Arts, sports, and entertainment make up a critical and growing segment of the economy, employing millions of workers across the globe. Employment growth in these fields reflects what some scholars view as a shift from a service economy to an emergent experience economy, characterised not only by live concerts and mass sporting events, but immersive escape rooms, themed dining, and "shoppertainment."
Creative labour is expected of an ever-widening swathe of workers, sometimes blurring the line between work and play and expanding the terrain of struggle over creative control. In this volume, we turn attention to the work experiences, labour processes, and employment relations of those working in the arts, sports and entertainment sectors of the economy.
This volume of Research in the Sociology of Work invites papers that explore any topic related to work in the fields of arts, entertainment, or sport. We welcome both empirical and conceptual papers. Articles may address a wide range of topics, including but not limited to the following:
- Work in the cultural industries (including film and TV, music, theatre, dance, gaming, animation, writing, live performance, and sports)
- The experience economy
- The arts and entertainment workforce: frontstage and backstage
- Athletic labour and labour relations
- Artistic labour and labour relations
- AI and the future of artistic labour
- Organisational contexts of creative labour
- The impact of changing technology on work in the arts, sports, and entertainment
- Careers in the arts, entertainment and sports
- The nature of work-life balance and experiences beyond work in these sectors
- The physical nature of work in these sectors and its implications for workers
- Worker organising in the fields of the arts, entertainment, and sports
- Labour market intermediation in the fields of the arts, entertainment, and sports
- Fans, spectators, audiences, and the consumption of athletic and artistic labour
- Labour classification struggles in arts, entertainment, and sports
- Racial, ethnic, and gendered disparities in pay, promotion, and protections
- Struggles for creative control
- Struggles over occupational legitimacy
- Comparative state policies regarding work in the arts, sports, and entertainment
- Alternative organisational models for the arts: public and "underground".
How to submit
Submissions may be made at any time up until 10th January 2025.
Please submit your manuscript to [email protected] and include "Work, Rest, and Play" in the subject line.