application/pdf
2036-461X
16575
29
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor ed. by Michael Curtin, Kevin Sanson University of California Press, Oakland 2016, pp. X + 324
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https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Reviews / Comptes rendus
2017-10-01
2021-10-06
2017-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Mette Hjort
2017/10/01
University of Copenhagen
2036-461X
29
en
Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor ed. by Michael Curtin, Kevin Sanson University of California Press, Oakland 2016, pp. X + 324
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16575/17300
17
Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor
ed. by Michael Curtin, Kevin Sanson
University of California Press, Oakland 2016, pp. X + 324




   Precarious Creativity encompasses twenty chapters, each with a sharp focus
on the increasingly difficult, unsustainable, and exploitative circumstances
of creative work in the media industries. Without exception, the contributors
offer razor-sharp accounts of the specific conditions in selected locations and
contexts, the overall result being far more probing and coherent, however,
than a series of loosely interconnected case studies offering diverse reflections
on a shared theme. The sense of common purpose and reciprocal awareness
that characterize the volume’s many contributions undoubtedly have much
to do with its origins in a successful conference, and with it being one of the
outcomes of a multiyear University of California (Santa Barbara) project on the
globalization of labor. This collaborative project’s strong integration is also the
fruit of common orientation across the individual projects, as each explores
a given production site or jurisdiction with a fine awareness, not only of the
dynamics and practices of globalized media industries, but of the urgent need
to probe debate concerning the changing realities of creative labor. A striking
feature of the volume is the high number of contributions by scholars who have
initiated and defined the still emerging debate, through socially committed
research efforts fueled, in part, by aspirations to realize positive change. The
table of contents identifies an introduction by Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson,
chapters by Toby Miller, John Caldwell, Shanti Kumar, Vicki Mayer, Violaine
Roussel, Petr Szczepanik, Matt Sienkiewicz, Tejaswini Ganti, Juan Pinon, Jade
Miller, Kristen J. Warner, Anthony Fung, Michael Keane, Marwan M. Kraidy,
Herman Gray, and Allison Perlman, as well as co-authored pieces by Heather
Berg and Constance Penley, John Banks and Stuart Cunningham, and Miranda
Banks and David Hesmondhalgh.
   In their lucid introduction, the editors set the stage for the collaborative project
creating a stark contrast between the glamour that surrounds Hollywood and
the realities of its working conditions, identifying a trend towards deteriorating
conditions for creative labor since around the early 1990s. The scope of the
volume’s investigations extends well beyond the West coast of the United States,
however, since Hollywood is but one among many domestic and international sites
of significant industrial activity. Precarious Creativity is thus judiciously designed

                                                  Cinéma & Cie, vol. XVII, no. 29, Fall 2017
                               Reviews/Comptes-rendus


to ‘offer insight into the changing nature of film, television, and digital media
work in diverse locations: Hyderabad, Lagos, Prague, New Orleans, Miami, the
Middle East, and of course, Hollywood’ (p. 10). A central assumption is that
the specificity of the ‘screen media’s industrial mode of production’ has been
largely overlooked, and that this situation is best remedied by looking carefully
at the ‘particular qualities of its highly specialized and detailed division of labor’
(p. 9). Media corporations’ strategic pursuit of transnationalism, as a means
of accessing cheaper labor pools and less regulated production environments,
is foregrounded as the single most important factor in the intensification of
workers’ precarity, a condition characterized, among other things, by a lack of
job security and benefits, poor pay, and long working hours. In many cases the
relevant strategy — appealing to those who wield globally-oriented corporate
power, but often damaging to locally embedded labor — is rendered viable or
all the more effective by power dynamics at the national or sub-national levels.
For example, tax breaks are a common means of courting inward investment
consistent with a given government’s or region’s priorities and public image.
   Precarious Creativity is wide-ranging in its attempt to capture a global
trend towards precarity and the specific mechanisms of its intensifying
institutionalization on a global basis. At the core of the project are issues of
justice and workers’ rights, and questions of how change is to be effected in
contexts where unions are non-existent, being weakened and undermined, or
simply circumvented through the transnational mobility of capital and creative
projects. The editors rightly identify the volume’s overarching conclusion as
follows: ‘As our contributors make clear, the central tension is not one between
local laborers in different regions — a perspective that feeds too easily into the
hands of producers — but is rather a struggle against the diverse yet increasingly
interconnected modalities of exploitation in screen media production around
the world’ (p. 16). Given this emphasis on struggle, a central aim throughout is to
identify promising means of advocacy and negotiation, the resources that might
make it possible not only to counteract the effects of precarity, but to institute
practices that are consistent with the most basic principles of sustainability and
fairness. While Precarious Creativity for the most part confronts the reader with
the stark realities of exploitation in the screen industries, the picture it paints is
by no means one-dimensional. The aim, clearly, is also to draw attention to the
‘opportunities’ that the ‘increasingly global nature of media production’ make
possible (p. 10).
   Calls for community engagement and knowledge transfer pervade the spheres
of academic research these days. Precarious Creativity is a shining example of
research with precisely the sort of wider relevance that various versions of the
“impact agenda” envisage. Given the significance of the issues that it takes
up and the quality of its discussions, this volume deserves to be read carefully
not only by scholars and students (at all levels), but by leaders of industry, by
government bodies with regulatory and policy-making remits, and, not least, by
those considering creative careers. Published through Luminos, the open-access

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    Michael Curtin, Kevin Sanson (eds), Precarious Creativity. Global Media, Local Labor


publishing program of the University of California Press, Precarious Creativity is
fortunately readily available, and at no cost.
   It is impossible in a short review to capture the richness of the individual
chapters, each of which meets the highest standards of academic rigor,
relevance, and incisiveness. The editors and their team deserve the warmest of
congratulations on what is truly a timely, and thus hopeful, achievement.

                                            [Mette Hjort, University of Copenhagen]




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