"Congratulations, it's a labour market!" A causal-explanatory account of the birth of the UK early music musician labour market

The issue of how a 'new' labour market emerges for the first time has been given little explicit attention in labour market literature. Indeed, there has been a general ontological assumption that labour markets just exist. This paper seeks to explore this issue by providing a causal-explanatory account of how the UK early music musician labour market emerged in the early 1970s. This is developed through the application of Archerâ´┐¢´┐¢s Morphogenetic Approach, which recognises a stratified and transformational social ontology. It is argued that the resulting analysis takes account of the dynamic and transitory nature of the labour market, thus emphasising the need to re-think the concept in terms of structures and the actions of agents, rather than structures alone. As such, the interdependency of labour market, firm, and market, through the mediation of human agency, is highlighted. The paper makes a call for further research to understand this interplay. It is suggested that the â´┐¢´┐¢dynamic of entrepreneurshipâ´┐¢´┐¢ represents a useful conceptual way forward in this respect.