Theorizing Cultural Work brings together leading theorists to reflect on the ways in which forms of cultural work are embedded historically and socially, and to assess the extent to which they are illustrative of some putatively new social relations of work. It analyzes both local and internationally inter-linked cultural/creative labour processes as they unfold across different territories and economic regimes, considering the history and the future of cultural work in light of the immediate (post-crisis) and longer term social context.

1. Introduction: Cultural Work, Time and Trajectory Part One: Histories 2. Precarious Labour Then and Now: The British Arts and Crafts Movement and Cultural Work Revisited 3. Cultural Work and Antisocial Psychology 4. Hired Hands, Liars, Schmucks: Histories of Screenwriting Work and Workers in Contemporary Screen Production 5. Absentee Workers: Representation and Participation in the Cultural Industries Part Two: Specificities/Transformations 6. Specificity, Ambivalence, and the Commodity Form of Creative Work 7. How Special? Cultural Work, Copyright, Politics 8. Logistics of Cultural Work 9. Learning from Luddites: Media Labor, Technology and Life Below the Line 10. Presence Bleed: Performing Professionalism Online Part Three: Futures 11. Feminist Futures of Cultural Work? Creativity, Gender and Difference in the Digital Media Sector 12. Creativity, Biography and the Time of Individualization 13. Professional Identity and Media Work 14. Theorizing Cultural Work: An Interview with the Editors. References.

Mark Banks is Reader in Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University, UK.

Rosalind Gill is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at King's College London.

Stephanie Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University, UK.