I’m so grateful to Rebecca for her work on this and the experience of collaborating together. It’s taught me a lot about the difficulty of writing interdisciplinary analysis – and reminded me of the challenges in producing internet research beyond social sciences paradigms. I really value the determination and imagination Becky is showing in bringing together different disciplinary influences in her PhD work, which this paper has developed from.

Unfortunately in the process of peer review we were asked to remove the song lyrics we originally included in the paper. (I hadn’t realised that copyright was so strict… and have had song lyrics published in the same journal before). Anyway, when reading, know that we originally wanted this as our main intertextual reference. Lily says it better than us.

I am also conscious of being heavily influenced from having just finished Andrew Ross’s latest book, Bird on Fire. This fantastic and important work covers so much that I can’t manage to address in this piece: property speculation, migration, climate change, gender and racism. It’s what I have in mind when I try to link the forms of biomediated calculation that service our online experiences as much as our credit rating.

I’ll post more about Andrew’s book another soon; I just mention it here to signal how much the financial crisis seems tied to what I’m describing as ‘the waning of the commute’. Put another way: there are suburbs, and then there are suburbs.

Just before Christmas, the South Australian Government’s Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology released the public report on our findings.

This is the only research of its kind that took place at the point of implementation at one of the five first release sites. Its recommendations therefore have relevance for ongoing stages of the project, just as they give insight into attitudes about the NBN among ‘ordinary’ Australians.

In addition to the cultural analysis of the town, a feature of the report is the survey of 422 Willunga school students that we conducted towards the end of the study. This offers some interesting new data on young people’s use of online technology.

You can download the report here, or let me know if you would like a hard copy.

In Australia a couple of excerpts have been published online if you are after a peek. At Inside Story, “Home Offices and Remote Parents” comes from chapter seven of the book. This is the chapter that lots of readers seem to react to, as it contains some of the most troubling stories of working parents with signs of chronic connectivity. Thanks to Peter Browne for his efforts putting this together.

Over at The Conversation, the piece I intended to write was sidelined with the news of Steve Jobs’ passing. As it happens, Jobs has a significant place in the concluding arguments for the book, so I decided to share some of them here. Thanks to Pat McGrath for that opportunity.

There have been some great radio experiences I have been lucky to have over the past little while, too, which I just wanted to store here for posterity. Thanks to Steve Austin and Richard Glover for having me on their programs as well.

The string of events that have unfolded since the book’s release – which also now include Occupy Wall Street – makes me realise how much more I would like to say about work and intimacy in future. For the moment, though, I want to announce the launch party for the book in Sydney in a few weeks. Everyone is welcome. The details are here and below. Come if you can!

Date: Thursday November 17th 6.00 for a 6.30pm

Place: The Beauchamp Hotel – Terrace Bar – 1st Floor
Corner of Oxford & South Dowling Sts, Darlinghurst, Sydney

To be launched by Annabel Crabb, the ABC’s chief political online writer and presenter of The Drum

RSVPs advised by November 15th to Simon Spivak at sspivak@wiley.com

RETHINKING CONVERGENCE/CULTURE
An introduction
James Hay & Nick Couldry

MORE SOCIOLOGY, MORE CULTURE, MORE POLITICS
Or, a modest proposal for ‘convergence’ studies
Nick Couldry

ARE WE ALL PRODUSERS NOW?
Convergence and media audience practices
S. Elizabeth Bird

CONTEXTUALISING AUTHOR-AUDIENCE CONVERGENCES
‘New’ technologies’ claims to increased participation, novelty and uniqueness
Nico Carpentier

THE POLITICS OF CONVERGENCE
On the role of the mobile object
Ginette Verstraete

WOMEN’S WORK
Affective labour and convergence culture
Laurie Ouellette & Julie Wilson

CONVERGENCE CULTURE AND THE LEGACY OF FEMINIST CULTURAL STUDIES
Catherine Driscoll & Melissa Gregg

OLD, NEW AND MIDDLE-AGED MEDIA CONVERGENCE
Richard Maxwell & Toby Miller

THE WORK THAT AFFECTIVE ECONOMICS DOES
Mark Andrejevic

USER-GENERATED DISCONTENT
Convergence, polemology and dissent
Jack Bratich

CONVERGENCE ON THE STREET
Rethinking the authentic/commercial binary
Sarah Banet-Weiser

‘POPULAR CULTURE’ IN A CRITIQUE OF THE NEW POLITICAL REASON
James Hay

SURRENDERING THE SPACE
Convergence culture, Cultural Studies and the curriculum
Graeme Turner

Thanks to Nick and James for their work on this, and for the invitation to be part of the project.

Even the middle classes, for the first time in their history, are feeling the pinch. They have not known actual hunger yet, but more and more of them find themselves floundering in a sort of deadly net of frustration in which it is harder and harder to persuade yourself that you are either happy, active, or useful. Even the lucky ones at the top, the real bourgeoisie, are haunted periodically by a consciousness of the miseries below, and still more by fears of the menacing future. And this is merely a preliminary stage, in a country still rich with the loot of a hundred years. Presently there may be coming God knows what horrors – horrors of which, in this sheltered island, we have not even a traditional knowledge. – George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

At the time, this passage seemed to capture some of the texture of the 2008 financial crisis – an event that marked a turning point for many of the employees studied in my book.

Whether it was the sense of foreboding haunting the workplace as job losses became a reality, or the broader feeling of anxiety that the turmoil in global markets spelled for investors, the middle class office workers I interviewed in boom time Brisbane were far from encountering actual hunger or poverty.

Their tremendous work ethic, which saw them attached to their email from morning to night, stemmed from a different set of fears: that the happiness and success to which they felt entitled as ambitious professionals could suddenly not be their destiny. “I’m starting to realize I might have to go down almost 50 per cent of what I was getting paid,” a retrenched marketing manager told me: “maybe even less, because there’s just so much competition out there.”

The publication of my book in the past week has coincided with a renewed period of economic uncertainty. As the US battles the prospect of recession, and volatility reigns on the share market, riots have spread across Orwell’s “sheltered island,” to the disbelief of so many. We have witnessed scenes of horror as the extent of ordinary political disaffection has been revealed.

Watching these events – on cable television, Facebook and YouTube – an already clear division in the experience of power and participation in a knowledge economy is further reinforced. Our culture is one that values and rewards ambition, particularly when this is appropriately targeted to the pursuit of paid work. But it cannot afford to acknowledge that such aspirations will never be sustainable for all. It is abundantly clear that there are structural conditions that determine the distribution of opportunity, in spite of the ways neoliberal discourses try to make failure a personal responsibility.

A major motivation for my recent research has been to better understand a situation in which so many educated professionals remain protected from an awareness of others’ lack of access to work – how social inequalities fall off the radar in the course of busy day-to-day priorities. When your own job is both demanding and rewarding, it is hard to relate to the much larger majority in a global economy for whom (to use the words of Andre Gorz) the spoils of a merit-based society are forever distant, the prospect of fulfilling work “a bad joke.”

I wanted to mark this week by returning to Orwell, especially since the quotation above was cut from my manuscript in the production process. For the publisher, the difficulty of securing copyright for the passage outweighed the significance of its message. And right now this seems to be just another indication of our misplaced legal and political priorities.

One is that it breaks the stranglehold of multinational publishing houses owning the terms of access to our work. While I always appreciate the effort that goes in to editing and peer-review, traditional scholarly publishing is not always an ideal way to share new ideas. This is particularly important for those of us who want to be read by people other than currently employed academics and enrolled students. Given the politics of institutional subscriptions to journals it is hardly the case that publication guarantees a relevant readership anyway, leaving aside the open secret about just how much time teaching academics have to read articles at all.

Tied to this is the way in which existing networks of academic exchange – be they conference circuits or “walled gardens” like Facebook – sometimes constitute a narrowing of consensus among established interest groups. What’s striking to me within 24 hours of joining academia.edu is the number of non-Anglosphere users. This is genuinely exciting and pedagogical and it ties in with some of my longer term efforts (through involvement with the International Association of Cultural Studies, for instance) to agitate against Anglo-American dominance in scholarship.

I was reminded and re-angered about this recently at the Boston ICA during the session on “The university in crisis.” Despite the different geographical location of the four speakers, and a searing indictment of the Bologna Process offered by my fellow panellist Isabel Gil, question time was dominated by US speakers spanning several generations seeking to discuss exclusively US experiences. This left me lamenting the function of “international” as well as “communication” in “International Communication Association” – and wondering what lessons might need to be learned for such a grouping to attract associates from further afield. (To the young guy who came up to Isabel and I afterwards and apologised on behalf of his peers: thanks for noticing.)

So, I will continue to post publications here on the blog – and it’s perhaps not a coincidence that there is a new one I’m adding today on autonomism and the politics of love. But in an effort to expand critical horizons (and be open to the “common wealth” of scholarly peers beyond Empire, to draw from Hardt and Negri), I will also be urging lots of you to make use of this fantastic, open-access resource.

Another publication just out is “Do Your Homework: New media, old problems”, which I wrote during the period that Julia Gillard eventually became the first female Prime Minister of Australia. The article includes some snapshots from Work’s Intimacy too. More importantly, it is part of the 10th anniversary edition of Feminist Media Studies journal. This is a fantastic collection featuring some of the biggest names in the field – so it’s a huge honour to be involved. Congratulations and happy birthday, Cynthia and Lisa! Looking forward to partying with you in Boston soon.

This book collection offers a critical companion to the Australian television series Underbelly. Drawing on a range of perspectives – from academics, journalists and critics to the show’s production team and the wider public – it provides a comprehensive account of Underbelly’s development, screening and reception. In doing so, it explores the social, political and economic conditions that mark a successful program in the landscape of Australian television.

A feature of this collection will be to showcase new partnerships developing across media and cultural institutions in Australian screen industries. A cross-section of work in contemporary media, journalism and cultural studies will discuss key concerns for these fields, and leading critics will illustrate the possibilities for contemporary screen studies analysis.

Writers, producers, actors and directors on each of the seasons to date are invited to contribute to the collection and/or participate in interviews. “Below the line” production staff and workers in affiliated areas (eg. publicity for the series and its distributors) are particularly welcome. Potential contributors for these formats should contact the editors before submitting an abstract.

Several of the chapters for the book are already commissioned, so the purpose of this call is to fill gaps in scope. We seek chapters responding to themes in each of the three seasons of Underbelly, such as:

- underworld and criminal networks
- white collar crime, including institutional corruption
- the drug trade
- commodity distribution and logistics
- drug consumption (including comparative class demographics)
- police culture and/or the politics of bureaucracy
- tabloid media and the law
- inter-state rivalry and cultural prejudice
- the night time economy, including the privatization of security
- sex work
- migration and ethnicity (especially in relation to alternative and/or leisure economies)
- cultural tourism and city branding
- the politics of city space and suburbia
- class and aspiration
- ordinariness
- masculinity and homosociality

Industry concerns for the book include:

- screenwriting and adaptation
- franchising in a global television market
- state and corporate funding strategies
- copyright and distribution (including the piracy threat)
- ratings and advertising
- casting and the Australian acting pool
- the pedigree of successful production teams
- prospects for Australian television careers

Potential chapter contributors are advised to read the following article for further indication of the material of interest to this collection:

Melissa Gregg and Jason Wilson (2010) “Underbelly, true crime and the cultural economy of infamy” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 24 (3): 411-427

Abstracts for written chapters should be 250 words and should be sent to:

Melissa Gregg: melissa.gregg@sydney.edu.au
Sue Turnbull: s.turnbull@latrobe.edu.au
Jason Wilson: jason.wilson@canberra.edu.au

Abstracts are due December 31.

Accepted chapters, of 5000 words maximum, will be due at the beginning of April, 2011.

Glen introduces the launch and reads some words from Greg.

Here are some photos from the launch last week. Thanks a bunch to Glen and Kane for documenting the moment! It was great to see so many friends, colleagues and collaborators enjoying the drinks and pizza. We even sold out of books (though I didn’t ask how many there were to start with!).

For anyone still after a copy, there is an order form here that Duke has sent through.

I think I left my speech on my work computer, so I can’t post it as promised until I am back in the office. But I think I managed to explain some of the political and personal motivations for the collection alongside all the thank yous. Looking forward to hearing from some readers next!

Professor Katherine Gibson

Speech time!

Contributors Andrew and Lorne with fans