Working the field: career pathways amongst artists and writers in Shanghai

This chapter explores the social space available for creative subjects in China, based on interviews with artists and writers in Shanghai. We argue that the space for creative autonomy is configured differently in China to the way it is presented within Western creative labour studies. Autonomy in China rests on a sense of serving the public good rather than on Romanticism’s free creativity, and links to a state project are long-standing. Building on Bourdieu’s notion of the creative field, we suggest that the state adds a distinct parallel polarity to that of restricted versus commercial production. Outside of both commerce and state-sanctioned art there is a very precarious space of independent cultural activity, less to do with censorship than the absence of a socially sanctioned space for an ‘artistic’ subject.