FIMS Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2010
Volume
10
Issue
3-4
Journal
Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization
First Page
337
Last Page
355
Abstract
This article examines the apparent paradox of the persistence of long-term employment contracts for cultural industry ‘talent’ in the context of broader trends toward short-term, flexible employment. While aspirants are numberless, bankable talent is in short supply. Long-term talent contracts appear to embody a durable, perhaps inherent, axiom in employment: labour shortage favours employees. The article approaches this axiom through the lens of recent reconsiderations of the concept of ‘primitive accumulation’. In the case of employment, this concept highlights employers’ impetus to transcend legal and customary barriers to and limits on their capacity to capture and compel labour. The article supports this argument through the analysis of contests between Los Angeles-based recording artists and record companies over the California and federal laws that govern their political-economic relationships. These struggles reveal a pattern of attempts by record companies to overcome or change laws that limit their power in the employment relation. The article suggests that as contractual norms change under digitalization, familiar political dynamics continue to characterize the relationships between recording artists and the companies that depend on their labor.
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