<nettime-ann> Moral Economies of Creative Labour - A two day conference (Leeds/UK)

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

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Moral Economies of Creative Labour - A two day conference

Organisers: MIRC/Institute of Communications Studies, Leeds &  
Sociology/CRESC, The Open University
Date: Thursday 7th-Friday 8th July 2011

Venue: Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds

Call for Papers
In analyses of the cultural, media and creative industries,  
considerable attention has been paid to the negative, unethical or  
amoral aspects of the labour process  – the exploitation of  
‘precarious’ workers, the self-exploitation that results from  
internalizing mechanisms of control, and the damaging aspects of  
inequality and individuation at work. While it remains vital to  
theorise these aspects, a number of scholars have sought to offer  
contrasting accounts that point to the diverse array of moral and  
ethical practices evident in cultural/creative labour, with workers  
appearing to routinely invest their work with social and non- 
instrumental values, ethics and politics – however ‘commercialised’,  
‘networked’ and ‘immaterial’ their workplaces may appear to be. Such  
scholars draw their energies from accounts of the cultural or moral  
aspects of economic life (Sayer), the limits of market thinking in the  
cultural sphere (O’Neill, Keat), autonomist and post-Marxist  
approaches (Lazzarato, Hardt and Negri) and varied attempts to move  
beyond the ethical impasse of post-structuralist critique. Yet whether  
it is possible to identify any substantively ‘moral’, ‘ethical’ or  
critical features of this sector remains contentious. This conference  
therefore asks: what are the moral or ethical dimensions of creative  
work? What are the political outcomes of efforts to infuse creative  
labour with ethical intent or content? How might an ethical politics  
of creative labour be theorized and organized?  Or, given the  
propensity of capital to absorb or exploit normative critique, should  
the prospect of ‘ethical’ cultural work be regarded as illusory and  
damaging?

Keynote speakers:

	• Susan Christopherson (author of Remaking Regional Economies (with  
Jennifer Clark) and numerous publications on creative economies);
	• Russell Keat (author of the classic text Cultural Goods and the  
Limits of the Market);
	• Andrew Sayer (author of, amongst other books, the forthcoming Why  
Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life and  
co-editor of Culture and Economy after the Cultural Turn).

Other speakers include: Mark Banks, David Hesmondhalgh, Helen Kennedy,  
David Lee and Jason Toynbee.
Papers are invited on the following (or similar) topics: creativity,  
cultural work and ethics; media work and ethics; ethics and  
aesthetics; creative/cultural policy, politics and organizing; ethics  
and exploitation; ‘good’ and ‘bad’ work; ethics of caring; emotions  
and affective creative labour; practices and virtues; the  
commodification of ethics; the limits of workplace ethics.


	• Please email abstracts (150 words max for a 20 minute paper) to Liz  
Pollard at  ics-conferences@leeds.ac.uk by Thursday 31st March.
	• Places are limited and successful acceptance will be confirmed in  
mid-April.
	• To register for the conference please also contact Liz Pollard.
	• Conference fee: £75 (waged) £30 (Postgraduates/unwaged), includes  
some meals and refreshments.
	• See http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/ and www.cresc.ac.uk for programme  
updates and further details.


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