Learning to (Love) Labour: Production Cultures and the Affective Turn

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Notes

1. See, for instance, C. Lee Harrington and D. Bielby, Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995); C. Harris and A. Alexander, Theorizing fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1998); Nancy Baym, Tune in, Log on: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000); E. Saxey, “Staking a Claim: The Series and its Slash Fan-fiction” in Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Unofficial Critical Companion to “Buffy” and “Angel,” ed. Roz Kaveny (New York: Tauris Park, 2001), 187–210. J. Gray, C. Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, eds, Fan Audiences: Cultural Consumption and Identities in a Mediated World (New York: New York University Press, 2007); M. Deuze, C. B. Martin, and C. Allen, “The Professional Identity of Gameworkers,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 13,4 (2007): 335–53.

2. A. Bruns, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). For more critical accounts of this trend see S. M. Peterson, “Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation,” First Monday 13 (2008); and K. Jarrett, “Interactivity is Evil! A Critical Investigation of Web 2.0” in M. Zimmer, ed, “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0,” First Monday 13 (2008), http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/263/showToc (accessed March 8, 2009).

3. T. Terranova, “Free Labour: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,” Social Text 18 (2000): 33–58.

4. M. Andrejevic, “Watching Television Without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans,” Television & New Media 9 (2008): 24–46.

5. See also M. Andrejevic, Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004); M. Andrejevic, I-Spy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2007).

6. Terranova, “Free Labour,” 38.

7. H. Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Cultures (London: Routledge, 1992); J. Tulloch and H. Jenkins, Science Fiction Audiences: Watching “Doctor Who” and “Star Trek” (New York: Routledge, 1995); C. Penley, NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America (New York: Verso, 1997); H. Jenkins, T. McPherson, and J. Shattuc, eds, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); M. Hills, Fan Cultures (London: Routledge, 2002).

8. M. Hills, Fan Cultures, xii.

9. M. Hardt, “Introduction: Laboratory Italy,” in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, ed. M. Hardt & P. Virno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 4; M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Cambridge: London, 2000).

10. M. Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labour” in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, ed. M. Hardt & P. Virno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 133; cf. M. Hardt, “Affective Labor,” Boundary 2 26,2 (1999): 89–100; P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

11. U. Huws, The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World, Monthly Review Press, 2003); L. Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction, trans. H. Creek, ed. J. Fleming (New York: Autonomedia, [1981] 1995).

12. L. Fortunati, “Immaterial Labour and its Machinization,” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 7 (2007): 139, 144.

13. See also J. K. Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).

14. A. R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkley: University of California Press, 1989).

15. E. Dowling, R. Nunes, and B. Trott, “Immaterial and Affective Labour: Explored,” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 7 (2007), http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/7-1/7-1index.htm (accessed March 8, 2009); J. Caldwell, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); D. Hesmondhalgh and S. Baker, “Creative Work and Emotional Labour in the Television Industry,” Theory, Culture & Society 25 (2008): 97–118; V. Mayer, “Guys Gone Wild? Soft-Core Video Professionalism and New Realities in Television Production,” Cinema Journal 47 (2008): 97–116.

16. For instance, A. McRobbie, “Clubs to Companies: Notes on the Decline of Political Culture in Speeded Up Creative Worlds,’ Cultural Studies 16 (2002): 516–31; A. Ross, No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs (New York: Basic Books, 2002); R. Gill, “Cool, Creative and Egalitarian? Exploring Gender in Project-Based New Media Work in Europe,” Information, Communication and Society 5 (2002): 70–89; R. Gill, Technobohemians or the New Cybertariat? New Media Work in Amsterdam a Decade After the Web (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007).

17. M. Banks, The Politics of Cultural Work (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007); L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans Gregory Elliot (London: Verso, 2005).

18. A. Ross, Low Pay, High Profile (New York: Basic Books, 2004).

19. M. Gregg, “Function Creep: Communication Technologies and Anticipatory Labour in the Information Workplace,” New Media & Society (forthcoming).

20. See M. Gregg, “Banal Bohemia: Blogging from the Ivory Tower Hotdesk,” Feature Report, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (forthcoming); M. Gregg, “Freedom to Work: The Impact of Wireless on Labour Politics” in Media International Australia, Special Issue on Wireless Technologies and Cultures (November, 2007).

21. L. Berlant, “After the Good Life, the Impasse: Human Resources, Time Out, and the Precarious Present,” Public Lecture, University of Melbourne, August, 2008; R. Gill and A. Pratt, “In the Social Factory?: Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work,” Theory, Culture & Society 25 (2008): 1–30.

22. M. Gregg, Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices (London: Palgrave, 2006).

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Melissa Gregg

Melissa Gregg is the author of Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices (Palgrave, 2006) and co-editor of The Affect Theory Reader (with Gregory J. Seigworth, forthcoming Duke UP). Melissa currently works in the Department of Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, where she is finishing “Working From Home”—a three-year empirical study of new media technology and white collar work