Türk kültürel ve yaratıcı endüstrilerinde yaratıcı emek: İstanbul-merkezli görsel tasarımcılar

With the recent discussions around 'post-industrialism', 'knowledge-based economy', 'information society', 'creative economy' and their variants, cultural production has come to the fore in public policy and academy. In the narrative of the new 'creative economy', the term creativity has stood out as a 'human capital' and a form of input and output. The term has been used in debates around economic growth, urban regeneration, and creation of new kinds of workplaces and workers. First in Australia and Britain, and then the other parts of the world, 'creative industries' has shone out as an umbrella term for artistic and cultural production in the new media age. In this context, cultural industries have begun to be seen as a subsector that supplies a variety of informational goods and services to a much more extensive information sector. Within this frame, creative laborers have shone out as a multi- national workforce of skilled workers. They have been named 'no-collar' workers, and their jobs were hailed as 'cool', 'creative', and 'egalitarian'. However, critical media and communication scholars' studies on this workforce have shown that under this 'glowing' image of creative labor in mainstream academic and policy accounts, creative occupations were marked with paradoxical characteristics. Almost all of the findings pointed to an interrelation between neo-liberalism, neo-liberal policy making and the worsening conditions and changing subjectivities of creative laborers in different industrial settings. However, these studies have been criticized for their apparent epistemological ethnocentrism centered on the post-industrial Western context. Drawing from these recent discussions, this thesis set out to ascertain the conditions, experiences, and subjectivities of cultural workers in Turkish CCIs, with a field study on Istanbul-based visual designers. The first chapter tries to define the cultural and creative industries since cultural workers build and experience their careers in these industrial contexts. Although the concepts of 'cultural industries' and 'creative industries' deploy different terminologies and consist of slightly different industrial classifications, they occasionally overlap. Additionally, these industries share much in common regarding their workforce since 'symbol making' is a crucial aspect for both of these industries. However, although both of these concepts are concerned with the creation and circulation of the 'cultural' in contemporary capitalism, they significantly differ in their manner of discourse. The discourses these concepts deploy are highly significant in determining cultural workers' conditions, experiences, and subjectivities. These discourses also shape public policy and academic perspectives on cultural production. While 'cultural industries' is a concept that draws its theoretical roots from the pioneering critical approaches to cultural production such as 'culture industry' and 'political economy of communication', 'creative industries' is a concept that is emerged from the convergence of the creative arts with cultural industries in recent discussions around new media technologies. Scholars have discussed that this terminological shift was triggered by the policy-makers who wanted to turn cultural policy into an industrial policy to boost employment and GDP in the new information- based neo-liberal economy. In recent years, cultural workers' positions in this new 'creativity' discourse have been a significant point of criticism. The second chapter tries to define cultural workers' conditions, experiences, and subjectivities under this terminological shift. Since most CCI work is being performed under post-Fordist arrangements, the chapter also highlights the transformations of labor practices under these arrangements. In the post-Fordist mode of production, repetitive and routinized work becomes less significant and occupational profile changes towards the activities that require the use of knowledge, information, and creativity. However, while workers break from the routine and alienating working conditions of Fordist capitalism, insecure, casualized and irregular work becomes dominant in the post-Fordist mode of production. In this context, precarity becomes as one of the main concepts that characterize post-Fordist labor. With the erosion of social institutions such as the welfare state or trade unions in neo-liberal regimes, the management of risk places upon individuals. Additionally, concepts such as 'flexibility' and 'informality' become increasingly important in the global neo-liberal restructuring of the economy. Cultural workers become the poster children of this new post-Fordist labor. In this context, a growing body of literature emerged on the conditions of creative laborers with a particular emphasis on the questions of inequality, precariousness, quality of working life, and the possibilities of collective action among cultural workers. On the other hand, drawing from governmentality theory, scholars have discussed that creative laborers are not just passive alienated workers in an industry that is marked with the cohesive effects of the processes such as flexibilization, individualization and precarization, but also are active-but-governed subjects who seek self-realization and pleasure through their work, and who embrace enterprise values and other neoliberal ideas that surround precarious cultural work. Thus, cultural workers are claimed as self-exploited victims of neoliberal creative workplaces. However, the universal validity of these studies has been a matter of debate among media and communication scholars in recent years since these studies predominately took place in the post-industrial Western context of cultural work. These scholars suggest that the taken-for-granted notions of cultural work established by Western scholars, such as entrepreneurial subjectivism, precarity, and informality must be rethought and provincialized. The third chapter contextualizes the field study by providing background information on the Turkish creative economy and the creative labor that operates under it. Turkish creative economy has grown rapidly in recent years. Istanbul stands out as the flagship of the Turkish economy, hosting almost half the country's cultural workforce. However, unlike the creative economies of the West, Türkiye does not have 'appropriate' cultural policies or specific labor laws that govern creative labor. Industrial development in Turkish cultural sectors primarily relies on creative entrepreneurs' individual or collective efforts rather than well-tailored cultural policies. After looking at the findings from previous studies on cultural workers in this context, the chapter moves on to the field study of this thesis: Istanbul-based visual designers. After conducting semi-structured interviews with 19 Istanbul-based visual designers, which have been selected by a snowball sampling method, the findings are presented under two main chapters: one corresponding to the quality of working life among workers in the field and the other on the experiences and the subjectivities. The findings indicate that Istanbul-based visual designers' labor takes a highly flexible, individualized, and precarious form. Based on this fact, the study has examined the role of these processes in shaping Istanbul-based visual designers' quality of working lives, work experiences, and subjectivities. In terms of flexibilization, it is observed that Istanbul-based visual designers' labor is highly flexible regarding working practices and recruitment systems. Almost all participants emphasized the flexibility of their laboring practices and job-finding processes. While flexibility can be a source of a positive experience as it provides workers some freedom to plan their own working program, its effects on workers' lives are mostly adverse. Due to the flexibility of their work, Istanbul-based visual designers' work intensifies, and they take additional responsibilities according to company or client demands, usually without a pay increase. It is also observed that work in Turkish CCIs is marked with high levels of precariousness. Additionally, it is observed that career advancement mechanisms are also highly flexible, informal, and individualized. Freelancing stands out as a highly popular and desired working model among Istanbul- based visual designers. With the erosion of social institutions such as the welfare state and trade unions in Türkiye, structural problems and risks surrounding the world of work are placed upon individuals. In this context, Istanbul-based visual designers rely on informal communities mostly consisting of their friends. This process is linked with the individualization of the workforce since workers use these networks as an individualized solution to the systemic flexploitation problem. However, informality and individualization should not just be thought of as a process that leads to precarization. Beyond its individualizing character, informality also creates new socialites and solidarity practices among Istanbul-based visual designers, which are 'relational'. Despite the harsh conditions presented by post-Fordist capitalism, it seems like Istanbul-based visual designers want to keep working in their creative occupations. It is observed that Istanbul-based visual designers have high levels of passion for their creative work. They seek self-affirmation, public-esteem, and self- esteem through their work. This leads them to self-exploit. Another important finding is on the subjectivities of Istanbul-based visual designers. It is observed that most Istanbul-based visual designers seem to embrace enterprise values. Istanbul-based visual designers seem to be entrepreneurial creative self-exploitative subjects, but unlike the cultural workers in the post-industrial Western context, they do not show self-blaming behaviors. Instead, they blame structural problems such as the economy, clients, sector, and 'culture'. In short, to create and enhance their entrepreneurial potential, they want structural changes in their sector, however, they do not take any collective action to change it. Instead, they want to move and work in mostly Euro- American countries, as they find these countries more 'respectful' to their occupation, where they have more 'professional' clients than clients in Türkiye and where payments are higher. This stands out as a threat to the Turkish cultural economy, as workers do not want to work with Turkish clients or agencies because of the combined effects of precariousness and abusive informality. Keywords: Creative Labor, Creative Industries, Cultural Industries, post-Fordism, Cultural Work