Abstract
This chapter gives evidence of the reputational dynamics of social capital and value as these emerge from the study of networks of freelancers in the ‘creative cities’ of London and Milan, dwelling upon what is knowledge work today in these cities and how it is intermediated by digital technologies and social media. The chapter illustrates the network cultures of the urban knowledge economy; the reader meets a variety of knowledge professionals who spend their professional lives constructing networks and engaging in social relations. This gives evidence of the strategic and managerial capitalisation of one’s reputation theorised in the previous section, as it occurs via performative practices of sociality that take place in multiple networked environments.
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Notes
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Alessandro Gandini, “Digital work: Self-branding and social capital in the freelance knowledge economy,” Marketing Theory (2015), DOI: 10.1177/1470593115607942.
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Helen Blair, “Winning and losing in flexible labour markets: the formation and operation of networks of interdependence in the UK film industry,” Sociology 37.4 (2003): 677–694.
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On free labour in the knowledge and creative industries, see Tiziana Terranova, “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,” Social Text 18.2 (2000): 33–58; David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker, Creative Labour: Media work in three cultural industries (London: Routledge, 2013).
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Gandini, A. (2016). Urban Knowledge Work: The Cases of London and Milan. In: The Reputation Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56107-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56107-7_4
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