Cultural/creative labour and ‘neo-precarity’: Emerging challenges and responses of precarious workers in Chinese cultural and creative industries

Dr Tse, Ho Lun Tommy   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Professor Fung Anthony Ying-him   (Co-Investigator)

Professor Smith Chris   (Co-Investigator)

5

2018-07-01

56000

Cultural/creative labour and ‘neo-precarity’: Emerging challenges and responses of precarious workers in Chinese cultural and creative industries

cultural & creative industries, cultural and creative labour, digitisation, neo-precarity

Cultural Studies / Cultural Policy,Sociology

N/A

Seed Fund for Basic Research for Resubmission of GRF/ECS Proposals

2018

Completed

While all the reviewers consider the proposed GRF research study to be timely, interesting and novel overall, they suggest the investigator to further improve its conceptualization, research framing, and methodology, also explaining how the notion of creative labour can be differentially defined in the Chinese context. In order to enhance the GRF proposal resubmission based on the specific comments listed above, the following activities are to be carried out: 1) To enhance both the theoretical and methodological framing of our proposed GRF research, the Principal Investigator will closely work with the Research Assistant in following 2 months, reviewing and extracting updated literature on the (i) recent academic discussions of precarity and precarization of labour and (ii) applications of various innovative research methodologies appropriate to the proposed GRF research study. Theoretically, it will help us clearly illustrate why our theoretical framework is not repeating previous discussions of precarization, and most importantly, also why precarity or precarization is simply not just a ‘Western’ concept’ which we simplistically apply to the non-Western context. Methodologically, rather than simply using in-depth interview as our key research method (as raised by some reviewers), we will explore how various innovative research methods could potentially complement each other to answer the research questions more comprehensively. These research methods include netnography [or ""digital ethnography""], observant participation [distinct from the typical ‘participant observation’], experience sampling methodology [ESM]), and visual ethnography. 2) Some reviewers worry that our proposed investigation and observation of ""the increasingly precarious working lives of formal workers in China’s burgeoning cultural and creative industries"" suggests an ex-ante researcher bias. In fact, in our GRF proposal, we already quoted an array of relevant literature and the PI’s previous research on Hong Kong’s creative workers to substantiate this claim and showing that the precarization of labour is a widely accepted, aggravating universal problem within and without the academia. However, in order to present our argument more strongly and precisely, the PI has secured a rare opportunity [the Alibaba Global Dreamer 2018 Programme] to conduct participant observation in Alibaba [top one technology/creative company in China] for 2 weeks (late July to mid August 2018) and (i) will conduct pilot interview with a selected number of creative labourers in Shanghai and Hangzhou (using snowball sampling through the newly developed professional contacts), to testify whether this claim is objectively valid and subjectively felt by the informants. We deem such empirical data important to convince the reviewers not to worry about our research direction as an ungrounded hypothesis, also help us to more concretely contextualize and trace the varied meanings of creative labour and creativity in China under the influence of globalization and rapid technological advancement. 3) Lastly, the Principal Investigator will make use of his upcoming personal trip to London (Fall 2018) to discuss with Co-Investigator Professor Chris Smith (a well-known and seasoned scholar in the sociology of work and employment in China and creative labour studies) and his UK-based colleagues about how to rework the proposal’s overall theoretical and methodological framing.