This event is part of CIDRAL's Autumn 2018 programme.
Ismail Ertürk (Senior Lecturer, Alliance Manchester Business School) will lead a Key Ideas seminar on the Creative Economy.
Creative industries as post-industrial economic policy and conjunctural narrative in financialised capitalism
As a post-industrial economic policy in core capitalist countries creative economy is clearly identifiable and traceable at governmental departments and in their policy documents and funded projects and activities (see for example Cunningham 2009). At international level too United Nations and European Union have produced policy documents and reports on cultural industries and creative industries to address uneven capitalist development between nations and regions (European Commission 2012 and UNDP and UNESCO 2013). Employment, development and economic growth are clear objectives in such official policy documents. Where neo-liberalism failed, technocrats dreamed a new market supported and subsidised by the state: creative economy is a distinctive state sponsored neo-liberal phenomenon involving entrepreneurial cultural intermediaries and speculative real estate investments. But in a financialised capitalism even government policies come in conjuncturally valid symbolic forms presented in performable narratives. Artistic creativity in old official cultural policies is discursively conjoined to scientific innovation in an era of new economy of internet and digital businesses (Boltanski&Esquerre 2016 and Fraser 2017). In my talk I will discuss the emergence of creative economy/industries as a conjunctural post-industrial policy in core capitalist countries and how the idea has travelled to the periphery as a state sponsored but intermediary and speculation-driven neo-liberal project. I will also argue that creative industries, both as an idea and as policy, feed on the peculiarities of financialised capitalism in value creation through economic narratives and new asset classes.
Preparatory readings for this seminar are available at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/aiy0ckpykfbsixv/AAB1goE-f-xeZ9mwSNfW34jWa?dl=0
Boltanski, L., & Esquerre, A. (2016) “The economic life of things. Commodities, collectibles, assets” New Left Review, (98), 31-54.
Cunningham, S. (2009) “Trojan horse or Rorschach blot? Creative industries discourse around the world”, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15:4, 375-386
Dubina, I. N., Carayannis, E. G., & Campbell, D. F. (2012) “Creativity economy and a crisis of the economy? Coevolution of knowledge, innovation, and creativity, and of the knowledge economy and knowledge society” Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 3(1), 1-24.
