Reluctant entrepreneurs: musicians and entrepreneurship in the ‘new’ music industry

Changing labour conditions in the creative industries – with celebrations of autonomy and entrepreneurialism intertwined with increasing job insecurity, portfolio careers and short‐term, project‐based contracts – are often interpreted as heralding changes to employment relations more broadly. The position of musicians’ labour in relation to these changes is unclear, however, given that these kinds of conditions have defined musicians’ working practices over much longer periods of time (though they may have intensified due to well‐documented changes to the music industry brought about by digitization and disintermediation). Musicians may thus be something of a barometer of current trends, as implied in the way that the musically derived label ‘gig economy’ is being used to describe the spread of precarious working conditions to broader sections of the population. This article, drawing on original qualitative research that investigated the working practices of musicians, explores one specific aspect of these conditions: whether musicians are self‐consciously entrepreneurial towards their work and audience. We found that, while the musicians in our study are routinely involved in activities that could be construed as entrepreneurial, generally they were reluctant to label themselves as entrepreneurs. In part this reflected understandings of entrepreneurialism as driven by profit‐seeking but it also reflected awareness that being a popular musician has always involved business and commercial dimensions. Drawing on theoretical conceptions of entrepreneurship developed by Joseph Schumpeter we highlight how the figure of the entrepreneur and the artist/musician share much in common and reflect various aspects of romantic individualism. Despite this, there are also some notable differences and we conclude that framing musicians’ labour as entrepreneurial misrepresents their activities through an overemphasis on the economic dimensions of their work at the expense of the cultural.     

Sexual orientation at work: Documenting and understanding wage inequality

A growing body of research focuses on the labor market experiences and outcomes of LGBTQ+ people. Yet sexual orientation has been incorporated unevenly into research on labor market inequality, developing in parallel across work in labor economics and the sociology of work and organizations. In this review, we describe research on sexual orientation and wage inequality, bridging insights from quantitative studies of wage gaps and qualitative work on the organizational and occupational experiences of sexual minorities. We further discuss theoretical developments in the sociology of sexuality to provide background to the concepts and measures both bodies of research employ in practice. We argue that future research should integrate these approaches to consider how local and diffuse cultural understandings of sexual orientation shape the valuation of workers.     

The Production of the Female Entrepreneurial Subject: A Space of Exclusion for Women of Color?

SUMMARY

Using critical discourse analysis, this paper examines how the female entrepreneurial subject is constructed/produced within entrepreneurial discourses, how this subject is racialized, gendered and classed, and examines what practices contribute to the shaping of the female entrepreneurial subject. I specifically look at four areas/discourses central to entrepreneurship; that of independence, self-definition/self-monitoring, networking, and women's abilities as businesswomen. I contend that contemporary self-employment discourses mirror those of neo-liberalism/modernization where the notion of the independent liberal subject has the ability to self-determine and self-monitor, which is a sign of autonomy and mastery of the self. I also argue that the space of women's entrepreneurship legitimizes white middle-class women's experiences and excludes women of color from becoming active subjects in entrepreneurial discourses.     

Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn

In this paper we outline a critique of ‘decorative sociology’ as a trend in contemporary sociology where ‘culture’ has eclipsed the ‘social’ and where literary interpretation has marginalized sociological methods. By the term ‘decorative sociology’ we mean a branch of modernist aesthetics which is devoted to a politicized, textual reading of society and culture. Although we acknowledge slippage between the textual and material levels of cultural analysis, notably in the output of the Birmingham School, we propose that the intellectual roots of cultural studies inevitably mean that the textual level is pre‐eminent. In emphasizing the aesthetic dimension we seek to challenge the political self‐image of decorative sociology as a contribution to political intervention. We argue that while the cultural turn has contributed to revising approaches to the relationships between identity and power, race and class, ideology and representation, it has done so chiefly at an aesthetic level. Following Davies (1993), we submit that the greatest achievement of the cultural turn has been to teach students to ‘read politically’. The effect of this upon concrete political action is an empirical question. Without wishing to minimize the political importance of cultural studies, our hypothesis is that, what might be called the ‘aestheticization of life’ has not translated fully into the politicization of culture. We argue that an adequate cultural sociology would have to be driven by an empirical research agenda, embrace an historical and comparative framework, and have a genuinely sociological focus, that is, a focus on the changing balance of power in Western capitalism. We reject the attempt to submerge the social in the cultural and outline the development of an alternative, integrated perspective on body, self and society. We conclude by briefly commenting on three sociological contributions to the comparative and historical study of cultural institutions which approximate this research agenda: Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu and Richard Sennett.     

Gender and the Artist Archetype: Understanding Gender Inequality in Artistic Careers

Women artists are systematically disadvantaged across cultural fields. Although some of these disadvantages resemble gender inequalities in non‐artistic work, such as lower pay, underrepresentation, work–family conflict, and symbolic devaluation, others are unique to artistic careers. In this essay, I extend Acker's work on the implicit gendering of the ideal‐typical worker to show how gender implicitly organizes social expectations around artists and artistic work. I highlight themes emerging from past research on gender relations in artistic careers, which suggest that the ideal‐typical artist builds on a masculine model in at least three ways. First, collective understandings of creative genius center a masculine subject. Second, bias in aesthetic evaluations systematically favors men over women. Third, the structure of artistic careers, particularly the need for entrepreneurial labor and self‐promotion, requires artists to engage in behaviors that are more socially acceptable in men than in women.     

Entrepreneurship – A Suitable Case for Sociological Treatment

Entrepreneurs are of great interest inside and outside the academic world. But there are considerable ambiguities and confusions about the nature of entrepreneurship among members of the public and entrepreneurship scholars alike, with the latter typically failing to locate entrepreneurial activities fully in their historical and societal contexts. Even work in the sociology of entrepreneurship is achieving less than might be expected in this respect. To overcome these problems it is helpful to return to basic sociological principles associated with Durkheim, Weber and Wright Mills and work with two newer sociological concepts; those of ‘institutional logics’ and ‘situated creativity’. Working in this way encourages us to drop entirely the analytical concept of ‘entrepreneur’ and to study, instead, ‘entrepreneurial action’– a concept which enables us to appreciate the relationship between the making of adventurous, creative or innovative exchanges in societies and both the organisational and the societal/institutional/historical settings in which these comes about – for better or worse.     

Explaining Attitudes towards Self-employment among Immigrants: A Canadian Case Study

Implicit in Canada's immigration policies is that some immigrants are endowed with a particular entrepreneurial spirit, and that this spirit relates to immigrants’ origin. This paper examines whether attitudes towards entrepreneurship indeed relate to origin, or whether they can be explained through labour market circumstances at the place of settlement and/or Canada's immigrant selection procedure. The empirical study focuses on the reported attitudes towards entrepreneurship. A survey of 509 Vancouver residents of a predominantly Chinese immigrant neighbourhood, a predominantly South Asian immigrant neighbourhood, and a neighbourhood of non‐immigrants reveals that ethnic origin is a weak indicator of entrepreneurial attitudes. Instead, urban or rural background emerges as a more powerful predictor. The results also raise doubts about whether the Canadian government's immigration policy, which selects immigrants on the basis of economic potential, indeed selects immigrants with a greater desire to become self‐employed. Furthermore, the amount of time immigrants have spent in Canada does not significantly affect attitudes towards entrepreneurship.     

Race,Labor Market Disadvantage,and Survivalist Entrepreneurship: Black Women in the Urban North During the Great Depression

The resource constraint version of the disadvantage theory of entrepreneurship holds that members of destitute ethnic groups often respond to labor market exclusion by becoming survivalist entrepreneurs, that is, persons who start marginal businesses in response to a need to become self-employed. Applying this theory, I analyze survivalist entrepreneurship among Black women in the urban North during the Great Depression, when many Black women had to find an independent means of livelihood. I hypothesize that (1) the participation of Black women in entrepreneurial occupations, i.e., occupations that lend themselves to self-employment, was positively associated with the disadvantage of these women in the labor market and (2) Black women would be inclined to participate in those entrepreneurial occupations with low barriers to entry, namely, boarding and lodging house keeping and hairdressing and beauty culture. These occupations, according to a review of historical studies, provided northern Black women with their best opportunities for survivalist entrepreneurship. The analyses of census data support my hypotheses and suggest that the resource constraint version of the disadvantage theory of entrepreneurship is relevant to the economic adjustment strategies of northern Black women during the nation's worst employment crisis.     

Retail entrepreneurial values in a bicultural community: Cultural and economic contentions and negotiation

Economic activity is universal yet the objectives of entrepreneurship are culture-specific in that the entrepreneur cannot be separated from the cultural context. The purpose of this research was to understand the structural differences between the Old Order Amish and their non-Amish counterpart as they conduct entrepreneurial activity in a bi-cultural rural setting. Eleven months of field research uncovered distinct differences between the two groups with regard to three conceptual themes: responsibility, cooperation and competition, and success. Amish entrepreneurs often find themselves in a state of negotiation between contradictory values of their own cultural system and those of the dominant world. The economic behavior of non-Amish entrepreneurs, on the other hand, is steeped in notions of individual gain found in the free market system. In an increasingly multicultural world, understanding the role of culture in economic life becomes critical if cultural groups are to conduct business in the same marketplace.     

What Makes an Entrepreneur and Does it Pay? Native Men,Turks, and Other Migrants in Germany

This paper focuses on the entrepreneurial endeavours of immigrants' and natives in Germany, concentrating on Turks, Germany's largest immigrant group and one under‐studied in the literature. Self‐employed Turks in Germany represent about 70 per cent of all Turkish entrepreneurs in the European Union. We use data from the German Socio‐economic Panel to study patterns of self‐employment. First, we identify the characteristics of the self‐employed individuals and understand their underlying drive into self‐employment. Next we investigate how immigrant entrepreneurs fare in the labour market and compare their earnings to those of the natives. It is important for decision makers to understand entrepreneurial patterns so that they can shape policy that better fosters entrepreneurial activities. This paper presents several findings that can inform better policymaking. First, our investigation indicates that education is not decisive in determining whether one will choose self‐employment over salaried work nor in explaining earnings. The estimated age‐earnings profiles are the same for natives and immigrants, while the proclivity to become self‐employed is concave with respect to age for both groups. Immigrants' start with a higher probability to work than natives but have a slower increase in the self‐employment probabilities thereafter. The earnings of self‐employed immigrants' are higher initially, but their earnings path crosses eventually that of the natives. Second, we find some suggestion of ethnic entrepreneurial spirit. Turks are 70 per cent more likely to be self‐employed than any other immigrant group, although they do not necessarily earn more. These patterns should be further explored.     

Culture and Suicide Acceptability: A Cross‐National,Multilevel Analysis

Cultural perspectives on suicidality have been largely marked by work explaining variability in suicide acceptability in the United States using structural variables including marital status and demographics, and limited symbolic or values orientations such as feminism, political liberalism, and civil liberties. The present article applies recent developments in comparative cultural sociology to the problem of suicidality. The central hypothesis is that cultural approval of suicide is related to a general cultural axis of nations (self‐expressionism) encompassing several values orientations such as tolerance and post‐materialism. Data are from Wave 4 of the World Values Surveys and refer to 53,275 individuals nested in 56 nations. Controls are incorporated from previous studies and include structural and demographic constructs. A hierarchical linear regression model determined that the degree of individual‐level adherence to the values of self‐expressionism predicted suicide acceptability (SA), independent of controls including ones interpretable from Durkheimian perspectives. Furthermore, persons high in individual‐level self‐expressionism nested in like‐minded nations were relatively high in SA. The analysis of the subject is expanded to 56 nations representing all major culture zones and varied levels of economic/political development. It determined that SA is shaped by a new, broad cultural construct, self‐expressionism whose impact is independent of Durkheimian familial and religious integration.     

Being the “Go-To Guy”: Fatherhood,Masculinity, and the Organization of Work in Silicon Valley

Based upon in-depth interviews with fathers who are employed as knowledge workers in Silicon Valley, this article argues that a newly constituted masculinity has emerged that coincides with the new way work is organized in the new economy. The article examines the relationship among this gendered subjectivity, processes of labor control, and fathering. It finds that the new masculinity functions as a key mechanism of control in high-tech workplaces that rely on identity-based forms of control and that the enactment of this new masculinity impacts the way fathers think about, experience, and manage their work and family lives.     

You are your brand: Self‐branding and the marketization of self

Personal branding was popularized in the late twentieth century through a spate of self‐help literature which enjoined workers to take responsibility for themselves by taking an entrepreneurial approach to the self, seeing themselves as products to be marketed as a means of managing the risks of an unstable labor market. Self‐branding discourse frames the “authentic self” as a source of material value which workers can leverage to build a reputation, which they can later capitalize upon in their attempts to remain competitive as workers. This article examines the literature on self‐branding to trace its origins as a framework for conceptualizing the self. The discourse of self‐branding proposes a singular, profitable self which is at once authentic and consistent. In this review of self‐branding literature, I explore what thinking of the self as a brand does to the way individuals relate to themselves. I examine the social construction of authentic self‐brands, how branding the self on social media impacts the process of self‐presentation, and how workers experience the imperative to self‐brand.     

Mobile Phones and Entrepreneurial Identity Negotiation by Urban Female Street Traders in Uganda

Mobile phones have been posited as enhancing women's entrepreneurship and gender equality in developing countries, yet empowerment outcomes are unclear. This article considers how women in the gender‐segregated informal economy construct their entrepreneurial identity in relation to mobile phones and the discursive repertoires that marginalize and empower. Using data from interviews with six urban female street traders in Kampala, Uganda, it explores how these repertoires illustrate their sense of self, positioning and belonging to the business community. Normative representations and positioning of female traders can sideline entrepreneurial identity and over‐validate gender identity. But, participants also negotiate entrepreneurial identity construction in response to these marginalizing influences. Although the data demonstrate that participants are equivocal about their entrepreneurial identity or fit in business, some representations are more validating and offer a sense of belonging. The article concludes by highlighting the nuanced opportunities for social change their discursive repertoires may present.     

Dimensions of Precariousness in an Emerging Sector of Self‐Employment: A Study of Self‐Employed Nurses

Changing economic ideologies and a new emphasis on entrepreneurial opportunities have led to a rise in self‐employment in Canada, especially among women. Although some people benefit from self‐employment, it is considered to be a precarious form of employment. Despite a growing body of literature on gender and self‐employment, there is more to learn about its precarious nature across industries and types of entrepreneurs. This ethnographic study examines the experiences of self‐employed nurses in order to better understand self‐employment in professional caring work. In some ways, these nurses' experiences fit with what is known about female self‐employment but this specific sector highlights how precariousness can take different forms across different areas of work. In particular, this study reveals new insights about the complexity and ambiguity of precariousness.     

The opportunity to contribute: disability and the digital entrepreneur

ABSTRACT

A range of scholarly work in communications, informatics, and media studies has identified ‘entrepreneurs’ as central to an emerging paradigm of digital labor. Drawing on data from a multi-year research project in the virtual world Second Life, I explore disability experiences of entrepreneurism, focusing on intersections of creativity, risk, and inclusion. Since its founding in 2003, Second Life has witnessed significant disability participation. Many such residents engage in forms of entrepreneurship that destabilize dominant understandings of digital labor. Most make little or no profit; some labor at a loss. Something is being articulated through languages and practices of entrepreneurship, something that challenges the ableist paradigms that still deeply structure both digital socialities and conceptions of labor.

Disability is typically assumed to be incompatible with work, an assumption often reinforced by policies that withdraw benefits from disabled persons whose income exceeds a meagre threshold. Responses to such exclusion appear when disabled persons in Second Life frame ‘entrepreneur’ as a selfhood characterized by creativity and contribution, not just initiative and risk. In navigating structural barriers with regard to income and access, including affordances of the virtual world itself, they implicitly contest reconfigurations of personhood under neoliberalism, where the laboring self becomes framed not as a worker earning an hourly wage, but as a business with the ‘ability’ to sell services. This reveals how digital technology reworks the interplay of selfhood, work, and value – but in ways that remain culturally specific and embedded in forms of inequality.     

Culture of the Labor Movement and Work in the United States

With the resurgence of union organizing during the 1990s, a new scholarship about the labor movement has emerged, documenting and explaining this new social movement unionism. Literature on the culture of work is well developed while, generally speaking, in the scholarship about the labor movement, culture is an underdeveloped analysis. In this article, we look at the culture of market fundamentalism as the dominant way of thinking and explaining work and labor in the United States. Market fundamentalism has emerged at the same time that women and immigrants have become much more numerous among U.S. workers, and they have brought with them new cultural emphases at work and among unions. In response to market fundamentalism and with the activism of women and immigrants among others, unions have transformed their own culture toward social movement unionism and have pushed for a new culture of work.     

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, JOB CONDITIONS, AND WELL-BEING: Self-Concept Explanations for Gender-Contingent Effects

Using data from a representative sample of adults age eighteen to fifty‐five who reside in Toronto, Canada, and are employed in the paid labor force, this study asks: Are the health benefits of education, income, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work different for women and men? If so, do mastery and self‐esteem contribute to those differences? Results show that women and men derive different personal benefits from socioeconomic status and job qualities: (1) education, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work are associated more positively with the sense of mastery among women, (2) job autonomy is associated more positively with self‐esteem among women, (3) education, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work are associated more negatively with depressive symptoms among women, and (4) job autonomy and nonroutinized work are associated more positively with global health among women. Moreover, the patterns in (1) and (2) explain the gender‐contingent effects in (3) and (4). In addition, unexpected suppression effects reveal that, among men, education is associated negatively with mastery and self‐esteem—but only after adjustment for job conditions. I interpret the findings in the context of the disadvantaged status thesis and speculate about status‐related social comparison processes.