Kia ora 
Many apologies for cross-posting. Please see below a call for papers for a stream on emotion and aesthetics at the 2010 Gender, Work and Organization conference.  
Due 1 November 2009.
Please note that full papers are not required.
Thanks
Deborah 

Gender, Work and Organization
6th international interdisciplinary conference
21st - 23rd June, 2010

Call for abstracts

Unmanageable Inequalities: Gender and Power in the 'Creative Industries'

Stream Convenors
Deborah Jones, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Judith Pringle, University of Technology, New Zealand
Sarah Proctor-Thomson, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

The 'creative industries' have emerged as a new object of study in the organisational literature since the late 1990s. Work in these industries is characterised by informal and episodic project-based organisation, and individualised and precarious 'careers'. If it is true - as many claim - that work in the creative industries prefigures a wider future of work, new or persistent  gender inequality in this sector have implications for future broader patterns of inequality. While is there is now an emerging critical literature on creative work, gender is largely neglected. We argue that the example of the creative industries presents particular challenges to the field of gender, work and organization. Scholars of gender and work typically discuss interventions against inequality in terms of programmatic changes - Equal Employment Opportunities programmes, 'managing' diversity policies and anti-discrimination law. But these bureaucracy-based interventions don't seem to apply in the new terrain of the creative sector. Here inequalities seem unmanageable. In this stream we invite papers which explore and interrogate patterns of power and inequality in the creative industries.

The evidence that we have so far is that gendered patterns of work persist and are re-worked in the 'new' creative industries, interpolated with age, class, ethnicity. New conceptions of 'skill' and 'attitude' traverse entrepreneurial as well as creative capabilities, whether embodied in individual creative/ entrepreneurs, or played out between occupations within creative sector organizations. At the same time there is a popular impression that any 'creative' person can have access to the new creative economy: the seeming informality and social inclusion of the creative industries implies openness and accessibility. Set against this background, even in the absence of overt 'management' hierarchies, the creative industries manage to reproduce and proliferate power inequalities through relationship-based processes. 

Papers are invited which explore and interrogate patterns of power and inequality in the creative industries. We encourage writers to specify their own local context in which various versions of gender, power and 'creative industries' play out. We also encourage an interdisciplinary approach, 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 and geography, as well as organisational studies. The following list is indicative, although not exhaustive, of likely topics in the stream:

Mapping inequalities: What kinds of inequality regimes can be discerned in or across various types of creative work? What kinds of information or knowledges do we call on to understand inequality in the creative industries? 

Gendering creative work: How are various types of creative occupations implicitly or explicitly gendered? What kinds of occupational masculinities and femininities are dominant? How are cultures gendered in the creative workplace? How does the gendering of entrepreneurship make a difference in women's careers in creative industries? What are the effects of the salience of 'new technologies'? How does the gendering of access to technology affect women in creative industries? 

Gendered 'careers' in creative industries: Do the new career models (e.g. 'portfolio' or 'protean'') characteristic of employment in the creative industries work for women? Do they entrench the precariousness that contributes to women's inequality across the work force? What processes are open to women to construct a career in the creative industries?

Critical perspectives on careers: What theoretical frameworks can be brought to bear in re-thinking the construct of 'career' in creative industries? Feminist epistemologies, postcolonial theories, critiques of neo-liberalism and other critical frameworks may provide tools for developing the critique of 'career' constructs. 

Intersectional inequalities in the creative industries: What are the new or traditional relationships between gender and other inequalities in the creative industries? For instance, in film and new media there is a strong emphasis on youth; and there may be distinctive gender patterns in ethnically-based creative forms. 

Creativity and entrepreneurship in the creative industries:  How is the mix of creative and entrepreneurial skills gendered, whether embodied in individual creative/ entrepreneurs, or played out between occupations within creative sector organizations? How can the literature of gender and entrepreneurship contribute to this analysis? How can feminist critiques of 'creativity' in the arts contribute to this analysis? 

'Managing' to transform inequalities: Can inequalities be regulated, managed, controlled in creative industries? Can work in the creative industries be managed so as to make it a pathway to increased social justice? Can the promotion and management of sectoral networks or 'clusters' by industry groups or government work to transform inequalities? How are inequalities 'managed' in institutional employers of 'creatives', such as large broadcasting organisations? How are women in creative industries sectors organising to support each other? 

Abstracts of approximately 500 words (ONE page, Word document, single spaced, excluding references) are invited by 1st November 2009 with decisions on acceptance to be made by stream leaders within one month. All abstracts will be peer reviewed. New and young scholars with 'work in progress' papers are welcomed. In the case of co-authored papers, ONE person should be identified as the corresponding author. Note that due to restrictions of space, multiple submissions by the same author will not be timetabled. Abstracts should be emailed to  [log in to unmask]  
Abstracts should include FULL contact details, including your name, institutional affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address. State the title of the stream to which you are submitting your abstract.



Dr Deborah Jones 
Victoria Management School 
Victoria University of Wellington 
P.O. Box 600, Wellington 
NEW ZEALAND 
Te Whare Wananga o te Upoko o te Ika a Maui 
Pouaka Poutapeta 600 
Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara 
AOTEAROA