passion” open to future inquiry—particularly regarding inequalities in creative work

From conception to consumption: creativity and the missing managerial link

Creative Labour provides an insight into the unique employment issues affecting workers in film, television, theatre, arts, music, radio and new media. In the UK alone, more than 1 million people work in the creative industries, generating billions of pounds in exports each year. These workers have to contend with elastic working hours, employment and promotion uncertainty and vigorous competition for each role. Creative Labour offers a contemporary perspective on a fascinating area of study and a rapidly growing area in developed economies. This chapter reviews the literature on creativity and the missing managerial link