Folk performances reflect the life-worlds of a vast section of subaltern communities in India. What is the philosophy that drives these performances, the vision that enables as well as enslaves these communities to present what they feel, think, imagine, and want to see? Can such performances challenge social hierarchies and ensure justice in a caste-ridden society? In Cultural Labour, the author studies bhuiyan puja (land worship), bidesia (theatre of migrant labourers), Reshma-Chuharmal (Dalit ballads), dugola (singing duels) from Bihar, and the songs and performances of Gaddar, who was associated with Jana Natya Mandali, Telangana: he examines various ways in which meanings and behaviour are engendered in communities through rituals, theatre, and enactments. Focusing on various motifs of landscape, materiality, and performance, the author looks at the relationship between culture and labour in its immediate contexts. Based on an extensive ethnography and the author’s own life experience as a member of such a community, the book offers a new conceptual framework to understand the politics and aesthetics of folk performance in the light of contemporary theories of theatre and performance studies.

This book is an ethnographic field study of five Indian subaltern performance genres that propose a new way of understanding the dynamic relationship between culture and labour in the Indian social context, especially in relation to caste. The five performance traditions examined are bhuiyan puja (land worship), bidesia (theatre of migrant labourers), reshma chuharmal (Dalit ballads), dugola (singer duels) and the performances ofGaddar and Jana Natya Mandali covering both north and south India, with a focus on the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh.

An ethnographic field study of five Indian subaltern performance genres that propose a new way of understanding the dynamic relationship between culture and labour in the Indian social context, especially in relation to caste. The five performance traditions examined are bhuiyan puja (land worship), bidesia (theatre of migrant labourers), reshma chuharmal (Dalit ballads), dugola (singer duels) and the performances of Gaddar and Jana Natya Mandali covering both north and south India, with a focus on the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh.

What is expertise? In the arts, or cultural work, the experts in this area are commonly regarded to be art critics, dealers or intermediaries. Why are they considered experts? What about the expertise of the artists or cultural workers themselves? The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour provides a much-needed account of the concept of expertise in cultural work, providing new insights into the individual experiences of cultural workers and the role of social media in their creative practice and development of expertise. It also explores the potential reasons for inequalities in the sector which centre not only on protected characteristics such as class, gender and race, but increasingly the digital divide. Drawing on interviews with cultural workers and an innovative social media analysis, this book highlights the characteristics of aesthetic expertise in production – the practical skills cultural workers hone and deploy over years of training and creative practice. This is a new take on aesthetic expertise, which is traditionally associated with those involved in the judgement of culture, such as critics, dealers and intermediaries. The book highlights how social media platforms both enable and constrain the development of practical aesthetic expertise, and the platforms’ role in the mediation of the cultural object online. Finally, Patel interrogates the power dimensions of expertise, focusing primarily on gender. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it explores how opportunities to develop aesthetic expertise, and the ability to use social media platforms to signal that expertise, are not available to everyone. In this sense, The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour adds new perspectives to the growing body of work on inequalities in the creative and cultural industries, as well as scholarship on social media and creative work. The book concludes with the argument that the term ‘expertise’ needs to be problematised and reclaimed by those who are not equally represented in the cultural industries, using gender as a case in point.

What is it like to work in the media? Are media jobs more âe~creativeâe(tm) than those in other sectors? To answer these questions, this book explores the creative industries, using a combination of original research and a synthesis of existing studies. Through its close analysis of key issues âe" such as tensions between commerce and creativity, the conditions and experiences of workers, alienation, autonomy, self-realization, emotional and affective labour, self-exploitation, and how possible it might be to produce âe~good workâe(tm) Creative Labour makes a major contribution to our understanding of the media, of work, and of social and cultural change. In addition, the book undertakes an extensive exploration of the creative industries, spanning numerous sectors including television, music and journalism. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible account of life in the creative industries in the twenty-first century. It is a major piece of research and a valuable study aid for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of subjects including business and management studies, sociology of work, sociology of culture, and media and communications.

In recent years, cultural work has engaged the interest of scholars from a broad range of social science and humanities disciplines. The debate in this ‘turn to cultural work’ has largely been based around evaluating its advantages and disadvantages: its freedoms and its constraints, its informal but precarious nature, the inequalities within its global workforce, and the blurring of work–life boundaries leading to ‘self-exploitation’. While academic critics have persuasively challenged more optimistic accounts of ‘converged’ worlds of creative production, the critical debate on cultural work has itself leant heavily towards suggesting a profoundly new confluence of forces and effects. Theorizing Cultural Work instead views cultural work through a specifically historicized and temporal lens, to ask: what novelty can we actually attach to current conditions, and precisely what relation does cultural work have to social precedent? The contributors to this volume also explore current transformations and future(s) of work within the cultural and creative industries as they move into an uncertain future. This book challenges more affirmative and proselytising industry and academic perspectives, and the pervasive cult of novelty that surrounds them, to locate cultural work as an historically and geographically situated process. It will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, cultural studies, human geography, urban studies and industrial relations, as well as management and business studies, cultural and economic policy and development, government and planning.

Claims the rebellion of poor and working class children against school authority prepares them for working class jobs.