“I was in a shaky place”: Fragile identities of indie musicians and writers in disruptive performativity cultures

Charlotte Gilmore, Christopher Bilton

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

There is currently burgeoning research around identities. In particular identities and the insecurities surrounding them are often a condition and consequence of working to be creative within in organizations (Knights & Clarke, 2014). For Giddens (1991, p.185) ‘…in the reflexive project of the self, the narrative of self-identity is inherently fragile’, while for Knights and Clarke (2014, p.352) professional identities are increasingly ‘insecure and fragile’. Drawing on a long-standing sociological literature on identity threat, (Durkheim, 1933), studies of managers depict them as locked in continuing states of ‘profound anxiety’ (Jackall, 1988, p.40) and stricken by frailties (Casey, 1995); while workers’ lives are portrayed as dominated by permanent, unsettling anxiety (Burawoy, 1979). Insecurity is intrinsic to the notion of identity; it is insecure because it is dependent on others’ judgments and evaluations of the self and these can never be fully anticipated (Berger & Luckmann 1967). Individuals’ and groups’ working lives are ‘…filled with a desire for security’ (Knights & Willmott, 1999, p.56), but ‘…the socially constructed nature of identity renders it inherently unstable…and…highly problematic’ (Collinson, 1992, p.27). Identities are insecure to the extent that they are subject to the potential of being socially accepted or unaccepted. Alvesson, (1994) notes that studies which display a discursive performance of identity tend to cast organizational actors as security seekers who seek to secure their fragile ‘selves’ by establishing or restoring a sense of continuity, coherence and distinctiveness. Within organisations there is a sense that there is a continuous process of ‘becoming’ with no possibility of final closure (Ashforth, 1998: 213); a sense of the vulnerable self closely intertwined with our sense of who we are, and who we could become.Our focus is on the social dynamics at play in the construction of fragile identities in disruptive creative performativity cultures. We focus on independent musicians and writers, who compose and construct their identities through interactions with band and audience members, readers, co-creators and the environments in which they perform and write. Despite the image of disruption, rebellion, coolness and anti-authority that is associated with indie musicians and writers, what we found was far more dubitable, transient and unstable than the image may have led us to believe. It is possible that the image is merely an act of bravado to disguise personal insecurities. However, our findings indicate a subtle flow between dissonant balances which occur as the musicians and writers perform both their creative output and their identities. We seek to contribute to the understanding of fragility in its relation to disruptive performance within the organizing and identity work literatures. We suggest that these fragile selves vary often moment to moment as does the discursive business within a well-understood system of meaning – in this context while demonstrating a paradoxical desire of both disrupting the norm and a need of belonging to a creative community creates an ever present insecurity, and the need to disrupt. Thus we address our research question: in this apparently informal, un-regulated, creative context how do independent professional musicians and writers affirm their claim to belong through composing themselves? Our context is the ever changing and disruptive creative organizational environment within which the independent musicians and writers seek to present and perform their work.ReferencesAlvesson, M. (1994) Talking in Organisations: Managing Identity and Impressions in an Advertising Agency. Organisations Studies, 15(4), 535-563.Ashforth, B. E. 1998. Becoming: How does the process of identification unfold? In D. A. Whetten & P. C. Godfrey (Eds.), Identity in organizations: Building theory through conversations: 213-222. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Berger P., Luckmann T. (1967). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. London: Penguin.Burawoy M. (1979). Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labor process under monopoly capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Casey C. (1995). Work, self and society. London: RoutledgeCollinson D. L. (1992). Managing the shopfloor: Subjectivity, masculinity and workplace culture. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Durkheim, E. (1933). The division of labor in society. New York: Free Press.Giddens A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and identity in the late modern age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jackall, R. (1988). Moral mazes. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Knights D., Clarke C. (2014). It’s a bittersweet symphony, this life: Fragile academic selves and insecure identities at work. Organization Studies, 35, 335–357.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2018
EventArt of Management and Organisation - Brighton
Duration: 30 Aug 20181 Sept 2018

Conference

ConferenceArt of Management and Organisation
CityBrighton
Period30/08/181/09/18

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