ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author draws on the findings of two research projects in Australia. One was a close-focus study in which 58 people from four fields of intellectual labour were interviewed about their lives and careers, during 1997–8. The second was a cross-sectional telephone survey of 500 intellectual workers, drawn from forty occupational categories and all states, conducted in April–June 2000. To be an intellectual – at least at this stage of history – is to be one of a group performing a particular kind of labour and requiring certain kinds of resources. Though there is still a significant number who work independently – some 19 per cent of the respondents in our survey were in a personal practice or a small partnership – the great majority of contemporary intellectual workers are employees in organizations. There is a sense of equality within the intellectual workplace and there is a good deal of networking in it and beyond it.