Funder: SSHRC
Principal Investigator: Greig de Peuter (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Research Collaborators:
Nicole Cohen (University of Toronto)
Enda Brophy (Simon Fraser University)
Kate Oakley (University of Glasgow)
Marisol Sandoval (City University of London)
Project Description:
Cultural Workers Organize is a research project that explores the hypothesis that flexworkers in the arts, communication, and cultural industries are protagonists of a recomposition of labour politics today. At the core of the study are emerging efforts of contract workers, interns, self-employed, freelancers, part-timers and other flexible labour forces—in some of contemporary capitalism’s most prized sectors—to confront precarity, or the financial and social insecurity exacerbated by unstable employment. In labour markets that compel and celebrate individual coping strategies, this research spotlights some of the various ways cultural workers are collectively responding to precarity. Cultural Workers Organize aims to contribute to a labour movement that has had difficulty adapting to the growth of flexible employment and knowledge-intensive, communicative, and cultural work. We publish research papers, reports, books, and host events.