Reading Notes

Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community And Everyday Life

The creative class is defined as “... a fast-growing, highly educated, and well-paid segment of the workforce on whose efforts corporate profits and economic growth increasingly depend.” (Florida)

Florida considers creativity to be the driving force of economic growth. The creative class that engages in creativity therefore drives America economically. He notices that companies are moving to or are being formed in the cities/regions, where there is a high ‘Creativity Index’ - a new measure of a city’s or regions overall standing in the creative economy developed by Florida. Economic growth has been focused in places that were tolerant, diverse, and open to creativity. These are places where creative people want to work.

Is the ‘creative class’ conscious of its own dominant role in society? If this creative class can become conscious of its self as a movement, it can lead our society in many ways, including overcoming many of its problems, in the best case scenaro.

But isn’t it more likely that in the system that we have, where creative force is restrained by the copyright law and is only one of the subsistems in the great economic structure driven by profit, the creative class would only replace the existing structures and strenghten its factory machanisms as described in Adorno and Horkheimer’s ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightment as Mass Deception’.

Isn’t the creative class only a step in the evolution of the class system, that if empowered could lead to more increasing class divisions? (Again, in the the context of the liberal capitalism in which we live in.)

Isn’t it to naive to think the “...blurring the old distinction between white-collar work (done by decisionmakers) and blue-collar work (done by those who follow orders)” would happen without the border/distinction/line only moving to a one class lower - to the traditional working class.

How would the rise of the creative class be a reflected on a development of a general state of the world’s economics in a free/open culture?

I my opinion, categorizing people or the working force into classes (what ever they are) is a thing that can potentialy mean only switching repleacing the same power structure with a different order.

The power of the creative class (in the way Florida describes it) will, once it gets openly eknowledged, going to experience the faster and more radical transformation of the cultural sector into the culture industry in Adorno-Horkheimer scenario.

Florida argues that in the attempt to attract the creative class to their cities, their leaders instead “... create facsimiles of neighborhoods or retail districts, replacing the old and authentic with the new and generic---and in doing so drive the creative class away.”.

Michel Gondry, You'll Like This Film Because You're In It

Would we still be discussing to which extent Goundry’s factory is a communal project or author’s directed project, or if the project alterative/innovative in its approach or if it’s just following the well known hollywood paradigm if Gondty stated that his project’s intention was to demystify and popularize the film culture among the communities that don't get to participate in these kind of activities? What if the official reason for making this kind of project was to introduce the processes of filmmaking to, especially younger generations of people by bringing it closer to them and even inspire them to continue doing it in a way.

In my opinion, this is maybe the greatest value of this project, although the project might markedly differ from location to location and from context to context (US / Rotterdam / Brighton & Hove Children’s Festival). And although it isn't defined as such, we should take it under consideration while talking about this project.

It would be interesting to find out how many (young) people got interested in the film culture and continued with the filming/acting/directing practice in some way.

Chuck Kleinhans, Creative Industries and the Cold Hard Facts of Global Capitalism

In this essay/article Kleinhans is explaining the core and the essence of the world's driving force - profit, through a very skeptical and critical approach. By looking at what happened with the "creative industries" in the recession he negates the existance of the creative class in Floridian sence.

Through his friend's example he explains: "…it is the nature of capitalism to change forms: the capitalist corporation in this case simply sought to maximize profit, to do as much as it could with the resource of which it had taken control. What nation was the source of the wealth was unimportant, what nation was the final market was irrelevant, what marketable product was produced was insignificant — the only thing that mattered was that capital could be more efficiently expanded."

And concludes: "The big lesson here, especially for communications and media folks, is that we need to understand capitalism from the point of what it is fundamentally about. And that is not about specific services, products, or ideological representations (what we usually study), but about expanding and maximizing capital itself."

As opposed to Richards Florida's notion of the creative class as a sign of progressiveness, economical growth and "the best approach to future prosperity", Kleinhans is emphasizing the economically precarious nature of todays "creative industry" workers.

“The term “precarity” has come to refer to insecure employment in the neoliberal era. Precarious work describes non-standard employment that is poorly paid, insecure, unprotected, and that cannot support a household.”

And the reason why this phenomenon occurred is: "Globally, the increase in precarious labor is often linked to globalization, information technology, and shifts from manufacturing to service economies. However, we need to be careful here. Precarity is not a necessary result of these changes. Rather, it is a deliberate policy and aspect of neoliberalism in its relation to the labor force. Such a policy aims to make the situation of owners, of capitalists, of employers (even non-profits like many colleges) more flexible. Rather than full-time, continuous work, of indefinite duration, protected by labor unions and government regulations, with standard hours, social benefits, and a social wage (that is one that allows you to support a family), precarious work goes in the other direction."

Kleinhans is opposing Florida by saying that in a neo-liberal, capitalistic world there are no solid grounds for the sustainability of his theory. Since the profit is extremely resourceful and the nature of "creative jobs" is getting more precarious, they are only becoming more and more in its service.

He lists the reasons of the increased unemployment in the “creative fields” as very good examples of Florida’s theory has become outdated:

- outside subcontractors (rather than e.g. in-house designer) - off shored cheaper work (rather than local services) - 'speedup' (the common term in traditional manufacturing to describe the technique of the employers increasing productivity by increasing the pace of an assembly line), - 'crisis' atmosphere (a technique of increasing productivity by makin people fear of loosing a job) - "Why Are Artists Poor?" study (the lack of orthodox economics principles that are characteristic for the workers in the 'creative field' in which "they largely find the activity so personally satisfying that they are willing to trade economic security and success" when it comes to a choice of leaving their field if they couldn’t make a good living,

Can we consider Kleinhans's theory to be contemporary, or is it also already outdated? And can we talk about both Florida and Kleinhas’s theories in general terms, when we talk about countries in different stages of development or capitalistic history?