THE CREATIVE UNDERCLASS: CULTURE,SUBCULTURE, AND URBAN RENEWAL

GEORGE MORGANUniversity of Western Sydney

XUEFEI RENMichigan State University

Words are restless things. Their meanings change over time, usually gradually through smallacts of speech and writing, but sometimes a word is redefined so rapidly as to warrant scholarlyinvestigation, in order to uncover the historical, political, or discursive forces that destabilizeaccepted meanings. The word creativity has arguably undergone two such semantic revolutions.The first occurred during the Renaissance. As Williams (1988) indicates, prior to that point inhistory the modern notion of human creativity was largely unthinkable. “Create” was largely usedin the past tense and then to refer to the handiwork of God. “Creatures” (including humans)—aword derived from the same root as creation—could not themselves be creators. It was only duringthe Renaissance that the role of the artist creator gained legitimacy, and with it the idea of peopleas originators of knowledge and culture rather than as ciphers of the divine. In the industrial eraWestern philosophers came to view work and creativity as antithetical. In the Marxist tradition,for example, the inexorable logic of capitalist enterprise was to rob workers of creativity, toalienate them from the products of their labor, to reduce them to conveyor-belt functionaries.The romantic and bohemian traditions of artistic independence and the untethering of symbolicexpression from commercial imperatives were reflected in movements like the French l’art pourl’art (art for art’s sake), and remain strong today.

It is ironic, therefore that the second radical redefinition of creativity has occurred in responseto the needs of new capitalism. The artist, for so long the outcast, the enemy of standardizationand Taylorist management, has become the archetype of new capitalism. Artists’ ability to liveoff their wits and tolerate the vagaries of fortune makes them the ideal flexible citizen of a societyloaded with endemic risk. But more importantly, their readiness to break new cultural ground,to challenge habitual ways of seeing the world fits them for the brave new world in which thevalue of goods and services rests more on intellectual and symbolic inputs than on raw materialsand “old labor.” In order to harness such creative forces, contemporary managerial discourse

Direct correspondence to: George Morgan, School of Humanities/Institute for Culture and Society, University of WesternSydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia. E-mail: georgemorgan@uws.edu.au; or Xuefei Ren, Departmentof Sociology, Global Urban Studies Program, Michigan State University, 317 Berkey Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824–1111.E-mail: renxuefe@msu.edu.

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 34, Number 2, pages 127–130.Copyright C© 2012 Urban Affairs AssociationAll rights of reproduction in any form reserved.ISSN: 0735-2166. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9906.2012.00606.x

128 II JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS II Vol. 34/No. 2/2012

challenges the separation of art and industry, the idea of artistic independence, and the classicalpresumption that economic imperatives can only inhibit freewheeling symbolic expression. Inaddition, new capitalism also seeks to extend the lexical range of “creativity” beyond the aestheticrealm to also connote qualities like entrepreneurialism and a sort of practical, problem-solvingingenuity. It collapses the distinction between copywriters and poets. Indeed it goes so far as todeny the possibility of creativity that is not (at least) subject to market relations. As Andy Prattargues, the culture/economy dichotomy has collapsed so spectacularly that “neo-liberalism is thenecessary and sufficient home for creativity” (Pratt, 2011, p. 126).

The work of Richard Florida (2002) crystallizes and legitimates the neoliberal appropriationof creativity (see also Charles Landry’s influential The Creative City, 2008). He lionizes thecreative classes—defined broadly as professional, knowledge, and cultural workers at variouslevels—without whom, in Florida’s view, a city or region cannot hope to experience economicrenewal and growth. The Rise of the Creative Class became a handbook for civic boosterism.To leaven the municipal loaf and turn rustbelt towns into global cities necessitates a climate ofdiversity and tolerance and the presence of the sorts of cultural infrastructure that the creativeclass finds attractive. Florida’s work has influenced policy makers, and it has also been muchcriticized by academic researchers (Peck, 2005; Pratt, 2011). While the red carpet is rolled outfor the creative class, long-standing communities, with their affective and material connections tolocalities, are flattened. In Florida’s schema members of residual communities—working class,youth, disenfranchised, minority—are spectators in this larger drama, at best a colorful backdropto gentrification. As Jamie Peck wrote, the “uncreative population, one assumes, should merelylook on, and learn” (Peck, 2005, p. 746). The “working and service classes need to find a wayto pull themselves up by their creative bootstraps. So while all people are creative, some areevidently more creative than others.” (p. 757).

For us symbolic creativity is not only the province of the creative class, and it is not restrictedto those in particular professions or callings. This special issue is in part based on the recognitionof the need to “claw back” the meaning of creativity from the clutches of neoliberalism. Thisinvolves affirming something of the anthropological idea of culture as a whole way of life, asembedded in the everyday, rather than sequestered in the fields of work or artistic practice.However, anthropology has been guilty at certain moments of reifying traditional culture, treatingit as essential and unchanging, rather than recognizing the ongoing creative processes that keepcultures fluid and alive, especially in circumstances where indigenous forms meet the challengesof modernity.

The discipline of cultural studies has been better at recognizing these forms of dynamism. Thework of Paul Willis, for example, implores us to recognize that “symbolic creativity is not onlypart of everyday activity but also a necessary part” (Willis, 2002, p. 283). Creative expression ispart of what makes us human. It has a vernacular quality and a potential for subverting dominantmeanings "in the sense of remaking the world for ourselves as we make and find our own placeand identity" (p. 285). Willis has been particularly interested in the creative irreverence of youth.This theme is particularly well represented in the themes addressed by our contributors: fromstreet art to alternative/counter cultural urban communes, from hip hop music to experimentalfilm and video. The five articles suggest that the fertile creativity of young people rarely springsfully formed from the exigencies of the market economy.

The “creative underclass” is thus meant as polemical, to draw attention to the ongoing impor-tance of creative outputs that are not commodities, but obtain value in other ways, as symboliccapital (Bourdieu, 1984) or as subcultural capital (Thornton, 1996), and it challenges the cen-tral discourses of the creative economy. We distinguish the term “creative underclass” from thecommon sociological category “the underclass,” which in the United States has been used torefer to the black poverty groups that formed in inner-city neighborhoods as results of economic

II The Creative Underclass: Culture, Subculture, and Urban Renewal II 129

shifts from manufacturing and services in the second half of the 20th century (Wilson, 1990).The underclass is defined by its abjection. The creative underclass, by contrast, is more broadlybased and actively engaged in expressive resistance that usually forms part of larger politicalmovements seeking to destabilize entrenched and unequal social relations, moralities, and eco-nomic power. It encompasses both those who situate themselves solidly in the bohemian artistictradition in classical and emergent artistic forms, and those whose creativity emerges not fromsuch a lofty calling but from their everyday rebellious practices. The work of Florida’s creativeclass, by contrast, is guided primarily by the market with little scope for cultural dissent. Thisspecial issue is thus distinct from much scholarship dealing with the creative class.

There is nothing new about studying the key role of artists in urban change (Vivant, 2009; Zukin,1982). Sharon Zukin, who co-convened the conference session on which this special issue is based,famously studied the 1970s trend among New York artists to convert lofts into studios and livingspaces, thus turning once derelict districts into chic neighborhoods with hugely inflated propertyvalues. Forty years on artists are probably more aware that, despite their creative iconoclasmand nonconformity, they can help to promote gentrification. As Australian artist Lucas Ihleinwrote, “we loudly declare our abhorrence for gentrification, yet we ourselves are a key step in itsonward march” (Ihlein, 2009, p. 49). While in contemporary neoliberal cities artistic scenes areoften constituted in ways more self-consciously hostile to the mainstream creative economy andto property capital, ironically this does not prevent them from creating the conditions that hastenthe demise of their low-rent tenure in run-down districts. Claire Colomb’s paper illustrates thisprocess very effectively. In the unusual conditions of post-unification Berlin, the large oversupplyof commercial buildings opened the possibility for artistic/counter cultural creative initiativesin temporary spaces. As a result, once down-at-heel districts became “cool” and encouragedreal estate speculation and other forms of economic gain, thus foreclosing on the very culturalinitiatives that had helped elevate the profile of areas like Kreuzberg. Hakan Thorn too shows howthe alternative communities that were established in the working class districts of Christiania inCopenhagen and Haga in Gothenburg eventually came to be surrounded by gentrification. For thecitizens of each of these communities, this process generated all sorts of political dilemmas. Thornexplores state responses to these grass-roots developments in the periods of social democracy andneoliberalism. Galina Gornastaeva and Noel Campbell’s ambitious study of London’s CamdenTown traces its evolution from liminal to gentrified space and examines how the area became ahub for the film and video industry. They challenge both production and consumption theories ofgentrification and reveal the complex layers of creativity—from those working at the epicentersof new culture to those who remain strictly on the margin.

Aesthetic value is not given or consensual, but highly contested, as is demonstrated in twopapers based on research conducted in Sydney. What constitutes art or an artist is open to debate.Some forms of creativity struggle for legitimacy, especially those that emerge from the experienceof alienation and social marginalization. Graffiti or street art is one such form and is the focusof Cameron McAuliffe’s paper. He contrasts areas of Sydney’s western suburbs, where localcouncils adopted a zero-tolerance approach, and an inner urban area with a high presence ofstudents and artists. In the latter district authorities and property owners are much more favorablydisposed toward the possibilities of street art. McAuliffe argues that these policy approachesrepresent contrasting “moral geographies” of public space and observes that prohibition andpunishment remain normative. George Morgan’s paper looks at the subcultures of socially disad-vantaged Aboriginal youth in Sydney and argues that, rather than wholly embracing indigenoustraditions, they rely much more on hip-hop, a global form, to build local solidarities, construct avision of place, and make sense of their social marginality and their mistreatment by police andauthorities. The subculture licenses a belligerent street presence that works against the agenda ofgentrification.

130 II JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS II Vol. 34/No. 2/2012

Each of the papers in this special issue deals with urban creativity, broadly defined, thatoperates outside the market and the imperatives of neoliberal discourse, or at least began as such.This creativity is rooted in communities—whether subcultural, place-based or both—that areawkwardly situated in relation to the welling forces of gentrification and are generally subjectto official forms of management designed to either conscript them or to remove them fromthe scene. The five papers show that the way in which “alternative creatives” respond to thesepressures varies greatly from place to place and time to time. At a moment when the “Occupy”movement is seeking to reclaim urban spaces all over the world, it is important for governmentsto recognize that for too long the imperatives of corporate-led urban renewal have marginalizedthe poor and disenfranchised. The contributors to this special issue document some of the creativecounterweights to this process.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This special issue results from a panel at the Congress of the International SociologicalAssociation in Gothenburg, Sweden, in July 2010.

REFERENCES

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class. New York: Basic Books.Ihlein, L. (2009). Complexity, aesthetics and gentrification: Redfern-Waterloo/ Waterloo tour of beauty. In K. De

Souza & Z. Begg (Eds.), There goes the neighborhood: Redfern-Waterloo and the politics of urban space(pp. 45–49). Sydney: Creative Commons.

Landry, C. (2008). The creative city. London: Comedia.Peck, J. (2005). Struggling with the creative class. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(4),

740–770.Pratt, A. (2011). The cultural contradictions of the creative city. City, Culture and Society, 2(1), 123–130.Thornton, S. (1996). Club cultures: Music, media and subcultural capital. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University

Press.Vivant, E. (2009). How underground culture is changing Paris. Urban Research and Practices, 2(1), 36–52.Williams, R. (1988). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. London: Fontana.Willis, P. (2002). Symbolic creativity. In B. Highmore (Ed.), The everyday life reader (pp. 282–292). London:

Routledge.Wilson, W. (1990). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass and the public policy. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.Zukin, S. (1982). Loft living: Culture and capital in urban change. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.