The Aspirational Labor of an Academic
The Aspirational Labor of an Academic
This concluding chapter explains how the ideologies and social practices propelling the social media sphere bear a striking resemblance to contemporary academe. With its staid, ivory tower facade, the academy might seem far removed from the creative industries, a cluster of professions marked by an aura of bohemian cool. But it is much less of a conceptual leap to understand the creation and dissemination of knowledge as a form of cultural work. And many of the same venerated ideals—autonomy, flexibility, the perennial quest to “do what one loves”—seem to animate workers in both arenas. Indeed, academia is unique among professions that fuse the personal identity of their workers so intimately with the work output, which might well be said of the creative industries.
Keywords: aspirational labor, academia, creative industries, social media, ideologies, social practices, contemporary academe, cultural work
Yale Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.