A Critique of the Creative Economy, Creative City and Creative Class From the Global South

Abstract

The aims are to identify and examine the inconsistencies and incongruities of the definitions of “creative economy”, “creative city” and “creative class” in their application to the study and the formulation of public policies in the Global South. The central argument points out that 1) the idea of “creative economy” seemed to conceive peripheral societies would be flat tables on which pre-given economic governance strategies for creative sectors could be replicated; 2) the concept of a “creative city” by the mainstream does not deal with the specific political-economic obstacles in the Global South, so it seems more feasible to define “creative city” from a culturally specific understanding of what creativity is and recognize the motivations for creating a creative city can come from different actors according to local circumstances; 3) the mobilization of creativity in the exercise of the profession is a weak criterion for defining the “creative class”, which motivates difficulties regarding the self-identification of individuals as members of it. They reproduce hierarchical regimes that exclude differences.