De-westernizing creative labour studies: The informality of creative work from an ex-centric perspective

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Alacovska, Ana and Gill, Rosalind. 2019. De-westernizing creative labour studies: The informality of creative work from an ex-centric perspective. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(2), pp. 195-212. ISSN 1367-8779 [Article]

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Official URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/136787791...

Abstract or Description

Creative labour studies focus almost exclusively on Euro-American metropolitan 'creative hubs' and hence the creative worker they theorize is typically white, middle-class, urban and overwhelmingly male. This article outlines the contours of a de-Westernizing project in creative labour studies while introducing a special journal issue that examines the lived dynamics of creative work outside the West. The article advocates an 'ex-centric perspective' on creative work. An ex-centric perspective does not merely aim at multiplying non-West empirical case studies. Rather, it aims at destabilizing, decentring and provincializing the taken-for-grantedness of some entrenched notions in creative labour studies such as informality and precarity. An ex-centric perspective, we contend, offers a potential challenge to many of the claims about creative work that have taken on the status of general truths and universal principles in spite of them being generated from limited empirical evidence gleaned from research sites situated almost exclusively in the creative hubs of Euro-America.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877918821231

Additional Information:

Keywords:

creative cities, creative industries, creative labour, cultural work, de-westernizing, de-westernization, informality, media work, precariousness, precarity

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Institute for Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship (ICCE)

Dates: