Culture of work

The changing world of work has plunged the traditional definition of the concept of work into crisis. We can observe the corresponding transformation processes particularly well in the cultural and creative industries, which tend to undergo developments in the labour market before all other sectors, making them early indicators of work-related trends. While this significance of the cultural and creative industries has been observed on various occasions, there are no well-developed, systematic analyses of this field of work to date. Professor Hannes Krämer is the project manager of the DFG network ‘Artistic and Creative Labour. Network for the Study of Practices of Work and Organisation within the Cultural and Creative Industries’. It is an association of academics researching the relationship between culture and work in contemporary capitalism. Taking a comparative approach, the project systematically puts its members’ empirical studies into context in order to categorise specifics of the practice and structure of cultural creative work, thereby advancing the concept of ‘work’. The project also includes activities aimed at defining the international position of specifically German discourses and, subsequently, the incorporation of that position into the international discussion about cultural and creative work (2017–2021, publication in preparation).