Special Issue for Organization
Guest Editors:
- Deborah Jones, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
- Kate Sang, Heriot-Watt University, UK
- Naomi Stead, The University of Queensland, Australia, Australia
- Rebecca Finkel, Queen Margaret University, UK
- Dimi Stoyanova Russell, Cardiff University, UK
The special issue invites empirical, theoretical or methodological papers critically exploring creative work and, in particular, the ways in which it is diversified. For instance, the gendered construction of creativity can be seen in analyses of women’s employment within creative industries and in the ways in which creativity is imagined or represented in a range of occupations and practices. Intersectional perspectives regarding how gender intersects with class, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation for those working in the sector also can be explored. Although the special issue is open to any discussion of diversity in creativity or creative work, explorations of specific work settings or contexts, for example, architecture, film and television, comedy, literature, music and design, will be prioritised. An inter-disciplinary approach is welcome, acknowledging that the literatures of work in the creative industries, like the sector itself, have developed in and across a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, sociology, geography, management and organisational studies. Contributions also could include explorations of innovative methodologies for studying and understanding the creative industries, creative identities and creative labour, such as those employing visual and ethnographic methods. Research may open up new discourses for imagining, re-negotiating and managing diversity in creative work, opening up in turn new opportunities for marginalised groups to lead, collaborate and develop skills in creative spaces of greater equality.
Scope
- Embodying the creative: How is creativity embodied as gendered, racialised, aged and able? How do organisations do support or discourage these embodiments, implicitly or explicitly?
- Imagining and organising diversity in creative work: What would decent work in the creative sector look like for women and other marginalised groups? How do minorities organise in guilds, professional groups, unions or lobby groups to raise issues of equality in this sector? How do they organise creative projects with across or within boundaries of difference?
- Experiences of women and other marginalised groups in the creative industries: Autobiographical and third-party accounts of experiences in various creative fields can ask questions such as follows: How is equality approached and negotiated? What challenges have been faced and what kinds of approaches taken to varying outcomes and successes?
- Intersectional analyses of working life in the creative industries: The complex intersections between different identity categories sometimes create unexpected effects, both negative and positive. How does the compounding or intersection of diversity categories in single cases add to a study of working life in the creative industries?
- Claiming the creative: How are ‘creative’ identities allocated and recognised? How is the ‘super-creative core’ constituted in relation to the ‘below the line’ people, that is, the ‘crew’, support workers and administrators? What systems are there of awards, grants, training and networks, and how are they diversified? Who are the gatekeepers to these resources and who receives them? Who in a profession or occupation actually gets to be creative at all, and why?
- Personal branding and the benefits of difference: In the creative industries, standing out as distinct from peers can sometimes be advantageous in the construction of a creative persona, even when this difference stems from being part of a marginalised group. How can it sometimes be beneficial to be in a minority? How does difference link with constructions of originality and uniqueness in such cases?
- Authorship, attribution and credit in collaborative work: Creative work is very often collaborative, yet the credit is often attributed to one individual. This is not just a case of unscrupulous individuals stealing credit, but publications and awards and organisations insisting on a single creative figurehead. What implications and effects does this practice have in terms of equality?
- Exceptionalist discourses: How do some creative professions frame themselves as unlike any other profession and entirely incomparable? What are the unequal consequences of this framing?
- Anti-management: There are tendencies in creative professions actively to resist perceived managerialism, including any kind of official equity initiatives. How is this resistance exploited by employers to increase their own profit at the expense of their workers or to prevent equity interventions?
- The creative profession as cult: Colleagues may become the creative’s only friends, romantic and business partners and family. How does this exclusive culture engender inequalities?
- Creativity and vocation: There is often a sense of ‘calling’ to the creative professions. What are the effects of such quasi-metaphysical ideas? For example, are people willing to put up with exploitation and precariousness because they are dedicated to a larger ideal, one which frames economic and business imperatives as dishonourable and low-minded?
- Methodologies for studying gendered creativity: Explorations of innovative methods for studying and understanding the creative industries and creative labour. What methods are most appropriate or interesting (e.g. visual, ethnographic) for understanding diversity and creative labour?
Submissions
Papers for the special issue must be submitted electronically between 31 October and 1 December 2015 (please note dates) to SAGETrack at this website1
Papers should be no more than 8000 words, excluding references, and will be blind reviewed following the journal’s standard procedures. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines published in Organization and on the journal’s website2
Workshop: The special issue editors are planning a writing workshop for authors interested in submitting papers to the special issue to be held at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh (Scotland) in the first week of September 2015. Please contact the editors below for details.
Early abstract submission: The editors are anxious to ensure speedy review of the submitted works. In support of this, they have requested that authors please send them the abstracts of their proposed papers by 31 October 2015. This will ensure that potential reviewers for these papers are identified prior to paper submission.
Special Issue Editor contact details: For further information, please contact one of the guest editors:
- Deborah Jones: Deborah.Jones[at]vuw.ac.nz
- Kate Sang: K.Sang[at]hw.ac.uk
- Naomi Stead: n.stead[at]uq.edu.au
- Rebecca Finkel: RFinkel[at]qmu.ac.uk
- Dimi Stoyanova Russell: StoyanovaRussellD[at]cardiff.ac.uk