Abstract
This chapter considers “passion” as an enthusiastic orientation to work within creative worlds: work motivated by intense attachments to the products of work and their conditions of production. Drawing on Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology of critique and justification, the chapter argues that the passionate lens most usefully trains our sights on normative questions: not what or how—but why such work is undertaken. Embedded in research on cultural and creative industries, the contemporary recorded music sector is presented as a “passionate” industry in transformation. Interviews with workers, who both criticize and defend their industry, act as a springboard to explore three possible interpretive approaches: affirmative, critical, and pragmatic. Theoretical flexibility is needed to keep “passion” open to future inquiry—particularly regarding inequalities in creative work.
Browsing through each bullet point on the “preferred candidate will demonstrate…” list, I reflect on my experience. A qualification; some event promotion; office work: I consider how to pare these down into basic elements that display a technical, social and personal prowess in the field of music administration. What are the requisite “transferable skills”? Word processing and spreadsheet management. “Meeting deadlines”. “Professionalism”. “Interpersonal skills and relationship development”. “Creative thinking”, “initiative”, “passion for music”…? I wonder, uncomfortably, what is meant by this. Music is my passion, of course—but this music? I’ve never even heard of most of their artists. Do I have the right passion?
Author’s reflection: applying for a job at a major record label, November 2007
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
“The music industry” is a normative designation that does not necessarily reflect the unevenly distributed plurality of economic forms it covers: this chapter’s examples stem from the commercial recorded music industry, which Williamson and Cloonan (2007) note is often misleadingly taken to stand in for the broader “music industries”. Nonetheless, the singular designation conveys workers’ own sense of participating in a shared imagined community (see note three).
- 2.
Cultural labour market inequalities remain (Oakley & O’Brien, 2016) and a number of surveys point to statistical imbalances across gender and ethnicity in music, particularly amongst older workers and more senior roles (e.g. CC Skills, 2011). “Passion”, with its associated lexicon of fiery intensity, commitment, resilience, and even aggression, is hardly innocent in reproducing such inequalities discursively, particularly in relation to gender.
- 3.
With the term “musical capitalism”, Born (2013) signals the deep imbrication of culture with the social-institutional spheres in which it is produced and reproduced—equally present for other (non-capitalist) forms of economic organization, such as public subsidy, patronage, or small-scale market exchange. Resonating with this chapter’s argument, she seeks to avoid deterministic portrayals of musical practice : as wholly swallowed up and exploited by capitalism as a monolithic force; or, alternatively, one in which music’s generative creativity somehow necessarily resists, escapes, or prefigures such a force. Instead, she argues for the need to empirically trace specific material mediations of (a passion for) music in close-knit social practices, and larger imagined communities, identity formations, and institutions (c.f. Born, 2011, p. 378).
- 4.
Interviewees’ names are changed and roles approximated to preserve anonymity. The study involved 23 interviews between 2013 and 2015 with individuals, predominantly in non-creative roles, working in or around the three “majors”: Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music. This was informed by an (auto-)ethnographic inquiry into my own career “in the field”: 2007–2012 (pre-research), as a full-time employee at a London major record label; and 2013, as a “temp” worker in participant-observer mode. A large textual corpus of popular and managerial books, online trade commentary, and policy grey literature were also surveyed during this period—relevant here insofar as they perform an intermediary role between theory and practice, as well as informing the account in the next section.
- 5.
The three conceptual frames owe something to Corner (2016).
- 6.
Inevitably, the extracts suggest rather purer positions than is evidently the case. My analyses try to represent interviewees faithfully: I assume they mean what they say and situate their words in different professional histories; but, as complex and contradictory subjects, clearly they do not merely parrot the philosophical positions I ascribe to them.
- 7.
Although see Himanen’s (2001) notion of a “hacker ethic” for an argument, also grounded in Maslow’s hierarchy, that software programming is equally passionate.
- 8.
- 9.
If the coupling of “users” and “addicts” of music and drugs seems a rather glib analogy, note that the connection is often made explicit in popular music discourse (e.g. Napier-Bell, 2002)—deployed to highlight a culture of excess, abandon, transgression, and so on—and typically to load an argument with moral weight: that is, either to endorse or condemn (the) popular music (industry). Pragmatically, such associations suggest many paths to follow; regrettably, there is no space to explore them here.
- 10.
Although see McRobbie (2016, pp. 107–110) on “girlish enthusiasm” and note two.
References
Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2014). The cultural politics of emotion (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Akerlof, G., & Shiller, R. (2009). Animal spirits: How human psychology drives the economy, and why it matters for global capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Alvesson, M., & Wilmott, H. (2002). Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39, 619–644.
Amabile, T. M., & Fisher, C. M. (2009). Stimulate creativity by fueling passion. In E. A. Locke (Ed.), Handbook of principles for organizational behavior: Indispensable knowledge for evidence-based management (2nd ed., pp. 481–490). Chichester: Wiley.
Arvidsson, A., Malossi, G., & Naro, S. (2010). Passionate work? Labour conditions in the Milan fashion industry. Journal for Cultural Research, 14, 295–309.
Banks, M. (2014). “Being in the zone” of cultural work. Culture Unbound: Journal of Cultural Research, 6, 241–262.
Banks, M. (2017). Creative justice: Cultural industries, work and inequality. London: Rowman and Littlefield.
Banks, M., & Hesmondhalgh, D. (2009). Looking for work in creative industries policy. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15, 415–430.
Barfe, L. (2006). Where have all the good times gone? The rise and fall of the record industry. London: Atlantic.
Bennett, T. (2015). Learning the music business: Evaluating the “vocational turn” in music industry education. London: UK Music.
Biressi, A., & Nunn, H. (2005). Reality TV: Realism and revelation. London: Wallflower Press.
Boltanski, L. (2011). On critique: A sociology of emancipation. Cambridge: Polity.
Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, È. (2005). The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (1999). The sociology of critical capacity. European Journal of Social Theory, 2, 359–377.
Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (2006). On justification: Economies of worth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Born, G. (2010). The social and the aesthetic: For a post-Bourdieuian theory of cultural production. Cultural Sociology, 4, 171–208.
Born, G. (2011). Music and the materialization of identities. Journal of Material Culture, 16, 376–388.
Born, G. (Ed.). (2013). Music, sound and space: Transformations of public and private experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brouillette, S. (2013). Cultural work and antisocial psychology. In M. Banks, R. Gill, & S. Taylor (Eds.), Theorizing cultural work: Labour, continuity and change in the creative industries (pp. 30–43). London: Routledge.
Callaghan, G., & Thompson, P. (2002). “We recruit attitude”: The selection and shaping of routine call centre labour. Journal of Management Studies, 39, 233–254.
Cannizzo, F. (2018). “You’ve got to love what you do”: Academic labour in a culture of authenticity. The Sociological Review, 66, 91–106.
Caves, R. (2000). Creative industries: Contracts between art and commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
CC Skills. (2011). The music blueprint. London: Creative and Cultural Skills.
Colbourne, R. (2011). Practice, power and learning in UK recorded music companies. Unpublished doctoral thesis. University of Cambridge.
Cooren, F. (2010). Action and agency in dialogue: Passion, incarnation and ventriloquism. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
Corner, J. (2016). Passion and reason: Notes on a contested relationship. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 19, 209–217.
Costas, J., & Kärreman, D. (2013). Conscience as control—Managing employees through CSR. Organization, 20, 394–415.
Couldry, N. (2008). Reality TV, or the secret theater of neoliberalism. The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 30, 3–13.
Couldry, N., & Littler, J. (2011). Work, power and performance: Analysing the “reality” game of The Apprentice. Cultural Sociology, 5, 263–279.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. London: Harper Collins.
Davies, W. (2015). The happiness industry: How government and big business sold us well-being. London: Verso.
de Boise, S. (2015). Men, masculinity, music and emotions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Donzelot, J. (1991). Pleasure in work. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (pp. 251–280). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Duffy, B. E. (2017). (Not) getting paid to do what you love: Gender, social media and aspirational work. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Edwards, L., Klein, B., Lee, D., Moss, G., & Philip, F. (2015). Discourse, justification and critique: Towards a legitimate digital copyright regime? International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21, 60–77.
Fleming, P., & Sturdy, A. (2009). “Just be yourself!”: Towards neo-normative control in organisations? Employee Relations, 31, 569–583.
Frey, B., & Osterloh, M. (2002). Successful management by motivation: Balancing intrinsic and extrinsic incentives. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Frith, S. (1996). Performing rites: On the value of popular music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Gandini, A. (2016). The reputation economy: Understanding knowledge work in digital society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48, 781–795.
Gill, R., & Pratt, A. C. (2008). In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work. Theory, Culture and Society, 25, 1–30.
Gomart, É., & Hennion, A. (1999). A sociology of attachment: Music amateurs and drug users. In J. Law & J. Hazard (Eds.), Actor network theory and after (pp. 220–247). Oxford: Blackwells/The Sociological Review.
Gregg, M. (2011). Work’s intimacy. Cambridge: Polity.
Habermas, J. (1975). Legitimation crisis. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hall, C. (2007). Recognizing the passion in deliberation: Toward a more democratic theory of deliberative democracy. Hypatia, 22, 81–95.
Hardt, M. (1999). Affective labor. Boundary, 2(26), 89–100.
Hennion, A. (2007). Those things that hold us together: Taste and sociology. Cultural Sociology, 1, 97–114.
Hennion, A. (2015). The passion for music: A sociology of mediation. London: Routledge.
Hermes, J. (2015). Labour and passion: Introduction to themed section. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18, 111–116.
Hesmondhalgh, D. (2013). Why music matters. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hey, V., & Leathwood, C. (2009). Passionate attachments: Higher education, policy, knowledge, emotion and social justice. Higher Education Policy, 22, 101–118.
Hill, A., & Hermes, J. (2016). Passion: Introduction to special issue. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 19, 207–208.
Himanen, P. (2001). The hacker ethic and the spirit of the information age. New York: Random House.
Hirschman, A. O. (1997). The passions and the interests: Political arguments for capitalism before its triumph. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hochschild, A. R. (2003). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hollway, W. (1991). Work psychology and organizational behavior. London: Sage.
Hong, R. (2015). Finding passion in work: Media, passion and career guides. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18, 190–206.
Huq, R. (2006). Beyond subculture: Pop, youth and identity in a postcolonial world. Oxford: Routledge.
Illouz, E. (2007). Cold intimacies: The making of emotional capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Illouz, E. (2008). Saving the modern soul: Therapy, emotions, and the culture of self-help. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kenny, K. (2010). Beyond ourselves: Passion and the dark side of identification in an ethical organization. Human Relations, 63, 857–873.
Latour, B., & Épinay, V. A. (2009). The science of passionate interests: An introduction to Gabriel Tarde’s economic anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Leidner, R. (2006). Identity and work. In M. Korczynski, R. Hodson, & P. Edwards (Eds.), Social theory at work (pp. 424–463). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leyshon, A. (2014). Reformatted: Code, networks, and the transformation of the music industry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leyshon, A., Thrift, N., Crewe, L., French, S., & Webb, P. (2016). Leveraging affect: Mobilizing enthusiasm and the co-production of the musical economy. In B. Hracs, B. Seman, & T. Virani (Eds.), The production and consumption of music in the digital age (pp. 248–262). London: Routledge.
Lindvall, H. (2011, November 17). Behind the music: Universal’s EMI buyout will be painful—I should know. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/nov/17/music-universal-emi-buyout
Littler, J. (2013). Meritocracy as plutocracy: The marketising of “equality” under neoliberalism. New Formations, 80–81, 52–72.
Long, P., & Barber, S. (2015). Voicing passion: The emotional economy of songwriting. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18, 142–257.
Luhmann, N. (1986). Love as passion: The codification of intimacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Marshall, L. (2013). The structural functions of stardom in the recording industry. Popular Music and Society, 36(5), 578–596.
Maslow, A. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper.
McRobbie, A. (2016). Be creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. Cambridge: Polity.
Milonakis, D., & Fine, B. (2009). From political economy to economics: Method, the social and the historical in the evolution of economic theory. Oxford: Routledge.
Napier-Bell, S. (2002). Black vinyl, white powder. London: Ebury Press.
Negus, K. (1995). Where the mystical meets the market: Creativity and commerce in the production of popular music. Sociological Review, 47, 316–341.
Negus, K. (1999). Music genres and corporate cultures. London: Routledge.
Niven, J. (2009). Kill your friends. London: Vintage.
Nixon, S., & Crewe, B. (2004). Pleasure at work? Gender, consumption and work-based identities in the creative industries. Consumption Markets & Culture, 7, 129–147.
Oakley, K., & O’Brien, D. (2016). Learning to labour unequally: Understanding the relationship between cultural production, cultural consumption and inequality. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 22, 471–486.
Petersson McIntyre, M. (2014). Commodifying passion: The fashion of aesthetic labour. Journal of Cultural Economy, 7, 79–94.
Potts, J., & Shehadeh, T. (2014). Compensating differentials in creative industries and occupations: Some evidence from HILDA’. In G. Hearn, R. Bridgstock, B. Goldsmith, & J. Rodgers (Eds.), Creative work beyond the creative industries: Innovation, employment and education (pp. 47–60). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Press.
Sayer, A. (2011). Why things matter to people: Social science, values and ethical life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Southall, B. (2009). The rise and fall of EMI records. London: Omnibus.
Stahl, M. (2004). A moment like this: American Idol and narratives of meritocracy. In C. Washburne & M. Derno (Eds.), Bad music: The music we love to hate (pp. 212–232). London: Routledge.
Sterne, J. (2014). There is no music industry. Media Industries, 1, 50–55.
Thrift, N. (2001). “It’s the romance, not the finance, that makes the business worth pursuing”: Disclosing a new market culture. Economy and Society, 30, 412–432.
Towse, R. (2006). Human capital and artists’ labour markets. In V. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (Eds.), Handbook of the economics of the arts and culture (pp. 865–894). Amsterdam: North Holland Elsevier.
UK Music. (n.d.). The business case for diversity. Retrieved from https://www.ukmusic.org/equality-diversity/research/
UMG and Music Week. (n.d.). Everything you need to know, to get a job in music.
Wall, T. (2013). The X factor. In P. Bennett & J. McDougall (Eds.), Mythologies today: Barthes reimagined (pp. 19–23). London: Routledge.
Wardle, B. (2008). Inside the record company cauldron. A&Rmchair. Retrieved from http://benwardle.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/inside-record-company-cauldron.html
Weber, M. (2001). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. London: Routledge.
Wheeldon, J. (2014). Patrons, curators, inventors and thieves: The storytelling contest of the cultural industries in the digital age. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Williamson, J., & Cloonan, M. (2007). Rethinking the music industry. Popular Music, 26, 305–322.
Wood, H., & Skeggs, B. (2011). Reality television and class. London: BFI/Palgrave.
Acknowledgements
This chapter is based on presentations given at two conferences: Media and Passion (Lund University, March 2013) and the “Passionate Work” stream of the London Conference in Critical Thought (Birkbeck, University of London, June 2016). I am grateful to the hosts and participants at both for the opportunity and for spurring further reflections. Warm thanks go to Rachel O’Neill and Sara De Benedictis, as well as this volume’s editors, for their thoughtful comments on an early draft and suggestions for further reading.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bennett, T. (2018). “Essential—Passion for Music”: Affirming, Critiquing, and Practising Passionate Work in Creative Industries. In: Martin, L., Wilson, N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Creativity at Work. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77350-6_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77350-6_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77349-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77350-6
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)