City Research Online

Abstract

This thesis builds on the growing body of scholarship on inequalities and diversity in the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) by identifying a particular subset of organisations working to bring about feminist change in London’s CCIs. What I term Feminist CCIs, these organisations have become increasingly visible in UK media and culture across the last eight years, however, no scholarly research has yet interrogated this new phenomenon. To address this gap, this interdisciplinary PhD project centres an empirical concern with the experiences, subjectivities, and attitudes of contemporary feminist cultural workers in London. To this end, it takes a mixed-methods research approach of in-depth interviews, digital ethnographic methods, and archival research to examine the multiple histories and contexts of Feminist CCIs.

This project analyses the contemporary Feminist CCIs in relation to the wider increased visibility of feminism in contemporary popular culture, existing research on precarity and inequalities within the CCIs, as well as the emergence and increases in female-led entrepreneurship across these sectors. Moreover, through the theoretical lens it has developed of ‘freelance feminism’, this research investigates how feminist practice is being negotiated and shaped at this intersection between precarity, feminism and entrepreneurialism. It considers how these entrepreneurial activities impact feminist politics, and in turn, how feminist politics shape these entrepreneurial environments.

Additionally, this research foregrounds its analysis within what it terms ‘crisis contexts’, and whereby multiple and intersecting crises (such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020) have impacted the practices of Feminist CCIs and the wider CCIs. It argues how these intersecting crises have intensified the pre-existing tensions within the work of Feminist CCIs. For instance, tensions between balancing political ideologies and economic exigencies; individualised and collective working practices; engaging in and resisting commercial models; online and offline subjectivities, and feminist activism and entrepreneurialism. As part of this, this project considers how neoliberal logics and structures (in the CCIs and wider) govern some of the sense-making and perceived political possibilities at hand for Feminist CCIs. Moreover, through bringing Feminist CCIs and freelance feminism into conversation with existing scholarly debates, this thesis pushes these conversations forward, asking new and nuanced questions along the way. To this end, this research makes novel contributions to scholarly knowledge on contemporary feminism and digital culture, platformised cultural work, gendered entrepreneurialism, and precarity and inequalities within the CCIs.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races T Technology
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Media, Culture & Creative Industries School of Communication & Creativity > School of Communication & Creativity Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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