Working with amateur labour : between culture and economy

The theme of this special issue emerged out of a panel organised by the issue editors for the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia (CSAA) annual conference in 2010. In the months preceding the conference we were struck by similarities emerging between the demands placed on professional lives dominated by the imperatives of the neoliberal marketplace of the contemporary university and the drive among non-professionals to position themselves in relation to similar structures, for what appeared to be no logical (and no financial) motive at all. In everyday communities, in the entertainment industry and especially in the complex architecture of the digital media system it increasingly appeared to be the case that being called professional was the highest compliment one could receive.