'Like Skydiving without a Parachute': How Class Origin Shapes Occupational Trajectories in British Acting

Free and for all? A comparative study of programs with user fees in North American and Danish public libraries

Purpose

As a research topic within the field of LIS, programs in public libraries are underexplored, and the question of user fees for programs has not previously been addressed.

Design/methodology/approach

This article compares data collected from two individually conducted studies of public library programs in North America and Denmark to enrich our understanding of user fees in relation to programs.

Findings

The comparative analysis shows both similarities and deviations regarding the levying of fees for library programs. While paying a fee to attend a program is rather normal in Denmark, it is more of a fringe idea in North America.

Research limitations/implications

By exploring a previously understudied facet of contemporary public librarianship, this article opens up new avenues for inquiry regarding how the relative accessibility and availability of programs relate to theoretical discussions about programs as public library services.

Practical implications

This article provides library managers with needed information about how to conceptualize the roles of programs as public library services.

Social implications

As programming surges to the fore in contemporary public librarianship, the levying of user fees has social implications in terms of social equity and the public library ethos of free and equal access for all.

Originality/value

This article is the first study of user fees for public library programs, as well as among the first cross-national comparisons of programming as a dimension of public librarianship.

Identity as career capital: enhancing employability in the creative industries and beyond

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to broaden the conversation about the link between identity and employability by investigating how identity can function as a type of career capital. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1990) theory of practice and Côté’s (2016) identity capital model, the authors introduce the concept of identity capitalization and elaborate on the career practices people engage in to convert identity into career capital based on studies of careers in the creative industries.

Design/methodology/approach

The conceptual development is based on an examination of studies of careers in the creative industries. The authors move beyond a single idiosyncratic occupational setting and offer insights about how individuals acquire, accumulate and deploy identity capital in response to varying occupational demands and institutional norms.

Findings

The authors identify three patterns of work – display work, authenticity work and personation work – that creative professionals use to harness identity as career capital to enhance their employability. The authors find that both the demand for authenticity and the existence of social inequalities in the creative industries present challenges for the acquisition, accumulation and deployment of identity capital.

Originality/value

The ability to harness one’s identity for career capital has become increasingly important for career actors in the face of a challenging labor market. This paper provides a conceptual understanding of the process of identity capitalization and presents concrete career practices in real-world settings. It also offers practical advice for individuals wishing to capitalize on their identity to maximize career opportunities.

What makes for a successful sociology? A response to "Against a descriptive turn"

This paper responds to Nick Gane's "Against a descriptive turn". I argue that descriptive research strategies are more open and inclusive than those which purport to be causal  where explanatory adequacy is assessed by expert insiders. I also show how open descriptive strategies can assist a wider explanatory purpose when these are conceived in non-positivist ways. I argue that epochalist sociology lacks an adequate temporal ontology because it collapses descriptive specificity back into overarching epoch descriptions. Finally, I argue that if the entire range of publications associated with the Great British Class Survey are considered, that it has demonstrated  a productive way of recognising  the significance of class which has facilitated major research advances in its wake.

The contribution of supply and demand factors to the reproduction of hierarchies online: The case of crowdfunding of scientific research

We conceptualize mechanisms that explain how social uses of media technologies, especially online platforms and crowds, reproduce, or modify inequalities, and explore these in the context of the crowdfunding of science. We distinguish between "supply side" factors related to the ability of actors given their institutional standing to use this funding approach, and "demand side" factors related to the crowd's sensitivity to the institutional standing of those actors. We collected data on scientists requesting funding for their studies on Experiment.com , arguably the most popular scientific crowdfunding platform, and investigated the factors contributing to initiation and success. Supply side factors were important: crowdfunding appeals tended to come from scientists affiliated with larger, wealthier, and more active and prestigious institutions. However, demand side factors were not as important at the institutional level. Crowdfunding projects' success was not predicted by the institution's status, but rather by the number of appeals from an institution.

Public Libraries and Walkable Neighborhoods

Public libraries constitute a ubiquitous social infrastructure found in nearly every community in the United States and Canada. The hypothesis of this study is that public libraries can be understood as important supports of walking in neighborhoods, not only as walkable destinations, but also as providers of programs that increase walking in communities. Recent work by public health scholars has analyzed how libraries contribute to community health. This particular topic has not previously been researched. As such, a qualitative, exploratory approach guides this study. Grounded theory techniques are used in a content analysis of a corpus of 94 online articles documenting this phenomenon. Results show that across North America public librarians endeavor to support walking through programs oriented around stories, books, and local history, as well as through walking groups and community partnerships. While this exploratory study has many limitations, it does set the stage for future, more rigorous research on the contributions public libraries and public librarians make to walking in neighborhoods. The principal conclusion of this study is that additional research is needed to comprehensively understand the intersection between public librarianship and public health.

The composition of precarity: 'emerging' composers' experiences of opportunity culture in contemporary classical music

This paper examines the precarious working lives of 'emerging' composers attempting to build a career in the world of new classical music in the UK. This topic is approached by considering the 'composition opportunity', success in which is seen as an important element in 'making it' in this sphere. We argue that such schemes in fact manifest a crucial tension in the nature of artistic labour, and are, at the very least, problematic in their function as conduits towards full professional identity. They may instead act to maintain the precarious working situation of composers in a neoliberal age. The working lives of artists are all too rarely illuminated, and new music composers are no exception; this survey of 47 emerging composers is the largest study of such individuals in the UK.