Programme full

Friday 17 April 2015 15:15 - 16:45
PAPER SESSION 8
In developing research on the identity of the 21st century British artisan it was necessary to concentrate in the first
instance on the history of the artisan. It became increasingly apparent that the identity of the British artisan should be
split into three distinct eras.
The Artisanal Craftsman
This identity is predominantly attached to the pre-industrial craftsman. Arising with the medieval guild system, the
erstwhile artisan existed in the centuries preceding the industrial revolution. As the revolution intensified, the artisanal
craftsman became enveloped by new, more efficient methods of production, with many fragmenting into industrial
workers and forming into factory units.
The Industrial Craftsman
The aforementioned devolution provides the framework for this second identity. Marx notes that "…since his activities
are now confined to one groove, he learns to work more efficiently within that groove." This is evident within this
identity as the industrial craftsman starts to take ownership within their specific tasks, developing a 'niche craft' which
further defined their identity as a collective, unionised workforce.
The Neo-Artisan
Formed from the recessive identity of the artisanal craftsman, the neo-artisan is the most recent of the identities.
Drawing distinct similarities to the arts and crafts movement, understanding the emergent neo-artisan is at the centre
of my current research.
Cooking, Situated Action and the Construction of Norms at Work
Bourkel, T.
(University of Strathclyde)
This paper presents findings of a six month micro ethnography in a professional Kitchen. Drawing on insights gathered
through participant observation, the discussion will outline how chef culture and practices are organised through group
responses to temporal demands in a pressurised work context. Recognizing practices as situated action and exploring
the routines that chefs undertake, the paper documents how a group of employees respond to layers of organisational
time (Fine, 1990) by filtering professional and organizational norms into routines with socio-temporal constructed
properties. This process illuminates a balancing act between quality consistency and high volume production that is
integral to the reality of chef work; which has implications for discussions on the routines of chefs, broader sociological
interpretations of the relationship between people, kitchen work and society, and practical HR value.
'Reluctant Entrepreneurs': Exploring the Working Practices of Musicians
Haynes, J., Marshall, L.
(University of Bristol)
In a music industry characterised by declining record sales and greater interaction between musicians and fans via
social media, how do musicians make money and how do they feel about the circumstances in which they find
themselves? This paper will present findings from British Academy funded research which explores musicians' digital
commercial practices and how musicians' perceptions of recent changes to the music industry shape their creative
music subjectivity. Combining recent literature concerning creative labour with discourses about entrepreneurialism in
the music industry and in the wider cultural sector, the project investigates whether musicians are becoming more selfconsciously
entrepreneurial towards their careers and how they negotiate potential tensions between the commercial
and creative aspects of their musical labour. This paper will draw on interview data from musicians signed to record
labels based in the South-West to critique representations of musician's activity as entrepreneurial. It argues that
although musicians' routine activity incorporates a variety of creative and business tasks in order to sustain their
careers, the label of entrepreneur is never fully embraced because of the dominant representations of it as
commercially or profit driven.
Biographies of Cybernetic Precarious Minds
Bonito Roque, I.
(CES-FEUC)
In the 21st century, the growth of the service sector has marked the global economy, engendering new forms of work
organization and labor market. Prospects of easy job insertion into the labor market were created. Call centres
represent one of the best production lines for precarity where the temporary becomes a lifetime project. Many young
adults cannot put in practice what their academic education qualified them for, leading to a status frustration, which is
becoming a pandemic. Workers become not only alienated from their social labor rights but also from their selves,
creating a precarious mind. The present study aims to investigate the process of (de)construction of occupational
307 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University