Sticking to a theme, the next Monthly MACS meeting at UQ — which will also be my last — is going to discuss the consequences of moving for work. Back in my first year at the CCCS, I thought a group like MACS might be a way to form a community of support for young scholars in Brisbane to help ease the feelings of isolation brought by career mobility. Four years later, and having seen many colleagues come and go since then, the theme still seems fitting. Here’s the blurb. And spread the word! It will be my last day at UQ and a good chance for a farewell drink.

Mobility is a big issue for many early career researchers. If you stay at one institution for too long you risk being labelled as intellectually unadventurous; if you move too often then people wonder what you’ve done wrong. Moving institutions can expose people to new modes of thought, new experiences, but can also be seen as disloyalty to the institution that nurtured you. Many universities use rhetoric that speaks about attracting and keeping the best people, but also actively discourage (if not structurally prevent) their own graduates from applying for local postdocs.

Moving away from your home institution can bring a refreshing new perspective on life and work, but there are the costs of moving away from support networks of friends and family, and starting anew in a different city or country. As many of us are workers on short (or shortish) term contracts, these are questions we must face with some regularity.

This month we will hear the views of three people with different experiences, and try to answer the question “should I stay, or should I go” (with apologies to The Clash):

Peta Mitchell has been based in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History (formerly the Department of English) at UQ since her undergraduate degree, and now lectures there in writing and publishing.

Mel Gregg grew up on Bruny Island, Tasmania and first moved to the big city of Hobart to complete high school. After finishing her Honours degree at the University of Tasmania she completed her doctoral work at the University of Sydney, before moving to the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at UQ.

Zala Volčič completed her undergraduate studies at Ljubljana University, Slovenia, and her PhD in Media Studies at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. She has worked as an assistant professor of International Communication at Franklin College/University in Lugano, Switzerland; at Maribor University in Slovenia; the University of Skopje in Macedonia; and had a Research position at the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia, Bulgaria. Zala is now a University of Queensland Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies.

I haven’t yet had a chance to say thanks to Adrian and my other generous hosts at Monash last week… even though the Qantas debacle meant I was a little bit late and spent most of the day in transit everyone made me feel very welcome and not too much of a screen studies amateur.

There could be the potential for a podcast of the event given the close relationship I developed with a roving mike but in saying that I would be more than happy if my dinner hypothesis was proven and no-one bothered to download it. In any case the “under construction” theme was thoroughly fitting my home cooked theories about work on television (theories that reached a crescendo during the Emmys coverage) and I remain very grateful for all the ideas, DVDs and even spoilers shared afterwards.

Despite some strong desires to enjoy the beautiful Melbourne surroundings and also my first ever Grand Final Parade I escaped early in the morning to beat the road closures and get to my interview at Sydney…

NOW.

(excitement)

The official news arising from that very nervous afternoon is that I have accepted a position as Lecturer in my old department, Gender and Cultural Studies, commencing mid-2009. Before that I will be finishing my Working From Home project based at Sydney too. This is very good news. Not only is the GCS program booming - enrolments and staff numbers have grown significantly since I was a grad student there - I’ll be inheriting some of the most interesting courses I could possibly hope for. e.g., my first assignment will be Intimacy, Love and Friendship in second semester next year. It means I can pursue my two ongoing research interests while also having access to a range of teaching opportunities - from foundational, introductory subjects to theory and methodology units as well as postgraduate coursework and supervision.

Five years of research work has been an incredible opportunity and privilege, but it has also been difficult to work so many years in my own head and without clear frameworks to contribute to institutional regeneration. I really want more diversity in my job, to be able to teach and learn from students and feel part of an ongoing project that has a collective outcome. The individualisation of workload and anxiety in research-only positions has also burrowed away at the expense of my personal life for some time now and it’s time to change that while I still can.

Some issues in particular are not incidental in making secure employment increasingly attractive. So, I am happy but also humble to have had the cards fall in my favour this time. I intend to make the most of this.

Of course such a profound change calls for some renovations on-blog as well! Hopefully you’ll stay tuned for some aesthetic developments which will reflect the more profound movements in the life of this “Brisbane research fella.” Here I don’t mean to invite jokes about the suit I wore to the policy forum on Monday (although it was great to have an event to dress up for). Rather, HCT will be having a redesign in the next week or two. For one thing, it needs to start saying “thirty something” rather than “twenty something”…

In another instance of outsourcing labour and discharging accountability, Qantas now encourages customers to check in online the night before a flight to prevent the likelihood that your seat will be given to someone else. The company’s policy to routinely oversell flights is now taken to be our responsibility; merely showing up on time for check-in is no longer good enough. You would think after the past few trips I would realise that I will be “late” for a flight after leaving home over an hour beforehand to travel 15 km. Such a bad frequent flyer.

On the bright side:

I am moving in a few weeks! Before that, it’s Melbourne (sometime) today and then Sydney for some house-hunting. (Anyone with any real-estate tips for a lovely couple to rent or house-sit, please pass them on!) I have a job interview tomorrow afternoon and on Monday will be presenting at the Communications Policy & Research Forum. “Through Country Women” is a project I’ve been working on with Genevieve Bell which makes a case for civic institutions, and the Country Women’s Association in particular, to assist in the roll-out of the Government’s National Broadband Network. Our paper at the forum outlines the CWA’s long history of telecommunications lobbying and the important lessons it holds for contextualising the current infatuation with online social networks.

The paper will be available in the conference proceedings over the next few days - but email me if you want more info!

I wish I’d seen this before my “Always On” talk. Would have helped in question time.

Part Two is also pretty funny. I got this from a comment on Mark Deuze’s Facebook page - it was offered by one of his friends as an initiation present.

Mark’s blogpost this week makes me realise I’m not just imagining the growing Twitter take-up in recent months. I’ve also been reading that Twitter is being seen as an answer to Facebook fatigue. While this is a progressivist perspective, it could be true if we think that those taking up Twitter now are also likely to be users who had their first positive experiences of self-broadcasting on FB (or MySpace before that - before the demographically-specific exodus).

I don’t think Twitter is going to steal the majority of Facebook users for the same reason: it’s the first substantial online identity many people have maintained, and they care about that. The protests about the new site design are so strong because heavy users are attached to Facebook as part of daily life. More specifically, they’re habituated to the layout for its reliable routes to immediate pleasures. If these people can’t handle a few changes to their page arrangement, it’s pretty unlikely they’ll have the patience or energy to move platforms entirely. Which is not to say they won’t protest. On the contrary! They’ll engage in the strongest form of activism they understand: joining a Facebook group.

This time next week I’ll be in Melbourne speaking at Monash University’s Film and Television series, Under Construction. Loyal Home Cooked Theory reader and brilliant film scholar Adrian Martin has generously invited me to share some of the thinking behind one of my current projects, “Work on TV.”

This will be an early version of one of the papers I’m giving at the Television and the National conference at ACMI in November. But in keeping with the series, I’ll also be using the paper to explore some recent writing on production cultures, particularly John Caldwell’s latest book. The abstract is below.

Moving beyond the established benchmarks of crime, law and medicine, the past ten years has seen an expansion in the number of workplaces depicted as prime time television entertainment. Not only have these shows created new opportunities for empathy with employees at the front line of the service industry (airlines, beauty, and border security, for example) they have positioned the viewer as a knowing insider to an ever greater range of jobs beyond their own training and expertise – an extension of what John Hartley calls television’s ‘cross-demographic’ function.

From the White House to the underworld, the kitchen to the office park, work on TV has been one of the most successful of recent television genres, reaching its zenith in a suite of programs that have dramatised the art of TV production itself. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage, 30 Rock, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Extras all base their appeal on familiarity with the routines of the cultural industries and the vicissitudes of portfolio careers, providing fresh possibilities for TV content in the process. Coming at a time of increased union activity with the 2007 writers’ strike and its associated publicity, these programs deliberately confused insider/outsider status: viewers were invited to identify not only with the fate of creative talent but also the challenges they posed to management.

This paper suggests that on the surface these shows can be read as evidence of a new style of labour politics befitting the creative economy, where narcissistic self-representations are used to articulate and justify a devalued work ethic. Yet in a post-broadcast era, they might also be regarded as a last-ditch attempt on behalf of a vulnerable industry to gain the support of an audience with little compulsion to remain loyal to its offerings.

Last week I gave a paper in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies’ regular Tuesday seminar series. It introduced a number of the themes emerging from two rounds of interviews for my research fellowship.

Presence bleed: Because a lot of previous studies of home-working focus on ‘teleworkers’ or ‘remote workers’ I introduced the term presence bleed to describe the impact of communication technology on ordinary office workers. Employees with or without flexible work arrangements are increasingly relying on home networks to keep in touch with work, whether or not this is compensated.

“Keeping sane” as mobilising imperative: A de-differentiation between home and work combines with a lack of interest in defining what “counts” as work such that traditional notions of working hours and labour claims become irrelevant. Recreational monitoring of work email at home creates the psychological comfort of being prepared and in control of one’s workload.

Email etiquette: Older workers are challenged to find an appropriate way to use email given earlier forms of workplace sociability and contact. Meanwhile younger workers use email conscientiously to perform professionalism, exacerbating the problem of unrealistic email turnaround times.

Screen-time trumps face-time: Workers tend to email colleagues rather than call or talk to them. It is seen as more efficient and saving time despite the level of complaint about how much email people are dealing with. Online platforms (e.g. delivering services through Blackboard, work blogs, wikis, SMS notifications, IM) add to the workload of many employees already struggling with email loads.

The catch-up day: Working mothers employed part-time regularly use days off and unpaid hours to catch up on work. They consistently see this as a personal preference rather than a management expectation.

Function creep: Whereas many employees may have had acceptable workloads to begin with, and the promise of flexible work arrangements to ensure balance, over time their roles have accumulated more expectations and responsibilities that aren’t being recognised. A lot of the additional demands stem from the need to provide services in more formats – to implement the so-called participatory and democratic revolution of “Web 2.0”.

Anticipatory labour: The sense that employees could be missing out on something, letting people down, or losing sight of the potential that something urgent might be waiting for them manifests as a persistent state of anticipation. This is the affective labour intrinsic to information work that both management and labour advocates must come to terms with.

I have a long version of the paper available and would welcome feedback while it’s under review. Let me know if you’d like a copy.

Guest post by Emily Potter. Emily is an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. Her current research, funded by an ARC Discovery Grant held with Professor Paul Carter, focuses on the poetics of place, and the work of public art in the remaking of environments. She is co-editor of Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia (MUP, 2007) and co-convenor of the Cultural Research Network Early Career Researchers Node.

As the posts by Mel and Clif have indicated, ‘State of the Industry’ is developing its program through conversation. Below are some broad themes proposed so far for Day 2 of the conference, which will focus on Research. The theme of ‘research’ lends itself to a theoretical and practical approach: questions concerning methods and cultures of research, as well as its practice across different career models and within current funding regimes.

Themes for discussion might include:

- Current expectations of research output vs realities of academic workloads; balancing teaching and research

- The pursuit of ‘measurable’ outcomes: how can cultural research stand its ground in this current climate?

- What are the new models of research that are emerging in our fields?

- What research can do – its real world effect; research impact, ‘applied research’

- Communicating research to the audiences that it effects

- The ethics of research practice

- Interdisciplinary research collaborations – methods and practices; difficulties and challenges

- Funding regimes; ARC and beyond; international opportunities for research collaboration and funding. Have funding regimes caught up to the realities of academic work cultures?

- The impact of short-term contracts and sessional teaching positions on the opportunities for research and to obtain research funding; the need to have these difficulties and experiences heard

- Research-only careers: particular challenges and opportunities; how possible is research-only as a long term career option? What new career models are emerging?

- The disparity of career/promotion opportunities between research-only (particularly ARC funded) and teaching and research staff; the implications of fixed-term contracts on career progression

- The ‘lost generation’ of cultural research: those PhD graduates unable to attain work in the academy: where are they? What are they doing? How can we reconnect with their expertise and experience?

- Research careers outside the academy: what are these? How to develop them?

We welcome reflections on any of these issues as well as further suggestions. Volunteers or ideas for speakers are also being sought.

Email to all staff from Director, HR

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic)

Guest post by Clif Evers. Clif is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. He is Co-Editor of Kurungabaa - A journal of literature, history and ideas for surfers, and Altitude - A journal for emerging humanities research in Australia. Clif co-convenes the ‘early career researchers’ node of the Cultural Research Network.

For the last few years I have been increasingly involved in community development work. This has meant that I have found my research leaning towards pursuing projects with various community organisations, NGOs, Not-for Profits, Service Providers, etc.

Inspired by Cultural Research work done at the Centre for Social Inclusion at Macquarie University and the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney I have learned that a lot of research of members of the CRN is addressing the diverse challenges which people experience in regards to inequalities. Importantly, some of this research happens to be very actionable in that outcomes continue to step up in a very real way to face social inequities that adversely affect health, education, economic development, environmental quality, and cultural and artistic representation.

A key lesson has been that ethical research with communities is based on principles of participation. It has been crucial to ensure that at all times research does not become far removed from affected communities despite cooperation and best intentions, and that the community is part of the research team. It’s what I understand as Co-operative Cultural Research - research that focuses on community-based knowledge, needs, activism, communication, and cultural expression (rather than industry, for example). While there is less money in such collaborations, and this means less “value” for relative research institutions, it is a fundamental goal of many researchers.

To ensure emerging cooperative cultural research and researchers in the 21st century continue an ethical, holistic and rigorous approach it is suggested that one day of the CRN State of the Industry conference be dedicated to promoting and working through future cooperative cultural research: best practice, how to avoid pitfalls, and promising interactive methodologies and research that are generating new collaborations, knowledge and action.

To be successful the day would rely on giving voice to a very diverse array of perspectives to look critically and honestly at how such Cooperative Cultural Research sits within the current research climate, and is - and can be - used to deal with what is a diverse array of community requirements. Attendance and voice would be sought from: researchers, community partners, artists, activists, service providers, health professionals, educators, students, policymakers and funders.

Underscoring the day might be questions like:

How cooperation can be a part of cultural research in the 21st century?

Are we up to it within the current research and teaching climate?

How can Cooperative Cultural Research and support reach those who need it most, both globally and locally?

Perhaps, some other key tracks could also be along the lines of:

· Clearing up what Cooperative Cultural Research is, and what it offers stakeholders
· Identifying and addressing pressing social inequities and disparities.
· Identifying current Cooperative Cultural Research projects and what they are trying to address.
· Negotiating best practice in translating theory and research into practice and action in diverse communities.
· Integrating artistic and cultural expression into research and dissemination processes.
· Outlining what it is that community-based organizations (eg. Migrant Resource Centres, sports organizations, aged care centres, health centres) now require of cultural researchers
· Becoming clear about the problems community groups and organizations have faced during cooperation - What does, or would, make them ‘gun shy’ and reticent in taking part in future cooperative research?
· What resources (economic, distance, time, logistical, infrastructure) issues are at play in cooperative research? How can the stakeholders help each other out in this regard?
· What methodological tools work best when undertaking Cooperative Cultural Research?
· What technological tools work best when undertaking, and communicating, Cooperative Cultural Research?
· What are the key steps to ensuring Cooperative Cultural Research meets each stakeholder’ needs?
· How do emerging researchers and community workers establish contacts in an efficient and effective way?
· What would most facilitate future cooperation?
· What are the funding steps to cooperation and collaboration?

Please critique, amend, and add to this list (it is by no means exhaustive).

We are half way through the Advanced Cultural Studies course I’ve been teaching this semester with my colleagues Graeme Turner and Mark Andrejevic. I thought I’d share the course outline to give a sense of what we’ve been up to.

Advanced cultural studies: The work of media consumption

July 23
New media utopias and dystopias
Group discussion

Readings

• Axel Bruns, ‘Reconfiguring television for a networked, produsage context’, Media International Australia, No. 126 2008, pp 82-94.
• Søren Mørk Petersen, ‘Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation’ First Monday 13.3 March 2008
• Kylie Jarrett, ‘Interactivity is Evil! A critical investigation of Web 2.0’, First Monday 13.3 March 2008
• Mark Andrejevic, ‘The Webcam Subculture and the Digital Enclosure’, MediaSpace: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age, Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy (eds) Routledge, 2004. pp 193-208
• David Morley, ‘Rhetorics of the Technological Sublime: the Paradoxes of Technical Rationality’, Media, Modernity and Technology: The Geography of the New Routledge, 2006.

August 6
Sites of consumption
Discussion led by Graeme Turner

Readings

• Amanda Lotz, Chapter 1, The Television Will be Revolutionized, New York University Press, 2007
• Karen Lury, ‘Confessions of a Television Academic in a Post-TV World’, Flow, 7:07 2008
• Jinna Tay and Graeme Turner, ‘What is Television? Comparing media systems in the post-broadcast era’, Media International Australia 126 2008, pp. 71-81
• Michael Keane, Anthony Fung and Albert Moran, Chapter 2, New Television, Globalisation and the East Asian Cultural Imagination, Hong Kong University Press, 2007.

August 20
Work and Labour
Discussion led by Mark Andrejevic

Readings

• Tiziana Terranova ‘Free Labour’, Social Text 18.2 2000, pp. 33-58
• Steve Wright, ‘Reality Check: Are We Living in an Immaterial World?’ Mute Magazine: Culture and politics after the net
• Michael Hardt, ‘Affective Labor’, boundary 2, 26.2 1999 pp.89-100
• Ursula Huws, ‘Material World: The Myth of the Weightless Economy’, The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World, Monthly Review Press 2003, pp. 126-151
• Massimo De Angelis, ‘Marx and Primitive Accumulation: The Continuous Character of Capital’s Enclosures’, The Commoner No 2 September, 2001.

September 3
Production Cultures
Discussion led by Melissa Gregg

Readings

• Mark Banks, ‘The Construction of Creativity’, The Politics of Cultural Work, Palgrave, 2007, pp. 69-93
• Andrew Ross, ‘Jobs in Candyland: An Introduction’, No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs, Basic Books, 2003 pp. 1-20
• John Caldwell. ‘Trade Images and Imagined Communities (Below the Line)’, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television, Duke University Press, 2008 pp. 110-149
• Geert Lovink, ‘“I work here, but I’m cool”: Interview with Alan Liu’, Net Critique
• Screenings of 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

September 17
What was the media?
Discussion led by students

Readings

David Gauntlett, ‘Media Studies 2.0’ Theory.org.uk

Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, ‘Ecological Ethics and Media Technology’, International Journal of Communication 2 (2008)

October 8
Student presentations