Table Of ContentCREATIVE
CONTROL
The Ambivalence of Work in
the Culture Industries
MICHAEL L. SICILIANO
CREATIVE CONTROL
Creative Control
THE AMBIVALENCE OF WORK IN
THE CULTURE INDUSTRIES
Michael L. Siciliano
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup . columbia . edu
Copyright © 2021 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Siciliano, Michael L., author.
Title: Creative control : the ambivalence of work in the culture industries / Michael L. Siciliano.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020045830 (print) | LCCN 2020045831 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780231193801 (hardback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231193818 (trade paperback ; alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780231550512 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cultural industries. | Creative ability. | Creative ability in business. |
Work— Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC HD9999.C9472 S525 2021 (print) | LCC HD9999.C9472 (ebook) |
DDC 658.3/14— dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020045830
LC ebook record available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020045831
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-f ree paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design: Noah Arlow
Cover image: Shutterstock (seesaw)
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
Part I. Introductions
Chapter One
Creative Control? 3
Chapter Two
Conflicting Creativities 28
Part II. SoniCo’s Social Regime
Chapter Three
SoniCo’s Positive Pole: Aesthetic Subjectivities and Control 59
Chapter Four
SoniCo’s Negative Pole: Mitigating Precarity and
Alienated Judgment 99
vi
CONTENTS
Part III. The Future’s Quantified Regime
Chapter Five
The Future’s Positive Pole: Platform Discipline,
Transience, and Immersion 131
Chapter Six
The Future’s Negative Pole: Compound Precarity and
the (Infra)structure of Alienated Judgment 185
Part IV. Conclusion
Chapter Seven
Toward a Theory of Creative Labor and a Politics of Judgment 223
METHODOLOGICAL APPENDIX: ATTENDING TO DIFFERENCE
IN SIMILARITY AND THE GENDER OF MY ACCESS 243
NOTES 253
REFERENCES 271
INDEX 287
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The production of a book, like any cultural product, is an immensely social
process involving many people, all equally important. Sociologists have
known this for quite some time, yet most studies of cultural production
focus on only the most visible, most obviously “important” contributors to
the production of knowledge, information, media, and the arts. Among
my many aims with this book, I hope to correct the absence of routine
workers in studies of media and the arts by including both expressive and
routine forms of work in this ethnography of creative labor. With that in
mind, I want to begin by thanking all the people whom I met while con-
ducting ethnographic fieldwork for this book. All the people involved with
the recording studio that I call SoniCo as well as the freelance recording
engineers and the many YouTube creators who invited me into their work-
places and homes were incredibly generous with their time and candid
with their opinions. This book could not have been written without their
valuable contributions to my research project and my life.
I also, like a ghost, owe much to my haunts where I did much of the
writing for this book, and so I would like to acknowledge the importance
of cafes in Los Angeles; the East Bay; Kingston, Ontario; Pittsburgh, Penn-
sylvania; and Steubenville, Ohio. Even though they may never read this, I
would like to extend a big thank you to the many baristas who served me
countless cups of black coffee while I wrote. These unsung heroes include
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
the bean slingers of Stories, Chango (RIP), and Cafecito Organico in Los
Angeles; Lili (RIP) in Pittsburgh; Leonardo’s in Steubenville; and the Elm
in Kingston. Though I mostly wrote in these places, it also felt a bit like
ongoing fieldwork as I watched people use Slack to chat with their cowork-
ers, share their latest PowerPoint decks via Dropbox, or use their laptop to
work on their latest mix of a song for some geographically distant client.
Even after I left the offices at SoniCo and The Future, I was still surrounded
by their modes of work whenever I decided to plunk away at my comput-
er’s keys in public.
This book would not be possible without Ching Kwan Lee, whom I
thank for her robust and ceaseless support as well as rigorous criticism. I
owe her much for her years of mentorship, a debt that I cannot begin to
repay. While others might have reined me in, attempting to fit a square peg
in a round hole, she gave me a rather long leash during the early stages of
this project. I would also like to thank Edward Walker, Stefan Bargheer,
and Christopher Kelty at UCLA. I do not think I would be the scholar I am
today without their support and guidance.
Early drafts of several chapters benefited from thoughtful feedback pro-
vided by Joan Donovan and other participants in Chris Kelty’s Part.Lab as
well as by the UCLA Sociology Department’s working groups in Ethnog-
raphy and Movements, Organizations, and Markets, which were headed
by Kyle Nelson and Lina Stepick. Likewise, Nina Eliasoph’s Politics, Orga-
nizations, Ethnography, and Theory (POETs) and Paul Lichterman’s Eth-
nography of Public Life (EPL) working groups provided me with an
important social and intellectual anchor during my time as a postdoctoral
scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern Cali-
fornia. Thoughtful comments and collegiality from Thomas Abrams,
Martin Hand, Annette Burfoot, and all my colleagues at Queen’s Univer-
sity provided much needed positivity during the final stages of writing in
the coldest months of my first Canadian winter.
I thank my good friends for their continued friendship, reading of early
drafts, and providing positivity during my fieldwork and writing. I was
always excited to have Pat Reilly show up at my door while in Los Angeles
to discuss sociology, records, and comedy over coffee and lunch. Although
Steven Tuttle resides in Chicago, he never felt far away as he offered
thoughtful comments on my work and continued emotional support, pro-
viding a friendship that I highly value. Alexandra Lippman’s invitation to
ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
participate in her Sound Ethnography Project opened me up to the incor-
poration of sound recordings in my fieldwork while also introducing me to
sound studies, STS, and incredible friends such as Nalika Gajaweera, a
familiar face who made USC less intimidating, and Alessandro Delfanti,
with whom I continue an ongoing discussion about the future of labor. I
also want to thank Neil Gong and Brooks Ambrose for their patience
when we lived together and for their continued support of my research. I
miss the countless hours we spent in traffic talking about social theory and
research methods. I thank Wisam Alshaibi for being supportive and gen-
erous with his time, offering both commentary on my research as well as
superb drumming for some of my more recent creative pursuits. I also
want to thank my good friends Ashton Leech, Frank Fornsaglio, and Jeff
Gentle for sharing their perspectives on work with me and for letting me
bounce ideas off them. I also want to thank my mother and my family for
offering their support in the ways they know how.
This project benefited from funding generously provided by the
National Science Foundation (Grant Number 1636662) and from time
spent discussing my work with Melissa Gregg, Hannah Landecker, Gabriel
Rossman, David Halle, Zsuzsa Berend, and William Mazzarella, whose
course Commodity Aesthetics at the University of Chicago left a lasting
mark on my thinking, making a starting point for this project.
I would like to thank Eric Schwartz and the editorial board at Columbia
University Press for taking on my project and providing guidance through
the publishing process. This project also benefited from three anonymous
reviewers who provided thoughtful comments on earlier drafts. Portions
of chapter 3 appear in a significantly truncated form as an article in Orga-
nization Studies published in 2016.
Last but not least, I thank my ever- inspiring partner, my love, Ariel Pit-
tman, for attempting to keep me sane during the final year of writing this
book and for sharing her experiences as someone in a “creative” career. I
finished this during the COVID- 19 pandemic, and walking with Ariel
around our neighborhood in Los Angeles and taking trips to the beach
(staying inside the car the whole time of course) eased some of the anxiet-
ies brought out by 2020’s perpetual crises. I will forever cherish all those
times she convinced me that yes, it was OK to take a break from this book
to go for a walk outside.
