User:Eleanorg/1.3/Thematic/Reading/Florida: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 11:13, 19 June 2012

Richard Florida on the Rise of the Creative Class.

The Creative Worker

Florida opens this short article with an interesting spin on the familiar phenomenon of resistance being appropriated by capital. A tattooed, apparently employer-unfriendly graduate is flattered and seduced by recruiters into a highly paid contract. It's fascinating to read this analysis against older ones of how you are treated differently in your work time vs leisure time. The Situationists talked about how you are humiliated as a worker, then flattered as a consumer. But here we see an inversion where the worker is seen as a valuable asset who must be flattered/seduced into employment.

How does this shift of power happen? How does it come to be that companies are showing off to their potential employees, rather than vice versa? And just how big is this 'creative class' really? Looking at my peers I see penniless creatives struggling to find work - any work! So this creative class isn't referring to 'artists' in the traditional sense but a rather different group of material & immaterial commodity-makers, who "produce new forms or designs that are readily transferable and broadly useful---such as designing a product that can be widely made, sold and used; coming up with a theorem or strategy that can be applied in many cases; or composing music that can be performed again and again."

Florida broadens the category of 'creatives' by including those who work in fields not necessarily considered 'creative', but do so in a way which uses independent thinking. An interesting note about shifting class roles is the following: "In fields such as medicine and scientific research, technicians are taking on increased responsibility to interpret their work and make decisions, blurring the old distinction between white-collar work (done by decisionmakers) and blue-collar work (done by those who follow orders)." (If this is the case, then it would be good to know in more detail how Florida works out the population % of people in this 'creative class'. If you can't tell from the job title whether they are in it or not, how do you work out a percentage?) So is this a kind of middle class, then, who escape the drudgery associated with working class jobs but whose work still benefits those higher up the feeding chain? Young people should be championed by city planners, Florida states bluntly, because "they are workhorses".

Plug & Play Precarity

Florida is big on the idea of flexibility, mobility, and a kind of free-trade free-thinking "plug and play community" allowing cretives quickly to settle and feel at home in their new city:

"Places that thrive in today's world tend to be plug-and-play communities where anyone can fit in quickly. These are places where people can find opportunity, build support structures, be themselves, and not get stuck in any one identity. The plug-and-play community is one that somebody can move into and put together a life---or at least a facsimile of a life---in a week." [1]

The unstated underbelly of this cyborg dream is, of course, the actual working conditions resulting from such a shift - ie, precarity. While Florida focusses (perhaps strategically) on the high-paid innovators valued by large companies, he ignores the reality of low wages and unemployment faced by those in what are more traditionally referred to as the creative sectors. Or, even more troublingly, those free thinkers who are needed in the early stages of Florida's scheme - squatters, DIY initiatives, and those cast in the unfortunate role of providing exotic ethnic and poverty-stricken 'colour' to creative neighbourhoods. (In fact, the poverty and otherness of the latter actually have to be maintained in order to continue attracting highly-educated new recruits.) This blindspot seems necessary to prop up the whole theory, just as autonomous arts are being sidelined in arts funding changes in favour of an 'innovative' start-up model. This manifesto, then, seems to have little to say to those in the autonomous arts. They are not part of Florida's thinking and, apparently, have no place in the immaterial economy that he is helping to articulate.

The Creative Class vs The Culture Industry

Adorno & Horkneimer's critique of the Culture Industry is an interesting one to contrast with the vision presented to us by Florida. The industry described by the former churns out numbing trash to subdue the masses; it is easily critiqued by intellectuals, and provokes succinct leftist exposes with which we are familiar:

"Docility is no longer ensured by means of priestly magic, it results from a mass of minor hypnoses: news, culture, city planning, advertising, mechanisms of conditioning and suggestion ready to serve any order, established or to come." [2]

How do those neo-Marxist critiques stand up to Florida's vision? Does an analysis of the spectacle stretch to accomodate this emphatic anti-spectacle ("[the creative class] prefer indigenous stree-level culture... not escape")? On the economic level, probably yes - this culture has changed in appearance but is still serving the same ends. (This is a manifesto aimed at city authoririties, after all.) With the added complication that the culture produced by and for the 'creative class' is far more subtle in its methods. What Florida describes is the capitalist appropriation of counter-culture par excellence. The tattooed graduate is no drop-out threat to the order of work, but lands the highest paid contract! This scenario is, in fact, briefly acknowledged by Adorno & Horkneimer: "Once his particular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, [the dissident] belongs to it as does the land-reformer to capitalism. Realistic dissi-dence is the trademark of anyone who has a new idea in business." [3]

This is exactly the formula advanced by Florida, his question being: "how do we make creative people serve capital?" rather than, "how do we ensure economics enables creativity?". It's possible that this may just be an incredibly clever way of persuading city authorities that supporting creatives is in their interests. But what Florida proposes is not stable funding, but merely the creation of an environment in which creatives can generate money themselves - ie, the promotion of precarity in the name of free innovation. The question is, when capital is falling over itself to flatter and recruit the rebels it needs to rejuvenate itself - what forms of resistance are still available, or yet to be invented?

Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class [online]. Available at: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html (Accessed 19 June 2012).
Vaneigem, R. (2006) Revolution of Everyday Life (p.23).
Adorno, A. & Horkneimer, M. (1993) 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception' in Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum).

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-Richard Florida - rise of the creative class
+Richard Florida on the Rise of the Creative Class.
-http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html
-(short article to promote his book of the same name)
+==The Creative Worker==
+Florida opens this short article with an interesting spin on the familiar phenomenon of resistance being appropriated by capital. A tattooed, apparently employer-unfriendly graduate is flattered and seduced by recruiters into a highly paid contract. It's fascinating to read this analysis against older ones of how you are treated differently in your work time vs leisure time. The Situationists talked about how you are humiliated as a worker, then flattered as a consumer. But here we see an inversion where the worker is seen as a valuable asset who must be flattered/seduced into employment.
-* "What a change from my own college days, just a little more than 20 years ago, when students would put on their dressiest clothes and carefully hide any counterculture tendencies to prove that they could fit in with the company. Today, apparently, it's the company trying to fit in with the students."
+How does this shift of power happen? How does it come to be that companies are showing off to their potential employees, rather than vice versa? And just how big is this 'creative class' really? Looking at my peers I see penniless creatives struggling to find work - any work! So this creative class isn't referring to 'artists' in the traditional sense but a rather different group of material & immaterial commodity-makers, who "produce new forms or designs that are readily transferable and broadly useful---such as designing a product that can be widely made, sold and used; coming up with a theorem or strategy that can be applied in many cases; or composing music that can be performed again and again."
-* "This young man [leaving Pittsburgh for a cooler city] and his lifestyle proclivities represent a profound new force in the economy and life of America. He is a member of what I call the creative class: a fast-growing, highly educated, and well-paid segment of the workforce on whose efforts corporate profits and economic growth increasingly depend."
-* "More and more businesses understand that ethos and are making the adaptations necessary to attract and retain creative class employees---everything from relaxed dress codes, flexible schedules, and new work rules in the office to hiring recruiters who throw Frisbees."
+Florida broadens the category of 'creatives' by including those who work in fields not necessarily considered 'creative', but do so in a way which uses independent thinking. An interesting note about shifting class roles is the following: "In fields such as medicine and scientific research, technicians are taking on increased responsibility to interpret their work and make decisions, blurring the old distinction between white-collar work (done by decisionmakers) and blue-collar work (done by those who follow orders)." (If this is the case, then it would be good to know in more detail how Florida works out the population % of people in this 'creative class'. If you can't tell from the job title whether they are in it or not, how do you work out a percentage?)
+So is this a kind of middle class, then, who escape the drudgery associated with working class jobs but whose work still benefits those higher up the feeding chain? Young people should be championed by city planners, Florida states bluntly, because "they are workhorses".
-How does this shift of power happen? How does it come to be that companies are showing off to their potential employees, rather than vice versa? And just how big is this 'creative class' really? Looking at my peers I see penniless creatives struggling to find work - any work! So this creative class isn't referring to 'artists' in the traditional sense but a rather different group of capital-friendly commodity-makers, who "produce new forms or designs that are readily transferable and broadly useful---such as designing a product that can be widely made, sold and used; coming up with a theorem or strategy that can be applied in many cases; or composing music that can be performed again and again."
+==Plug & Play Precarity==
+Florida is big on the idea of flexibility, mobility, and a kind of free-trade free-thinking "plug and play community" allowing cretives quickly to settle and feel at home in their new city:
-Interesting observations about how these people work in fields not necessarily considered 'creative', but importantly, do so in a way which uses independent thinking. An interesting note about shifting class roles is the following: "In fields such as medicine and scientific research, technicians are taking on increased responsibility to interpret their work and make decisions, blurring the old distinction between white-collar work (done by decisionmakers) and blue-collar work (done by those who follow orders)." (If this is the case, then it would be good to know in more detail how Florida works out the population % of people in this 'creative class'. If you can't tell from the job title whether they are in it or not, how do you work out a percentage?)
+::"Places that thrive in today's world tend to be plug-and-play communities where anyone can fit in quickly. These are places where people can find opportunity, build support structures, be themselves, and not get stuck in any one identity. The plug-and-play community is one that somebody can move into and put together a life---or at least a facsimile of a life---in a week." [1]
-So is this a kind of middle class, then, who escape the drudgery associated with working class jobs but whose work still benefits those higher up the feeding chain? Young people should be championed by city planners, Florida states bluntly, because "they are workhorses".
-* "The University of Chicago sociologist Terry Clark likes to say Chicago developed an innovative political and cultural solution to this issue. Under the second Mayor Daley, the city integrated the members of the creative class into the city's culture and politics by treating them essentially as just another "ethnic group" that needed sufficient space to express its identity."
+The unstated underbelly of this cyborg dream is, of course, the actual working conditions resulting from such a shift - ie, precarity. While Florida focusses (perhaps strategically) on the high-paid innovators valued by large companies, he ignores the reality of low wages and unemployment faced by those in what are more traditionally referred to as the creative sectors. Or, even more troublingly, those free thinkers who are needed in the early stages of Florida's scheme - squatters, DIY initiatives, and those cast in the unfortunate role of providing exotic ethnic and poverty-stricken 'colour' to creative neighbourhoods. (In fact, the poverty and otherness of the latter actually have to be maintained in order to continue attracting highly-educated new recruits.) This blindspot seems necessary to prop up the whole theory, just as autonomous arts are being sidelined in arts funding changes in favour of an 'innovative' start-up model. This manifesto, then, seems to have little to say to those in the autonomous arts. They are not part of Florida's thinking and, apparently, have no place in the immaterial economy that he is helping to articulate.
->> There is something decidedly creepy about this. I guess it reflects the darker side of 'diversity' accomodation more generally; give people just enough space and freedom not to kick up a fuss.
-Plug & play communities
+==The Creative Class vs The Culture Industry==
-* "Places that thrive in today's world tend to be plug-and-play communities where anyone can fit in quickly. These are places where people can find opportunity, build support structures, be themselves, and not get stuck in any one identity. The plug-and-play community is one that somebody can move into and put together a life---or at least a facsimile of a life---in a week."
+Adorno & Horkneimer's critique of the Culture Industry is an interesting one to contrast with the vision presented to us by Florida. The industry described by the former churns out numbing trash to subdue the masses; it is easily critiqued by intellectuals, and provokes succinct leftist exposes with which we are familiar:
->> Wow it's exactly like the cyborg manifesto. Only, believe it or not, darker!
-* "They [the creative class] favor active, participatory recreation over passive, institutionalized forms. They prefer indigenous street-level culture---a teeming blend of cafes, sidewalk musicians, and small galleries and bistros, where it is hard to draw the line between performers and spectators. They crave stimulation, not escape. They want to pack their time full of dense, high-quality, multidimensional experiences. Seldom has one of my subjects expressed a desire to get away from it all. They want to get into it all, and do it with eyes wide open."
+:: "Docility is no longer ensured by means of priestly magic, it results from a mass of minor hypnoses: news, culture, city planning, advertising, mechanisms of conditioning and suggestion ready to serve any order, established or to come." [2]
->> It's fascinating to read this analysis against older ones of how you are treated differently in your work time vs leisure time. The situationists talked about how you are humiliated as a worker, then flattered as a consumer. But here we see an inversion where the worker is seen as a potential asset who must be flattered/seduced into employment.
-How do those neo-Marxist critiques stand up nowadays then? Does an analysis of the spectacle stretch to accommodate this emphatic anti-spectacle ("they prefer indigenous stree-level culture... not escape"), every bit as capitalist as the one before? Probably. This is a manifesto aimed at city authorities, after all. What Florida describes is the capitalist appropriation of counter-culture par excellence. The tattooed graduate is no drop-out threat to the order of work, but lands the highest paid contract!
+How do those neo-Marxist critiques stand up to Florida's vision? Does an analysis of the spectacle stretch to accomodate this emphatic anti-spectacle ("[the creative class] prefer indigenous stree-level culture... not escape")? On the economic level, probably yes - this culture has changed in appearance but is still serving the same ends. (This is a manifesto aimed at city authoririties, after all.) With the added complication that the culture produced by and for the 'creative class' is far more subtle in its methods. What Florida describes is the capitalist appropriation of counter-culture par excellence. The tattooed graduate is no drop-out threat to the order of work, but lands the highest paid contract! This scenario is, in fact, briefly acknowledged by Adorno & Horkneimer: "Once his particular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, [the dissident] belongs to it as does the land-reformer to capitalism. Realistic dissi-dence is the trademark of anyone who has a new idea in business." [3]
-Compare: how does this situationist rant measure up to the creative city Florida is describing? <br />
+This is exactly the formula advanced by Florida, his question being: "how do we make creative people serve capital?" rather than, "how do we ensure economics enables creativity?". It's possible that this may just be an incredibly clever way of persuading city authorities that supporting creatives is in their interests. But what Florida proposes is not stable funding, but merely the creation of an environment in which creatives can generate money themselves - ie, the promotion of precarity in the name of free innovation. The question is, when capital is falling over itself to flatter and recruit the rebels it needs to rejuvenate itself - what forms of resistance are still available, or yet to be invented?
-"Docility is no longer ensured by means of priestly magic, it results from a mass of minor hypnoses: news, culture, city planning, advertising, mechanisms of conditioning and suggestion ready to serve any order, established or to come." (Vaneigem's Revolution of Everyday Life, 2006 p.23)
-The question is whether these street-level entertainments are just another form of hypnosis ready to serve any order?
-It's telling perhaps that in Florida's text, the question is - "how do we make creative people serve capital?" rather than, "how do we ensure economics enables creativity?".
+# Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class [online]. Available at: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html (Accessed 19 June 2012).
+# Vaneigem, R. (2006) Revolution of Everyday Life (p.23).
+# Adorno, A. & Horkneimer, M. (1993) 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception' in Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum).