Dawson, Andrew (2012) Labouring in Hollywood’s motion picture industry and the promise of ‘flexible specialisation’. In: Dawson, Andrew and Holmes, Sean P., (eds.) Working in the global film industries: creativity, systems, space, patronage. Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK, pp. 21-38. ISBN 9781780930206

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Abstract

Flexible specialisation,’ as a conceptual framework, has exerted a powerful influence over how we understand Hollywood’s motion picture industry. Developed in the 1980s by Michael Storper, Susan Christopherson, Allen J. Scott and others, they claim to detect a new form of industrial organisation built around small competitive firms exerting powerful agglomeration influences that not only delivered greater efficiency but also promised to improve the working lives of those inside Hollywood. For supporters of flexible specialisation there exists an industrial divide separating the modern competitive era from its oligopolistic and less attractive past. This divide is represented by a series of Fordist/Post Fordist binaries: between mass production and flexible specialisation, oligopoly and competitive small firms, and between semi-skilled operatives and craft labour. Such optimism about the present industry stands in marked contrast to the darker vision of many of critics of flexible specialisation who predict a degraded, ‘globalised’ workforce as ‘runaway production’ gathers pace. Dawson argues that flexible specialisation, by inserting a spurious industrial divide, not only distorts the recent development of motion pictures but also the entire industry’s history since the 1920s. In order to fully explain the emergence of flexible specialisation and to grasp its political aspirations, he insists that we need to remember that it emerged during the Reagan era deregulation at a time of severe dislocation in the Los Angeles economy when many intellectuals looked for assurance that future industrial organisation could combine efficiency and social progress.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	[1] "Labouring in Hollywood’s motion picture industry and the promise of ‘flexible specialisation’" is Chapter 2 in Section I: Systems of Production of "Working in the global film industries: creativity, systems, space, patronage", edited by Andrew Dawson and Sean P. Holmes, (2012). [2] "Labouring in Hollywood’s motion picture industry and the promise of ‘flexible specialisation’" is based on a paper presented at the 8th European Social Science History Conference, Ghent Belgium, 13-16 April 2010, entitled "’Flexible Specialisation’ and New Hollywood: Time for a Paradigm Shift?". See GALA Item 4576. [2] ISBN 9781780930206 (hbk), 9781780930237 (pbk), 9781780930213 (ebk)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	United States, motion picture industry, flexible specialisation, Fordism, post-Fordism, historiography
Subjects:	E History America > E11 America (General) H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
Pre-2014 Departments:	School of Humanities & Social Sciences School of Humanities & Social Sciences > Department of Communications & Creative Arts
Related URLs:	Publisher Publisher Organisation
Last Modified:	23 Sep 2019 12:12
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/9822

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