Creative (in)Equality: Capital in Crisis

Creative (in)Equality: Capital in Crisis

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In May of 2010, a team of consultants published a report commissioned by the DC Office

of Planning and the Washington, DC Economic Partnership. This report, the Creative DC Action

Agenda, was created to “quantify and put into context the creative economy of the District”

(2010:7). Fortunately, the report operationalized the opaque concept “creative economy;” The

“‘creative sector’” informs the creative economy and refers to “enterprises in and for which

creative content drives both economic and cultural value” (2010:7). Yet, while the rationale for

the report and its objectives were made clear, a greater significance was less apparent.

To elucidate the significance of the creative economy and its diffusion into “creative”

suburbs and exurbs across the globe, this literature review examines the academic discourse

related to creative capital theory, the latest addition to the “toolkit for urban innovators”

(Landry 2000). It investigates the broader developer’s trinity1 to understand the manifold uses

of “capital” and includes critiques and ethnographies. In doing so, the review reasserts the vital

role of anthropologists vis-à-vis other social science disciplines within the “development-lite” of

the creative economy in advanced capitalism.

Writing in 1995 during an economic recession in the United Kingdom, Charles Landry

and Franco Bianchini warned that “the focus on the physical has gone as far as it can” (Landry

1995:13). They continue, “future competition between nations, cities and enterprises looks set

to be based less on natural resources, location or past reputation and more on the ability to

develop attractive images and symbols and project these effectively” (12). This insight

furthered observations made by David Harvey on the “spectacular” nature of post-modernity;

Harvey wrote that “image becomes all important in competition” and this is characterized by

1 I use this term to describe three prominent theories of economic development: human capital, social capital, and

creative capital.


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the use of “money power as a means of domination” rather than “direct control over the

means of production and wage labour” (Harvey 1990: 288,347). Thus, postmodernity supports

the crystallization of “a new global competition for talent” in which the “competitors” mobilize

money to create the “spectacular” (Florida 2007/Harvey 1990).

According to Landry and Bianchini this competition necessitates a shift away from

planning based on instrumental rationality (Landry 1995:13-16). It requires individuals to have a

“’softer’ set of skills”; the skills of “the broker…the networker, the connector” (18). These skills

are a product of the “creativity” tied to the present; this creativity is synthetic. It demands an

ability to “synthesize”, to “connect…to gauge impacts across different spheres of life, to see

holistically, to understand how material changes affect our perceptions, to grasp the subtle

ecologies of our systems of life and how to make them sustainable” (18).

Urban planning in advanced capitalism, corollary to synthetic creativity, involves

“different skills from those of planners brought up to think in terms of physical solutions”

(Landry 1995:14). The discipline, like geography, suffers from a bias toward quantification. This

bias masks subjectivity so that “’scientific’ decisions can be arrived at (21). Unfortunately, a

byproduct of this approach is the tendency to omit “other descriptions of reality, which are

subjective and not quantifiable” (21). Thus, “memory, emotions, passions, senses, desires” are

ignored. Hence, paradoxically, instrumentalist planners ignore humanity to serve it. Yet, while

Landry and Bianchini propose “to enrich the ‘scientific’ and quantitativist tradition with insights

gained from more qualitative, human-oriented approaches” to counter this deficit (22), they

failed to discuss existing theories and methods, like those developed by journalist Jane Jacobs


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(1961), her fellow Pennsylvanian, 1992 Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker (1962),

sociologist James Coleman (1988), and political scientist Robert Putnam (1995).

Landry and Bianchini did mention Jane Jacobs in passing in their 1995 work (Landry

1995:12). Yet, as noted, they did not describe her qualitative contributions. Rather, they

grouped her with one of her rivals, Lewis Mumford, as having her contributions adopted in an

instrumental rationalist manner by planners. Regardless, their academic call-to-arms for a shift

from instrumentalist planning to one based on Synthetic Creativity motivated the then Heinz

Professor of Regional Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University to focus on the role

of creativity in economic development.

In 2002, contemporary academic-cum-celebrity urban studies theorist Richard Florida

published his now bestselling The Rise of the Creative Class. The book was well received and

came to be seen as the modern “how-to guide” for economic development, informing the

decisions of thousands of elected officials, businessmen, and others who comprise the “growth

machine,” “the apparatus of interlocking progrowth associations and governmental units”

(Logan 2007:32).

The book is a three hundred-plus pages argument for the adoption of his creative capital

theory. In it he “argues that place is the key economic and social organizing unit of our time”

(Florida 2004:xix). His theory declares that a new economic class “emerged” due to the “rise of

the creative economy” (68). These people, the creative class, are a “type of human capital”

(222). Consequently, he terms this new form of capital “creative capital”; it/they are the source

of economic growth (222).


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Creative capital theory builds on the writings of John Howkins; it was Howkins who first

published on the “creative economy.” His book The Creative Economy: How People Make

Money from Ideas (Howkins 2001) is “about the relationship between creativity and

economics” (viii). In it he defines “creativity,” “economy,” and details the four industries that he

believes “constitute the creative industries and the creative economy” (xiii). The implications of

the creative economy and its associated creative capital are discussed at length by Howkins in

the final chapter of his book, “Capital on my Mind” (197-213).

Howkins and Florida use the economic thought of Joseph Schumpeter to explain the

creative economy in the context of advanced capitalism. Florida even published an article in

1996 that explicitly reasoned for a Schumpterian view of regional economic transformation.

The concept utilized in the article, as in the later works of Howkins and Florida, is “creative

destruction.”

In the writings of Schumpeter creative destruction is a process through which the

capitalist enterprise evolves. This evolution occurs through cycles in which the creation of “new

consumers’ goods…new methods of production or transportation…new markets” and “new

forms of industrial organization” revolutionize “the economic structure from within, incessantly

destroying the old one” (Schumpeter 1942:83). This “process of Creative Destruction is the

essential fact of capitalism” (83). However, Howkins and Florida are not alone in applying

Schumpterian thought to the analysis of advanced capitalism.

Marxist geographer David Harvey (Harvey 2007) also uses creative destruction as an

analytical tool. However, where Howkins and Florida emphasize the current manifestation of

advanced capitalism that they call the creative economy, Harvey uses the phrase to scrutinize


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neoliberalism. He wrote that “the creation of this neoliberal system has entailed much

destruction” (23). Like the proverbial phoenix, the neoliberal project rises out of the ashes of

the previous world order. Thus, in regards to Schumpeter, Harvey is a counterpoint to Howkins

and Florida. This exploration of the thought of Harvey requires further discussion but a

continuation of the discussion of creative capital theory is needed for a thorough analysis to be

developed.

Unlike Harvey, Schumpeter was not a Marxist. Rather, he used the writings of Marx to

further his own economic analysis of the capitalist system. The entirety of the first of five parts

of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy dealt with Marx in the aptly titled “The Marxian

Doctrine” (Schumpeter 1942:1-58). Howkins took a similar approach but devoted substantially

less time given that Schumpeter and many others had done the work by the time Howkins

published The Creative Economy (Howkins 2001:200). Similarly, Florida spends little time on

Marx as an economist. Rather, he focuses on the analytical utility of Marx as a social theorist

(Florida 2012:25, 37, 161, 385). However, neither Howkins nor Florida mentions the outcome of

the acceptance of Marx’s evolutionary view of capitalism by Schumpeter.

Florida noted that Marx’s belief that capitalism would collapse due to the inequality

generated by the Industrial Revolution proved false (Florida 2012:385). He did recognize the

increased inequality that is related to the creative economy (277, 384). His solutions to these

deleterious relationships will be discussed later. However, it is important to note that he places

the burden of responsibility to solve this and other issues onto others, his creative class (Florida

2004 :314). To this day he continues to do so (Florida 2012:383-400).


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In regards to Schumpeter, four words were used to answer whether Marx’s conclusions

about the capitalist system were correct; “I believe it is” (Schumpeter 1942:42). The preceding

passage summarizes Schumpeter’s feelings about Marx’s analysis; “even though Marx’s facts

and reasoning were still more at fault than they are, his result might nevertheless be true so far

as it simply avers that capitalist evolution will destroy its foundation”(42). That Howkins and

Florida selectively adopt Schumpeter further views that the creative economy and its

corresponding creative capital theory are a complex; they form an “intellectual technology”

intricately related to the neoliberal project.

Concerning the shift from Fordist Production to the creative economy, Howkins wrote

that its impact was not merely related to production and exchange. Rather, “its impact is

wider…the way we treat the economics of ideas and inventions obviously affects all social,

cultural, ideological and political issues” (Howkins 2001:213). This statement is a critical link

between Howkins and Florida. Much of Florida’s theory is based on analysis of social, cultural,

ideological, and political trends. However, it is Florida’s continuance of Howkins’ focus on

“homo creator” that is most central to creative class theory.

In adapting the writings of John Howkins, Florida accepted that “today’s economy” is

“fundamentally a Creative Economy” (Florida 2004:44). Creativity is the “most highly prized

commodity in our economy” yet “it is not a commodity” (5). This practical contradiction is a

product of economic history that “we can read…as a succession of new and better ways to

harness creativity” (56). He summarizes this progress in ten pages (56-66) using an

environmental determinist model popularized by Jared Diamond (Diamond 1997) that was in


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turn based on the cultural materialism of Marvin Harris (Harris 1968). Thus, the critiques of

these scholars are applicable to the work of Florida.

Echoing Howkins, Florida wrote that “human creativity is the ultimate economic

resource” (Florida 2004:xiii). “‘Knowledge’ and ‘information’ are the tools and materials of

creativity” and “‘innovation’…is its product” (44). His theory is derived from human capital and

social capital theories but lest a reader confuse the theory with its analogs the author spends

significant portions of his book demarcating his theory (220-223,267-282).

Eschewing the use of “class in the traditional Marxian sense,” Florida proudly declares

that his new class is still an economic class because “economic function both underpins and

informs its members’ social, cultural and lifestyle choices” (Florida 2004:68). They are “people

who add economic value through creativity” (68). Creatives “engage in work whose function is

to ‘create meaningful new forms’” (68). Thus, Florida shifted the industrial view of Howkins to

one based on occupations.

Florida divides the creative class into two components: the “Super-Creative Core” and

“creative professionals” (Florida 2004:69). The Super-Creative Core includes “scientists and

engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers and

architects, as well as the thought leadership of modern society” (69). “Nonfiction writers,

editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts and other opinion-makers” are the

members of Florida’s “thought leadership of modern society” (69). These individuals engage in

“the highest order of creative work…producing new forms or designs that are readily

transferable and widely useful” (69).


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Creative professionals “work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries such as

high-tech sectors, financial services, the legal and health care professions, and business

management. These people engage in creative problem solving, drawing on complex bodies of

knowledge to solve specific problems” (Florida 2004:69). Like the super-creative core, creative

professionals require “a high degree of formal education and thus a high level of human

capital” (69); both groups personify creative capital. It is this embodiment of creative capital in

the creative class that necessitates a new strategy for economic growth.

Positing that “regional economic growth is driven by the location choices of…the holders

of creative capital,” Florida argues that development must attract and retain these creative

people (Florida 2004:223). He continues, to “attract creative people, generate innovation and

stimulate economic growth, a place must have” technology, talent, and tolerance (249). These

3T’s denote his strategy for economic development.

Lest a reductionist understanding develop, Florida is careful to note that “building broad

creative ecosystems that mobilize the creative talents of many is a complex multifaceted

activity” (Florida 2004:xxiii). “Community leaders” who “conclude” that “the key lies in

attracting Creative Class workers” just don’t understand that while place is paramount,

increasing creativity is the key, not simply luring the creative class “like some sports franchise

from another city” (xxiii). Such qualifying statements reveal Florida to be an accomplished

rhetorical strategist, siding with simplicity versus complexity in exposition. Yet, while Florida

provides considerable empirical support for his assertion that “regional growth comes from the

3T’s of economic development” (250), he is unable to distance himself from obvious criticisms,

such as the self-serving nature of his occupational groupings (Markusen 2006) or indictments


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that there is “no difference between the human capital theory…and the ‘creative capital’

theory” (Glaeser 2004:2). Regardless, the aforementioned two out of the many critiques aside,

comprehension of the 3T’s through their indices illuminates creative capital theory permitting a

more thorough analysis of it and associated critiques.

Technology, the first T in the triumvirate, is measured by a combination of the Milken

Institute’s High-Tech Index and his Innovation Index, a “measure of patented innovations per

capita” (Florida 2004:333). Talent, the second T, is a traditional human capital index, “based on

the region’s share of people with a bachelor’s degree or above” (333). The final T, Tolerance, is

connected to his “Gay Index.” This index is a measure of the over- or under-representation of

coupled gay people in a region relative to” a nation as a whole” (333). However, he combines

this index with the “Bohemian Index” and the “Melting Pot Index” to establish the “Composite

Diversity Index” (333). This combination of the “measure of artistically creative people",

individuals employed in specific “creative” occupations, with “the measure of the relative

percentage of foreign born people in a region”, provides a more “accurate” indicator of

“tolerance” (333).

In aggregate, the explication of the creative class coupled with the 3T’s provided a

rationale, framework, indicators for success, and statistics that furthers the intellectual project

began in the mid-90s by Landry and Bianchini. Yet neither via omission, creative wordsmithing,

nor elaborate empiric argumentation is creative capital much more than diversae speciei. To

illustrate this assertion a comparison of creative capital with social capital and human capital

models is required.


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In sociological thought related to networks there are three ways to describe the types of

social ties between individuals: strong, weak, or none; I use none to characterize the absence

of either “strong” or “weak.” Strong ties are defined by temporality, the time “invested” in a

social relationship, “emotional intensity…intimacy…and the reciprocal services which

characterize the tie” (Granovetter 1973:1361). Weak ties are the opposite of strong ties; they

are infrequent and lack intimacy and substantive reciprocal relations.

Most social capital theories are built on the concept of strong ties. The two strong tie

theories detailed by Florida are the rational actor model of James Coleman and the

organizational framework of Robert Putnam. Yet it is another strong tie theorist, Jane Jacobs,

who is far more prevalent in the work of Florida.

Florida borrows extensively from The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs

1992) in the development of creative capital theory. Her work detailing communitarian

solutions to the problems engendered by her contemporary orthodox urban planners informs

the core of the New Urbanist movement. This movement in turn is the core of the place-based

development component of creative capital theory. Florida goes to great lengths to pay

homage to Jacobs but in doing so he misreads her.

Florida recognized that Jacobs used the term social capital decades before Coleman or

Putnam (Florida 2004:277). His reading of Jacobs posits that “communities use networks of

weak ties – coexisting with, but not constrained by, certain kinds of strong ties” to “channel

diversity and creativity, and even achieve stability in the process” (277). He derived this

interpretation of Jacobs’ use of social capital from a long quotation in which she used the term.

The abbreviated version is:


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“If self-government in the place is to work, underlying any float of population must be a continuity of people who have forged neighborhood networks. These networks are a city’s irreplaceable social capital. Whenever the capital is lost, from whatever the cause, the income from it disappears, never to return until and unless new capital is slowly and chancily accumulated.” (Jacobs 1992:138, emphasis added)

As is apparent in the text, Florida inverts the value of strong ties and weak ties to

support his emphasis on weak ties to the establishment of “healthy” communities. Her use of

social capital, inferred from the context, states that it is the strong tie informal networks, as

opposed to strong tie formal networks, like membership organizations, that are the social

capital of the city. She implies that the individuals in these networks do in fact constrain actors

in the city. However, since Florida relies on weak ties in the development of his theory, he

misreads Jacobs.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter developed a theory of the significance of weak ties to

facilitate a “discussion of relations between groups and to analysis of segments of social

structure not easily defined in terms of primary groups” (Granovetter 1973:1360). His research

of employment patterns revealed that weak ties were an important element in the

transmission of productive information. They are an important factor in society because

individuals are able to maintain more relationships bridged by weak ties; the amount of weak

ties enhances the statistical probability of their utility.

Creative Capital is rooted in the social theory of “weak ties.” They “allow for rapid entry

of new people and rapid absorption of new ideas and are thus critical to the creative process”

(Florida 2004:277). However, rather than quantifying the concept (Erickson 2004) Florida uses it

as a scare tactic. He fears that “American society…may well be splitting into two different


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societies with different institutions, different economies, different incomes, ethnic and racial

makeups, social organizations, religious orientations, and politics” (Florida 2004:281).

In Florida’s bifurcated American “society,” citizens are separating into two groups. The

first is “creative and diverse – a cosmopolitan mixture of high-tech people, bohemians,

scientists and engineers, the media and the professions” (Florida 2004:281). In contrast, the

other group is “a more close-knit, church-based, older civic society, of working people and rural

dwellers” (281). The former are the future, the proverbial engine of economic growth. The

latter are the past, remnants of a previous mode of production. At least the “working people

and rural dwellers” would be associated with a previous mode of production had Florida

applied Marx beyond the appropriation of the concept of “class.”

While creative capital qualitatively and quantitatively measures the “creative and

diverse” group, strong tie social capital measures the “older civic society.” The best example of

this measurement is in the work of political scientist Robert Putnam. His article, “Bowling

Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” (1995) and subsequent book Bowling Alone: The

Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) were highly politicized popular scholarship.

In 1995 Putnam published an alarmist article that claimed civil society was deteriorating.

He believed that liberal democracy was in danger due to a trust deficit. This deficit became

apparent to him after he examined voter turnout and participation in civic groups. He equated

civility with social capital; Places that exhibit a high degree of social capital have a strong civil

society.

To Putnam social capital “refers to the collective value of all ‘social networks’ [who

people know] and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other


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[‘norms of reciprocity’]” (Putnam 2013). In short social capital “refers to features of social

organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and

cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam 1995:66). Accordingly, a place with abundant social

capital is distinguished by large membership roles in formal organizations. Therefore when his

research found that participation in civic groups had steadily declined since the civic activism of

the “Greatest Generation,” Putnam sounded the alarm.

As evidence of the decline in civility, Putnam associates increases in the numbers of

non-league bowlers with the decrease in voter participation over the same time frame. This

trend towards “bowling alone” is bad for “the livelihoods of bowling lane proprietors” and for

the nation (Putnam 1995:69). It deprives the bowlers of “the social interaction and even

occasionally civic conversations over beer and pizza” and the proprietors from the increased

sales (69). Solo-bowling is “yet another vanishing form of social capital” (69).

Florida, citing Alejandro Portes and Patricia Landout, mentions the tautological

implications of Putnam’s work (Florida 2004:271). He uses this criticism as a springboard to

discuss the “exclusionary side of social capital” (272). In the process of furthering his argument,

it appears to be lost on Florida that his creative capital suffers from the same problem.

As Portes wrote, “if your town is ‘civic,’ it does civic things; if it is ‘uncivic,’ it does not

(Portes 1998:20). Putnam started with the effect, “working retroactively” to distinguish his

observations, and then tried to “explain all of the observed differences” (20). Florida engaged

the same process with creative capital; a region is creative if it has large numbers of the

creative class (Wojan 2008:1). However, unlike Putnam, in the tenth anniversary expanded

edition of Rise of the Creative Class, Florida used the source I cited in the previous sentence to


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support his assertion that creative capital is not human capital (Florida 2012:43, 261, 333).

Questionable academic behavior aside, Florida and Putnam have a positive academic feature in

their work; they both cited the social capital theorists whose work informed their own.

In a footnote to his 1995 article, Putnam wrote “James S. Coleman deserves primary

credit for developing the “social capital” theoretical framework” (Putnam 1995:78). This

framework uses social capital as “part of a general theoretical strategy” that takes “rational

action as a starting point” but rejects “the extreme individualistic premises that often

accompany it” (Coleman 1988:95). Coleman therefore introduced homo economicus, the

rational maximizing individual of economic theory, into his social theory. To do this he

examined “three forms of social capital…: obligations and expectations, information channels,

and social norms” as a way of “introducing social structure into the rational action paradigm”

(95).

Unlike his contemporary Bourdieu, Coleman believed that social capital only exists in

the relations between actors; “it is not lodged either in the actors themselves or in physical

implements of production” (Coleman 1988:98). This distinguishes it from “the most important

and most original development in the economics of education in the past 30 years…human

capital” (100).

To Coleman one aspect of social capital “is especially important: its effect on the

creation of human capital in the next generation. Both social capital in the family and social

capital in the community play roles in the creation of human capital in the rising generation”

(Coleman 1988:109). Accordingly, he devotes seven pages to the issue, four of which are

related to “family backgrounds.”


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Coleman divides “family background” into “three different components: financial

capital, human capital, and social capital” (Coleman 1988:109). Financial capital is a measure of

wealth. Human capital is a measure of parental education, providing “the potential for a

cognitive environment for the child that aids learning” (109). Social capital, of course, is a

measure of “the relations between children and parents” (110).

Various situations impact familial social capital. Examples include the absence of adults

or the existence of the statistically probable one-parent family (Coleman 1988:111). However,

the presence of a nuclear family is not a panacea. Working parents or the absence of

grandparents can make the nuclear family as, to use Coleman’s term, structurally deficient as a

single-parent household. Fortunately for the child of a working single-parent, expectations

matter, as, “although not a pure measure of social capital”, a mother’s collegiate expectations

influence the likelihood a child will drop out of school. Regardless of the specifics of familial

composition, Coleman delineated his use of human capital from the model developed by

Becker (1962)

Having avoided the adoption of a rational actor model in his discussion of the role of

social capital in the production of human capital, Coleman further differentiates his use of

human capital through his explanation of the “public good aspect of social capital.” Human

capital, “at least human capital of the sort that is produced in schools”, benefits the individual

investor (Coleman 1988:116). Similarly, through property rights physical capital allows the

investor to benefit (116). Social capital, in contrast, due to its formation through social

relations, is a public good. Being such, it may cause an individual to “experience extensive

losses” (116).


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Coleman writes that “most forms of social capital are created or destroyed as by-

products of other activities” (Coleman 1988:118). This severance of relations is often out of the

control of an individual investor (117). For example, relations may be severed when one

individual moves away from another for his/her personal benefit; moving to attend a college or

start a new job. When these relations are severed there is a loss of social capital.

Decades before the pessimism of Putnam, Coleman expressed a similar concern about

the future of society. He wrote that “strong families and strong communities” are the

“structural conditions” that “overcome the problems of supplying” the social relationships that

supply “public goods”; these structural conditions “are much less present now than in the past,

and promise to be even less present in the future (Coleman 1988:118). He concluded “we can

expect that, ceteris paribus, we confront a declining quality of human capital embodied in each

successive generation” (118). Fortunately, neither Coleman nor Putnam was correct in their

presumptions; conditions change.

Separated from Coleman by space but not time, Bourdieu, unlike Coleman or Putnam,

or Florida for that matter, was interested in the reproduction and maintenance of the class

system in society. In contrast to Coleman, Bourdieu disavows the use of the rational maximizing

individual in his work. To him

“Homo oeconomicus, as conceived (tacitly or explicitly) by economic orthodoxy, is a kind of anthropological monster (my emphasis):…the most extreme personification of the scholastic fallacy,…very common in the social sciences (particularly in linguistics and ethnology), by which the scholar puts into the heads of the agent he is studying – housewives or households, firms or entrepreneurs, etc. – the theoretical considerations and constructions he has had to develop in order to account for their practices.” (Bourdieu 2010:209)


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From this intellectual position Bourdieu developed his popular concepts of “field” and

“habitus.” They are the foundational elements through the understanding of which the

liberation and establishment of “a theory of the mode of generation of practices…which is the

precondition for establishing a theory of an experimental science…of incorporation and

objectification” is made possible (Bourdieu 2003a:72/Gualtieri 2009:12).

Bourdieu defines the habitus as “systems of durable, transposable dispositions,

structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” which are “objectively

organized as strategies without being the product of a genuine strategic intention” (Bourdieu

1990:72-73). Habitus is the mechanism through which objective possibility and subjective

expectation are internalized. Furthermore, habitus, imbued with social and cultural agency but

not located within one individual but rather in tacit knowledge, produces and reproduces

practices and is “determined by the past conditions which have produced the principle of their

production” and permit an understanding of “doxa,” experience which is self-evident in the

natural and social world (164). “Habitus” is of paramount importance to Bourdieu as practice

may only be understood through the relation of “habitus” formation in past social conditions

and the present social conditions in which actions are implemented.

Related to habitus is the concept of field. A field is “a separate social universe having its

own laws of functioning independent of those of politics and the economy” (Bourdieu

2003a:162-163); the habitus and capital of individuals interact with the specific laws of the

field. In it “accumulates a particular form of capital” with a corresponding exertion of force

(164). Fields are interrelated and hierarchical domains, subordinated to the field of power and

class relations.


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In The Forms of Capital (1986), Bourdieu provides a comprehensive analysis of the

manifestations that capital assumes to further collective misrecognition. Misrecognition is the

obfuscation of the social origins of social and cognitive categories. It is due to the symbolic

disguising the material, obscuring symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1984:249-251), defined as the

“collective labour” of the acceptance and naturalization of inequality by a majority in

subordination to a minority (Bourdieu 2000:170, 192). Subsequently collective misrecognition is

the collective belief in a power, such as magic in the work of Marcel Mauss. This social fact, to

borrow a term from Emile Durkheim, should be studied not just to “know…the specific

properties of the ‘magician’” or of “the magical operations and representations” but rather to

discover the bases of the collective belief” (Bourdieu 1993:81).

Bourdieu expressed that capital was accumulated labor which, “when appropriated on a

private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social

energy in the form of reified or living labor” (Bourdieu 1986:241). Hence, the “structure and

distribution” of capital “represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e., the set of

constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable

way, determining the chances of success for practices” (241). This belief led the distinguished

social theorist to be concerned “economic theory has” reduced “the universe of exchanges to

mercantile exchange which is subjectively and objectively oriented toward the maximization of

profit, i.e., (economically) self-interested, it has implicitly defined the other forms of exchange

as noneconomic and therefore disinterested” (241). From this position he deduced that

comprehension of the “structure and functioning of the social world” was impossible “unless

one reintroduces capital in all its forms and not solely in the form recognized by economic


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theory” (241). To facilitate this intellectual project he provided three “fundamental guises” in

which capital is presented: economic, cultural, and social (242).

Economic capital is the first of the guises in which capital presents itself. It is

“immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalized in the form of

property rights” (Bourdieu 1986:242). The second guise is cultural capital, which is “convertible,

on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of

educational qualifications” (242). Social capital is the final appearance of capital. It is comprised

of social obligations, convertible in certain conditions into economic capital and potentially

“institutionalized in the form of a title of nobility” (242).

Social capital is “the aggregate of the actual of potential resources which are linked to

possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships…membership in

a group…which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively-owned

capital” (Bourdieu 1986:246). Thus, the amount of social capital possessed by an individual

“depends on the size of the network of connections he can effectively mobilize” (246). In this,

Bourdieu sides with a strong ties view of social capital like Coleman. Concerning Coleman,

Portes wrote “curiously, Coleman does not mention Bourdieu, although his analysis of the

possible uses of social capital for the acquisition of educational credentials closely parallels that

pioneered by the French sociologist” (Portes 1998:5). These parallels are apparent in Bourdieu’s

discussion of cultural capital.

Cultural capital, writes Bourdieu, exists in the embodied state, the objectified state, and

in the institutionalized state (Bourdieu 1986: 242). Embodied cultural capital resides in the

individual and may be adopted unconsciously, such as the non-rhotic accent of the Boston


20

Brahmins. It combines the “prestige of innate property with the merits of acquisition” (244).

Cultural capital in the objectified state consists of cultural goods that may be “appropriated

materially...and symbolically” (245). Artworks are an example of this form of cultural capital

which is wielded as a “weapon” in the fields of cultural production and “the field of the social

classes” (245). Finally, the institutionalized state of cultural capital is “the objectification of

cultural capital in the form of academic qualifications” (246). It permits the comparison of

individuals and through this establishes conversion rates (to economic capital) (246). It is this

last feature of cultural capital that best relates to the discourse surrounding creative capital due

to the association of creative capital with human capital.

Bourdieu wrote that economists like human capital theorist Gary Becker “fail to take

systematic account of the structure of the differential chances of profit which the various

markets offer…agents or classes as a function of the volume of the composition of their assets”

(Bourdieu 1986:243). In doing so they ignore the “domestic transmission of cultural capital”

(243); their adoption of a functionalist definition “ignores the contribution which the

educational system makes to the reproduction of the social structure by sanctioning the

hereditary transmission of cultural capital” (243). Thus, human capital, “despite its humanistic

connotations, does not move beyond economism and ignores, inter alia, the fact that the

scholastic yield from educational action depends on the cultural capital previously invested by

the family. Moreover, the economic and social yield of the educational qualification depends on

the social capital, again, inherited” (243).

Anthropologist Jay MacLeod used the ideas of cultural capital and habitus to explain the

racial dynamics of social mobility in his ethnographic study of two groups of boys, one “white”


21

and the other “black,” who lived in a housing project (MacLeod 1987). He analyzed the

difference in approaches to the “American achievement ideology” among the boys. Similarly,

Phillipe Bourgois applied the writings of Bourdieu, particularly cultural capital, in his

ethnographic study of crack dealers in Spanish Harlem (Bourgois 1996). His work revealed the

complexities of the “underground economy” through the lives of individuals engaged in the

trade.

The interviews and investigation of Bourgois in Spanish Harlem provided insight into the

relationships between individual agency, violence, and the reproduction of poverty in an inner-

city neighborhood. His later work, the photo-ethnography Righteous Dopefiend (2009),

continued this work with a focus on symbolic violence. However, regardless of the revelation of

the worth of Bourdieu’s concepts in these studies of the class system, to appreciate these

insights and their relevance to creative capital, a thorough explanation of human capital is in

order.

Recognizing the limitations of physical resources and accepting that technology explains

most of “the growth in per capita income,” University of Chicago economist Gary Becker

pondered a “common sense idea” that would explain income inequality (Becker 1962:9, 49). He

sought to establish a theory of investment that would be empirically oriented so as to

“encourage the development of new sources and types of data” (Becker 1992:52). It was rooted

in an examination of “intangible resources” so as to provide a “unified explanation of a wide

range of empirical phenomena” (Becker 1962:9, 10). The intangible resources on which the

theory was to be constructed, human capital, led Becker to postulate that real incomes rise


22

through improvement in “the physical and mental abilities of people” (9). Thus, according to

Becker it was differential investment in human capital that explained income inequality.

Becker defines human capital as “the knowledge, information, ideas, skills, and health of

individuals” (Becker 2002:3). Essentially, human capital is “the imbedding of resources in

people” (Becker 1962:9). The associated theory of investment assumes that education

increases wages through improved productivity. Subsequently, in economic (or econometric)

terms, wage is a function of human capital. Further, in regards to education, capital markets are

“perfect” as there is “free entry.” Similarly, all agents have complete information; there is no

uncertainty in the market.

Using “the economic approach to analyze social issues that range beyond those usually

considered by economists” (Becker 1992:38), Becker’s research furthered “the relentless

expansion of the ambit of formal economic modeling beyond the realm of the market

transactions that were its original focus, to all areas of living” (Carrier 2009:24). His theory is “a

method of analysis, not an assumption about particular motivations” that “unlike Marxian

analysis…does not assume that individuals are motivated solely by selfishness of gain” (Becker

1992:38). Rather, “individuals maximize welfare as they conceive it” (38).

To Becker “actions are constrained by income, time, imperfect memory and calculating

capacities, and other limited resources, and also by the available opportunities in the economy

and elsewhere” (Becker 1992:38). However, “the most fundamental constraint is limited time”

(38). This use of rational choice theory, despite its recognition of individual limitations to the

maximization of personally conceived welfare, positioned the individual within neoclassical

economic theory.


23

While labor in the human capital theory of investment was considered to be a

commodity prior to Becker’s formulations the individual was not. Human capital theory

established the individual as a commodity but in doing so it confused labor with labor power.

However, the criticism from the “left” notwithstanding, a further unpacking of the concept and

theory is required prior to explicating the Marxist rebuttal.

Conventional discussions of investments in human capital focus on three forms: on-the-

job training (Becker 1962:10-25), schooling (25-26), and through the catch-all category of

“other knowledge” (26-27). On-the-job training is separated into general training, which

benefits all firms equally, and specific training, which “increases productivity by a different

amount in firms providing the training” (17). He further subdivides specific training into firm

specific and industry specific (24).

“Schooling” as an investment strategy has the “same kind of implications as general on-

the-job training” (Becker 1962:6). It prepares people for work in a firm or industry. The

products, credentials of various types, serve as entry requirements into firms or industries. In

contrast, “other knowledge” is amorphous and poorly defined by Becker.

Rather than defining “other knowledge,” Becker exemplifies the concept (Becker

1962:26-27). This is not inherently problematic but the assumption of equal access to

information is; His first example concerns market information about “production and

consumption possibilities” (27). Similarly, his acknowledgement that “information about the

political or social system…could also significantly raise real incomes” while self-evident is overly

simplistic (27); It is as unilinear and obtuse as conventional descriptions of human capital


24

investments that omit “productive wage increases” derived from improving “emotional and

physical health” (27).

Becker provided a four-page explanation of the significance of emotional and physical

health to wage increases (Becker 1962:27-31). This exponential “explanation” relative to “other

knowledge” accentuates critiques of human capital derived from readings of Karl Marx that are

not based on rational choice theory. Yet, as noted before, it was the spread of economic

analysis outside of its traditional boundaries which led Becker to be awarded the Nobel Prize

for Economics in 1992. This contribution to the ascendance of economics within the social

sciences is of the greatest relative significance as “economics is always a state

science…dependent on responding politically to demands, while at the same time defending

itself” against such involvement by “its formal, and preferably mathematical, construction”

(Bourdieu 2010:11).

In his 1992 acceptance speech, Becker declared “new faith in human capital in policy

discussions…has reshaped the way governments approach” problems (Becker 1992:44). It

(human capital theory) “builds on a theory of individual choice” but “is not mainly concerned

with individuals” (52). Rather, “it uses theory at the micro level…to derive implications at the

group or macro level” (52). This macro level focus is the feature that makes it “of interest to

policymakers and those studying differences among countries and cultures” (52). However, this

use of theory at the micro level to understand the macro was not new in the social sciences.

Anthropologists have conducted research among individuals to understand cultures and

societies since the inception of the discipline in the late Nineteenth Century. Yet, it was the

adoption of rational choice theory by other disciplines, such as anthropology, that furthered


25

“the economic way of seeing things” (Becker 1992:52). This use of economic logic by non-

economists like social and political theorist Jon Elster, who utilized rational choice theory to

argue that Marx’s economic theories are incorrect (Elster 1994), may have been the primary

source for Becker’s Nobel Prize, but it was not the main stimulus for its use in anthropology.

The inclusion of rational choice theory into the anthropological canon was part of a continuing

debate that reached a crescendo in the 1960s.

James Carrier describes this debate as “the first, and perhaps only, time that there was a

sustained public debate about the nature of the economy among anthropologists and between

anthropologists and at least some economists (Carrier 2009:16). The debate was between two

intellectual schools of thought - Formalists and Substantivists. It concerned the work of Austrian

economic historian Karl Polanyi (1957a). Yet, the “debate perennial” began much earlier in the

critique of Western economics found in the economic study of Trobriand Islanders by Bronislaw

Malinowski (1922) (Wilk and Cliggett 2007:5).

In Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), Malinowski founded economic anthropology

(Carrier 2009:21). He challenged the assumption of “primitive economic man.” To him,

“primitive economic man” was a “fanciful, dummy creature” (Malinowski 1922:60). He was not

“prompted in all his actions by a rationalistic conception of self-interest, and achieving his aim

directly and with minimum effort” (60). Accordingly, it was “the Ethnographer's duty and right

to protest against the introduction from outside of false facts into his own field of study”

(Malinowski 1922:62).

In academia Malinowski is best known for his contributions to methodology. They are

the foundation of contemporary anthropological practice. He provided the rationale and


26

articulation of the proper conduct of participant observation in fieldwork. However, it was his

implementation of the functionalist tradition of Emile Durkheim that grounded his critique of

Western economics (Gualtieri 2009:6-7).

Writing in the 1936 edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Malinowski described

functionalism:

This type of theory aims at the explanation of anthropological facts at all levels of

development by their function, by the part which they play within the integral system of

culture, by the manner in which they are related to each other within the system, and

by the manner in which the system is related to the physical surroundings. It aims at

understanding the nature of culture, rather than at conjectural reconstructions of its

evolution or of past historical events. (Malinowski 1936:132)

He continued the definition with the explanation that “description cannot be separated from

explanation,” that theory does not go beyond induction, and that all aspects of culture “fulfills

some vital function” (132). Furthermore, he added that the functional view “keeps always in

mind the biological basis of human civilization,” and, “teaches that man in the very fact of

culture transcends his biological outfit” (132). Thus, in psychological functionalism, Malinowski

prioritized the fulfillment of individual needs in the understanding of the human experience,

since structures existed to meet human needs (Kuper 1996:10).

Utilizing his psychological functionalist framework, Malinowski declared that Western

characterizations of “primitive” economies were ethnocentric. Trobriand customs were not

irrational; Trobrianders and other “primitives” were not childlike. Rather, their actions fulfilled

universal biological needs. For example, writing about Trobriand Islander eating habits,

Malinowski noted that “value is not the result of ‘utility and rarity, intellectually compounded,

but is the result of a sentiment grown round things, which, throygh satisfying human needs, are


27

capable of evoking emotions” (Malinowski 1922:172). He continued “the value of manufactured

objects of use must also be explained through man's emotional nature, and not by reference to

his logical construction of utilitarian views” (172). Thus, the seven-plus decade later call-to-arms

of Landry and Bianchini concerning such qualitative concepts as “emotions” is related to an

enduring academic struggle between economics and anthropology.

In 1941 an exchange between anthropologist Melville Herskovitz and economist Frank

Knight was published in which Herskovitz argued for cultural relativism and Knight for the

necessity of cross-cultural general models of human behavior (Carrier 2009:16). This exchange

continued the disciplinary debate between anthropologists and economists begun by

Malinowski. It is significant in that it presaged the expansion of the disciplinary debate within a

renegotiated linguistic framework; formalism and substantivism. However, prior to the climax

of this debate, anthropologists were adopting the rational economic individual into their work.

Anthropologist Fredrick Barth is the most cited among these scholars (Gualtieri 2009:8-10).

Barth adopted a concept created by the aforementioned Austrian economist Joseph

Schumpeter. That concept, “methodological individualism,” was invented by Schumpeter in

1908 (Hodgson 2007:1). It lacks a singular definition but according to Schumpeter it “means

that one starts from the individual in order to describe certain economic relationships”

(Schumpeter 1908:91)). Regardless of the diversity of definitions, all versions of methodological

individualism are derived from the work of German sociologist Max Weber.

Weber theorized that social phenomena while often reified “must be treated as solely

the resultants and modes of organization of the particular acts of individual persons, since

these alone can be treated as agents” (Weber 1968:13). Individual actions motivated by


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“intentional states” provide the explanations for social phenomena (13). This actor-oriented

approach accepted that individuals “seek to maximize their return in transactions” (Carrier

2009:19). In this acceptance of the maximizing individual, placed as it was by Schumpeter into

the economic framework of the rational actor, methodological individualism and associated

theories contrast with neo-Durkheimian functionalist models, like that of Malinowski.

Accepting methodological individualism, Barth studied exchange between individuals

in the Swat Valley of Pakistan and established models derived from the intersection of

individual strategies and socio-cultural values (Kuper 1996:157). He was concerned with the

impact of individual interactions on social structures (Prattis 1983:103). Thus, Barth and other

methodological individualists provided models that were opposed to functionalist models in

relation to structure and agency. The actor-oriented formalistic models that Barth produced are

categorized as “transactionalism” or “process analysis.”

Transactionalism is an interactive approach to the study of society. This association

comes via Raymond Firth, who recognized the deficiencies of Malinowskian functionalism. Firth

is often cited as being the first Formalist anthropologist. He recommended adherence to a

perspective that emphasized a focus on the social behavior of individuals, particularly the

decisions made by individuals and the relations between individuals (82). He was concerned

with the roles of individuals rather than the statuses they occupy (82). Unlike Malinowski he

believed that “complex social obligations” did not negate “rational economic choice” (Firth

1939:331).

Barth was the foremost proponent of transactionalism (Barnard 2004:83). His work

among the Swat Pathans formed the basis for the articulation of his approach to social action.


29

This approach developed models that focused on reciprocal relations in decision-making and

the negotiation of identity (84). To explore these relations, Barth utilized frameworks, which are

analytical tools derived from the work of Firth, who distinguished between social structure and

social organization (Barth 2004:3).

Frameworks are conceptual boundaries that “serve to define and restrict…alternatives

which are offered to each actor” (Barth 2004:3). There are two types of frameworks: fixed and

changeable (31). Fixed frameworks constrain choice and are conceptually similar to structural

functionalist social structures. Changeable frameworks are those that may be changed by the

actions of individuals and are thus a conceptual contribution to functionalism, which failed to

theorize the mechanisms for social change. This articulation of the transactionalism of Firth in

the work of Barth led to a serious return in a housing projectajor to the study of agency in

anthropological theory. However, the greater significance of transactionalism was the inclusion

of rational economic man within anthropological practice.

Economic anthropology adhering to the works of Malinowski was primarily descriptive.

It was not until Barth and others incorporated methodological individualism into their work that

a shift occurred. Corresponding with this transition in anthropology was a similar alteration

within economic thought. This intellectual movement, as previously mentioned, was prompted

by Karl Polanyi, challenging the orthodox academic thought of the time.

In The Great Transformation Polanyi (2001) explored the historical development of

market capitalism. He determined that “economics had developed along with market capitalism

as its servant and was merely part of a system that helped keep capitalism going by making it

seem natural” (Wilk 2007:6). Like Schumpeter, he believed that capitalism would lead to its


30

own destruction; to Polanyi civilization would breakdown due to the failure of a world economy

based on a utopian idea of a self-adjusting market (Polanyi 2011:3-5). The proclamation of this

thesis created a great deal of controversy. It served as a springboard for his later work with

anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, released as the edited volume Trade and

Market in the Early Empires (T&M) (Polanyi 1957a).

T&M examined the means through which civilizations built economies. The conclusions

of the research led to his acceptance that market capitalism was just one of a number of

options for economic organization. This belief spurred controversy as it contrasted with

orthodox economic thought and supported the views of anthropologists who studied

noncapitalist peoples. As discussed earlier, Malinowski had already positioned anthropology on

this side of the interdisciplinary debate. Yet, it was that the proclamation came from a

prominent economist that granted symbolic power to the anthropological position.

Proclaiming that the word “economic” had two meanings, Polanyi articulated this

duality in the article “The Economy as Instituted Process” (Polanyi 1957b). He defined

“economic” as being either “formal” or “substantive.” Formal involved “the study of rational

decisionmaking” while substantive related to “the material acts of making a living” (Wilk

2007:7). Further, he declared that only in the modern capitalist system of the West did the

substantive and formal unite. Modern capitalism fused the substantive economic system with

the formal rational economic logic of the maximizing individual (7). This contrasted with other

methods to integrate the economy into society: reciprocity, redistribution, and exchange.

Prior to Polanyi, Western economic thought was entrenched in the study of market

exchange. It failed to address the issues his research uncovered. This limited the applicability of


31

Western economic thought to modern capitalism. Correspondingly, Polanyi exclaimed that new

principles were required to ensure the proper conduct of economic research in nonmarket

societies. However, his cultural evolutionary position lacks an anthropological view of culture

due to its singular focus on institutions and other social structures from a macro perspective. It

is this feature of substantivism that led his followers in the discipline of economics to be called

“institutionalists” (Wilk 2007:8).

Unlike the orthodox economists whom Polanyi debated, anthropologists already studied

reciprocity and redistribution. A prime example of this anthropological approach, aside from

the authors previously discussed, is found in the seminal work on exchange and reciprocity by

Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le Don (1990). Regardless, anthropologists and other scholars who

adopted Polanyi’s views came to be known as “substantivists,” focusing on the means by which

individuals satisfy their needs and desires.

A formalist response to the substantivists emerged. Critics faulted Polanyi for his

assault on the dated concept of an economic man and deemed that a methodological

individualist Universalist approach was essential. To these scholars maximization relates to

emotions and not just money or markets (Wilk 2007:10). Similarly, in juxtaposition to

Malinowski, deduction is required to establish relationships to laws of human behavior;

substantivists are generalists whom rely on the idiosyncratic subjective authority of individual

scholars. Further, all societies exhibit rational behavior; the tools for research require

modification and are not to be discarded. Yet despite the solidity of these counterpoints one

related claim reverberated across the ages leading to a comical situation.


32

Many formalists believed that substantivism was irrelevant due to the spread of market

capitalism. As this paper reveals, that is not the case. Supporting evidence is myriad with one

example being proverbially close to home; Fred Bock wrote in the introduction to the 2001

Beacon Press edition of The Great Transformation, the work of Polanyi has continuing relevance

for “contemporary debates about globalization because neoliberals embrace the same utopian

vision that inspired the gold standard” (Polanyi 2011:xxxiii). However, the passage of time

reveals that there was no clear “winner” in the formalist – substantivist debate. Rather,

everyone “won”; both groups were able to solidify their position within academia. More

importantly the lack of a “winner” combined with an increase in applied anthropological work

spurred new avenues of research, primarily in nation-states with market economies (Wilk

2007:15).

Feminist anthropology substantively challenged formalist patriarchal views separating

what they perceive as a false dichotomy between the public and private spheres. This

separation was fundamental to economics and subordinated women based on outmoded

cultural norms about gender. Similarly, ecological anthropology in the cultural ecological

tradition of Leslie White (1949) and Julian Steward (1955) relied on substantivism by focusing

on the interactions between people and the environment. It later developed formal models,

like optimal foraging theory, embedding the debate perennial within this school of

anthropological thought (Wilk and Cliggett 2007:21). Likewise, peasant studies evolved into

oppositional positions (Wilk and Cliggett 2007:24-27): the substantive position of James Scott

found in The Moral Economy of the Peasant (Scott 1976) and the formalist, The Rational

Peasant of Samuel Popkin (Popkin 1979). However, regardless of the importance of these


33

contributions to anthropological thought, two other threads prove to be of greater import to

understanding the contemporary role of anthropology in relation to the creative economy.

Writing in 1965, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier stated “the concrete and

imperative urgency of the transformation of that part of the world which has remained ‘under-

developed’ gives a practical character to the need to understand the economic systems of other

societies” (Godelier 1966:249). This characterization of the object of economic anthropology

was a product of a methodological shift that began in the 1960s when scholars, many of them

French, applied the writings of Marx to the examination of social and economic change. These

anthropologists primarily worked in Africa and came to be known as neo-Marxists for their

implementation of a Marxian focus on class interest and modes of production derived from the

reinterpretation of Marx’s writings by Louis Althusser (2001).

Neo-Marxists like Godelier departed from studies on individual economic choice. They

emphasized that “there is no rationality ‘in itself’, nor any absolute rationality (Godelier

1966:317). Corresponding with this shift in the object of economic anthropology towards

relations of power, applied anthropologists working for development agencies furthered a

formalist approach to the study of economic development theory.

Disillusioned by the use of their work to harm others during the Vietnam Conflict, many

in the cadre of development anthropologists began to conduct fieldwork on the impacts of

various development programs (Wilk 2007:22). This work was often done while in the employ

of the donor institutions, creating awkward situations in the field and the academy. Regardless,

this work was conducted in an intellectual environment dominated by competing theories of


34

economic development. The competing theories informing these studies were modernization

theory and dependency theory.

Modernization theory was articulated by Gunnar Myrdal in 1957. He argued that

“progress” occurred in a unilinear evolutionary fashion. Economic systems evolved from

agrarian capitalism to industrial capitalism. Therefore, policies should be enacted to further the

progress of societies, largely tied to the modernist concept of the nation-state, from one

evolutionary phase to the next. In contrast, dependency theory challenged the evolutionary

premise of modernization theory.

Dependency theory was developed by Paul Baran in 1957. He claimed that the policies

enacted by the proponents of modernization theory served to impede the “progress” of the

recipients of the “aid” derived from modernist development programs. Further, these

impediments actually transferred resources to the donors for their benefit. This process

effectively created a relationship of dependency as recipients became unable to “feed and

educate their people and required loans and aid to finance economic ‘growth,’ which actually

made the problems of poverty worse instead of better (Wilk 2007:108). Yet, these political

opposites are quite similar in that they both are deterministic, employ a “rationalist

epistemology”, and are evolutionary with change coming “‘top-down’ from the state” (Gardner

1996:19). Regardless, the intellectual struggle between the two schools of thought informed

the work of anthropologists as they conducted fieldwork on the impacts of various

development programs.

In 1990 anthropologist James Ferguson published The Anti-Politics Machine:

“Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. The book was a revision of


35

the dissertation he completed at Harvard University in 1985. That dissertation was based on

fieldwork from 1982-1983 related to a rural development project in Lesotho (Ferguson

1990:viii). His book used the post-Structuralist writings of Michel Foucault concerning discursive

practices to argue “‘development’ institutions generate their own form of discourse, and this

discourse simultaneously constructs Lesotho as a particular kind of object of knowledge, and

creates a structure of knowledge around that object” (xiv). Thus, to understand the

development apparatus and its consequential depoliticized expansion of state power one must

examine “the complex relations between the intentionality of planning and strategic

intelligibility of outcomes” that form an “unauthored…constellation” – the anti-politics machine

(20-21).

Ferguson’s use of Foucauldian discourse analysis was emblematic of a shift in

anthropology “in gestation since the late 1960s” (Escobar 1995:5). The maturation of this shift

became prevalent in anthropology during the post-modern self-critique in the 1980s (5). It was

at this time that the writings of non-Western authors like “V.Y. Mudimbe, Chandra Mohanty,

and Homi Bhabha, among others” (5) influenced anthropologists as they adopted a reflexive

stance of their discipline. Arturo Escobar was one of these anthropologists.

Escobar used discourse analysis to analyze the practice of development. To Escobar

“thinking of development in terms of discourse makes it possible to maintain the focus on

domination – as earlier Marxist analyses, for instance, did – and at the same time to explore

more fruitfully the conditions of possibility and the most pervasive effects of development”

(Escobar 1995:5-6). Recognizing that “capital and new technologies are not conducive to the

defense of minority subjectivities” (225) he wrote a broad historical survey of development


36

policies that revealed the continuities between European colonialism and contemporary

international development.

Citing Stephen Gudeman, Escobar wrote “universal models – whether neoclassical,

substantivist, or Marxist – ‘continuously reproduce and discover their own assumptions in the

exotic materials” (Escobar 1995:94). As a universal model, development discourse “created an

extremely efficient apparatus for producing knowledge about, and the exercise of power over,

the Third World” (9). It “was – and continues to be…a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic

approach, which” treats “peoples and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be

moved up and down in the charts of ‘progress’” (44). The power dynamics of this approach was

intricately related to the social sciences and particularly dependent on orthodox economics.

“Economists do not see their science as cultural discourse…their knowledge is taken to

be a neutral representation of the world and the truth about it” (Escobar 1995:58). He

continued “had a nonindividualistic view of the underdeveloped economy been adopted

(Braudelian, Schumpterian, or Marxist, not to mention one based on a non-Western tradition),

the consequences would have been quite different, for development would have had to involve

all sectors of social life” (78). Yet, such an approach is not taken. This generates “a fundamental

assumption that…there is a reality of underdevelopment that a carefully conducted economic

science can grasp progressively, pretty much following the model of the natural sciences” (93).

Like creative capital theory, development sought to achieve “‘sustainable economic

growth’” through “the existence of ‘an undistorted, competitive, and well-functioning market’”

(Escobar 1995:93). Moreover, peasants and other “clients” “are socially constructed prior to the

agent’s (planner, researcher, development expert) interaction with them” (107). The


37

“relationship between client and agent is structured by bureaucratic and textual mechanisms

that are anterior to their interaction” (107). Yet, “This does not deter the agent or institution

from presenting the results of the interactions as ‘facts,’ that is, as true discoveries of the real

situation characterizing the client” (107). Rather, “labels are invented and maintained by

institutions on an ongoing basis, as part of an apparently rational process that is essentially

political” (110); “The local level must reproduce the world as the top sees it” (111). This “top”

to Escobar is the institutions that support the Washington Consensus.

Writing in 1989, economist John Williamson described the Washington Consensus as a

series of economic policies related to the structural adjustment of developing economies

(Williamson 1990). These policies tied development aid to the implementation of

macroeconomic policies such as free trade and investment and the privatization of industry.

The institutions abetting these reforms were based in Washington, D.C., hence the moniker.

They included the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the United States Department

of the Treasury.

Concerning the World Bank, Escobar wrote that “this institution should be seen as an

agent of economic and cultural imperialism at the service of the global elite” (Escobar

1995:167). He continued “the World Bank embodies the development apparatus. It deploys

development with tremendous efficiency, establishing multiplicities in all corners of the Third

World, from which the discourse extends and renews itself” (167). That the Washington

Consensus deployed an army of unarmed consultants rather than soldiers carrying rifles

revealed to development anthropologists and others that while class conflict appears in many

forms the relationship to orthodox economics and fundamental dynamics described by Marx do


38

not change; the colonial project of primitive accumulation through territorial domination for

the extraction of resources and exploitation of labor continues in a new guise.

Marx believed that Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, David Ricardo, and other classical

political economists treated history as having ended. This absurd notion required the

historicization of bourgeois economics so that “the present is not seen as the end of history but

as a part of history itself” (Patniak 2002:59). To achieve this goal, Marx adopted and modified

the labor theory of value used by classical political economists; the particular version he used

was formulated by David Ricardo in 1817.

Ricardo, like his contemporaries, focused on exchange value. Moreover, he equated

value with labor in a strict sense. The amount of labor used in the production of a commodity

established its value. Because “classical political economy nowhere” distinguished “between

labour as it appears in the value of a product, and the same labour as it appears in the

product’s use value” (Marx 1990:173), Marx incorporated a social element into the labor theory

of value.

To Marx the value of a commodity is determined by the “labour socially necessary…for

its production” (Marx 1990:129). Its use value is measured qualitatively while its exchange

value is defined quantitatively. Through exchange capitalists acquire surplus value, the

difference between exchange value and the components of production, such as raw materials

and labor. Thus, through the incorporation of socially necessary labor time into the labor theory

of value Marx was able to position the bourgeois economy within history and establish a

foundation for a discussion of the social aspects of capitalism.


39

To Marx, the demystification of social structures is of primary importance to the

understanding of the human experience. Through a dialectical exploration of modes of

production in history, particularly the relations between individuals and the means of

production and reproduction, Marx sought to demystify the structures that create social

antagonism: class conflict furthered through contradictions. He theorized that modes of

production culminated in the present historical moment of capitalism or the bourgeois mode of

production. This analytical model was later termed historical materialism (Gualtieri 2009:1-3).

Contradiction is the dynamic foundational element of dialectical inquiry in the writings

of Marx. It establishes unified social forms through relational oppositions and is the mechanism

for change (McGuire 2002:95). Contradiction is fundamental because actors exist within social

spaces of relational opposition within which each actor experiences all aspects of the social

relations simultaneously from a different perspective due to their relationship within the

oppositional framework (McGuire 2002:96-97). Therefore, to conceptualize the struggle of

individuals living within the capitalist mode of production and the inherent lack of stability

within society, Marx used the concepts of base and superstructure. These are social structures

that reveal society to be a system of interrelated parts that exist in a dialectical relationship

that functions to mystify the actual relations of production. This mystification occurs through

the establishment of false consciousness, which is the obscuration of actual life-process through

ideology, which is related to historical life-process (Marx 1978a:154).

In his writings, Marx characterizes false consciousness as a product of the division of

labor within the capitalist mode of production, which creates differentiation (Marx 1978:159).

This differentiation establishes classes that come into conflict due to contradiction; the laborers


40

(proletariat) produce and reproduce but the capitalists (bourgeoisie) control the means of

production and reproduction. It is only through class-consciousness that individuals will be led

to establish new relations between production and reproduction. Through communication

among the proletariat, who are massed together in factories to produce for the capitalists,

class-consciousness will arise, dispelling the mystifications established by false consciousness.

Although Marx described the means of demystification and in so doing the manner in

which to confront and dispel it, he relied on a structural model in which agency is discussed

only in the aggregate. He wrote that “society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the

sum of interactions, the relations within which these individuals stand” (Marx 1978b:247).

Therefore, individuals are understood in terms of the structures that they compose, such as

classes.

In response to Marx, orthodox economists revised their approaches. They jettisoned the

labor theory of value in favor of the “scientific” approach used by Becker and described by

Escobar (Fusfeld 2002:98). This theoretical school is called neoclassical economics (NE). It uses

mathematics and complex equations to justify assumptions about self-adjusting markets devoid

of entry barriers. These markets are comprised of maximizing individuals and progress is a

function of savings and capital accumulation. In essence it is classical economics without the

labor theory of value.

NE “made refutation of Marx unnecessary” (Fusfeld 2002:98). It has a seductive “vision

of a society operating perfectly” and uses proofs which rely on assumptions that are false (Keen

2011:18). Subsequent developments, like human capital theory and creative capital theory, rely

on it making them deficient for the same reasons that neoclassical economics is deficient.


41

Critiques of NE abound and alternatives exist: Marxian, Austrian, Post-Keynesian, Sraffian,

Evolutionary, Complexity theory, and Econophysics (Keen 2011:444). Yet, neoclassical

economics remains as ascendant among economic thought as economics is among the social

sciences. However, as economist Steve Keen wrote, the simplicity and the related ascendance

of economic theory "has not made the world a better place” (Keen 2011:xv). Rather, this

simplicity just contributes to its ascendance as the dominant social science; For while

individuals are experientially aware of their system of production, distribution, and

consumption, the analytical abstraction of economics from context in social life proves to be a

powerful rhetorical tool in public debate; while both economics and anthropology rely on

common sense the latter eschews simplicity (Carrier 2009:26-27). Significantly, within the

neoclassical economic framework human capital theory is proverbial low-hanging fruit for

critique.

As Steve Keen explained in Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor Dethroned?,

neoclassical economics is subject to a critique that developed out of a debate in the 1960s that

is known as the “Cambridge Controversies” (Keeen 2011:8). The debate involved a paper

written by Piero Sraffa in 1926 (Keen 2011:143). Economists at MIT advanced orthodox

neoclassical economic thought while their counterparts at the University of Cambridge

espoused “heretical” views (Keen 2011:142).

To summarize the debate, neoclassical economic growth theory aggregates inputs of

production. This aggregation unifies the term ‘capital;’ capital in economics actually has two

meanings: a sum of money or a collection of machinery (Keen 2011:142). Further, the

aggregation requires that the inputs have the same attributes. However, the production of


42

commodities through the combination of commodities and labor reveals that money cannot be

used as a substitute for machinery in production. There are qualitative differences between the

inputs.

Human capital is a quality of labor. Therefore it is differentiated in qualitative terms.

Thus, it is open to the same criticism related to the aggregation of inputs; a degree from

Harvard University is the same as a degree from Haskell Indian Nations University. Bourdieu

and Coleman, as previously discussed, have shown the falsity of this proposition in their

formulations of cultural capital and social capital respectively. Even an analysis conducted by a

neoclassical economist would argue that this is empirically false. Related to this critique is one

founded on the misrecognition of other qualitative factors ignored by neoclassical economic

theory.

As Bourdieu stated, Becker’s theory does not account for forms of capital that are not

explicitly economic. Having jettisoned the labor theory of value to expel Marx and save

capitalist thought, neoclassical economists overlook social factors impacting their theories. A

simple discussion of teachers working within the neoclassical economy on which Becker’s

model is based illustrates holes in the theory due to its assumptions.

In Becker’s theory of investment, human capital realizes returns commensurate to the

investment. Yet, union membership, a form of social capital, affords benefits that are unable to

be captured by his model. Teachers in the public sector tend to be members of unions while

those in the private sector, which includes public charter schools, are not. Besides the

employment protections afforded by membership in one of the two teachers’ unions, the

American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, there are other direct


43

economic benefits, such as minimum salaries. Therefore, two individuals with the same

investment in human capital may have differing salaries that are not based on their

qualifications but rather their social relations. That this issue reveals the continued applicability

of Marx’s relational social theory is furthered by the aforementioned misrecognition of the

difference between labor and labor power.

Harvey writes that “classical political economy…confused labour as a measure of value

and labour power as a commodity traded on the market” (Harvey 2006:23). Neoclassical

economics suffers from this same flaw. Human capital theory demonstrates this point. For as

Marx wrote “human labour-power in its fluid state…human labour, creates value but is not in

itself a value” (Marx 1990:142).

Labor power is a commodity sold by individuals. Labor is the act of production. The

former is a human capacity and the latter is a qualitative output of that capacity. Thus, in

conflating labor and labor power human capital fails to address the qualitative aspects of

investments in human capital. The significance of this “oversight” is substantial. It obscures

class conflict. Moreover, it assumes that investments always benefit the investor; there are no

public goods that create situations of individual over- or under-investment in the sense of

Coleman.

Taking for granted that investments in human capital benefit the investor, one accepts

that whoever purchases the labor power also benefits. The benefits accrue to those who wield

the economic capital to purchase the labor power of the laborer. Often the costs of investment

are born by the individual as a means of entry into a labor contract. Even when they are not,

the investment is done first for the primary benefit of the firm. Becker assumes that the


44

investor is compelled to apply all of the acquired knowledge for the benefit of the firm. Yet, as

important as these criticisms are, the philosophical dilemma created by this theory is of even

greater importance.

Essentializing individuals in the manner of human capital theory effectively strips people

of their humanity. It creates commodities out of people. This debasement through

commodification creates a philosophical quandary when removed from the economic

framework; “Humans must be made as living beings in order to act, engage in labor, and think”

(McGuire 2002:126). If people are commodities are they somehow slaves? Are they complicit in

their own devolution? These matters are irrelevant to a discipline that threw out the proverbial

baby with the bath water.

Becker, his neoclassical colleagues and their offspring, having cremated Marx and

scattered his ashes to the wind, ignored the atomistic nature of intellectual development.

Marx’s ghost, to borrow a phrase from an archaeology text, is “alive” (Derber 2011). He

manifests across time and space; Marx exists in the work of Godelier and the neo-Marxists, the

writings of Harvey, and even in the orthodox co-option by false intellectuals (Sartre 2008) like

Florida. To this day the collected work of Marx acts as a prism through which we formulate our

knowledge of the dynamics of advanced capitalism.

David Harvey is the most prominent contemporary proponent of the applicability of the

writings of Marx to contemporary life. His unorthodox approach crystallized during his studies

at the University of Cambridge where he earned his doctorate in geography in 1961.

Speculation aside, over the past four decades his application of dialectical materialism and

emphasis on social class in the study of advanced capitalism have generated a considerable


45

number of publications. His recent work continues the vein of Marxist thought that he crafted

while writing The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change.

Neoliberalism to Harvey is the “central guiding thought of economic thought and

management” in advanced capitalism (Harvey 2005:2). It is a utopian “theory of economic

practices that proposes” the betterment of humanity through the “liberation” of “individual

entrepreneurial freedoms and skills” within a neoclassical economic framework (2). As such It is

“rooted in a system of beliefs and values…in short, an economic common sense, linked…to the

social and cognitive structures of a particular order…which it formalizes and rationalizes,

thereby establishing them as the foundations of a universal model” (Bourdieu 2010:11).

However, despite the utopian pronouncements, as a theoretical project, the central feature of

neoliberalism is the restoration of class power (Harvey 2007:29).

Advocates of neoliberal theory are in positions of authority in education, media,

business, the state, and within international organizations, like the International Monetary

Fund. They believe that the state exists to establish and maintain an institutional framework of

practices that protect private property rights and the operation of markets, effectively

assembling “a monopoly of violence and definitions of legality” (Harvey 2007:35). Further, the

state is to create markets in areas lacking them; education and the environment are examples.

These prescriptions to “improve” the human condition rely on a process that advances the

welfare of the few at the expense of the multitude (Hardt 2001).

Related to the primitive accumulation of Marx, which involved conquest, extraction and

bondage, and the Washington Consensus, which backed the creation of “wage labour in

industry and agriculture”, neoliberalism operates through accumulation by dispossession


46

(Harvey 2005:178). Harvey coined this concept to describe the processes through which wealth

is transferred from laborers to the capitalists; neoliberal theory is a redistributive and not

generative class project of elites (159).

Accumulation by dispossession operates through privatization and commodification,

financialization, the management and manipulation of crises, and state redistribution (Harvey

2005:160-165). These processes are supported by the seizure of rights (178); rights are

understood to be sociocultural constructs of entitlement. Therefore, as sociocultural constructs

the contestation of these rights takes different forms across the globe. Regardless, privatization

is the “cutting edge of accumulation by dispossession” with the state transferring assets

managed for citizens to the market (Harvey 2003:157-169).

Through accumulation by dispossession the neoliberal creative destruction and

structural adjustment of the Washington Consensus proliferates. Austerity in the core is

modeled after the “creative destruction carried out on the periphery” (Harvey 2007:26).

Further, citing Polanyi, Harvey wrote that “neoliberalism confers rights and freedoms on those

‘whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing’” (Harvey 2005:38). This assignment of

rights was powerful; it managed to persuade even self-identified progressives that “class was a

meaningless category” (Harvey 2007:41).

As we have seen in the work of Florida, class is far from meaningless. If it was he would

not have argued for the inclusion of the concept into his creative capital theory. Rather, he

injected class into the neoliberal project on its own terms. He devalued other classes and

through the adoption of human capital theory obscured class conflict. But as Harvey wrote,

“the first lesson we must learn…is that if it looks like a class struggle and acts like a class


47

struggle, then we have to name it for what it is” (Harvey 2007:41). Yet, the establishment of a

class by Florida and its subsequent global diffusion was not a product of his own genius. Rather,

it was corollary to the ideological dominance of neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism has “become hegemonic as a mode of discourse” (Harvey 2005:3). Its

principles dominate global politics on the macro and mico scales despite being “quickly

abandoned whenever they conflict with (the) class project” (Harvey 2007:29). Its diffusion is

related to globalization, the process of international economic integration, as capitalism seeks

to eliminate “spatial barriers” in its quest to accelerate the turnover of capital (Harvey

2003:98). Fortunately Harvey was not alone among proverbial intellectual giants in his

recognition of the significance of globalization within the neoliberal class project.

Distinguished French social anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu characterized globalization

as “a myth…a powerful discourse…an idea which has social force, which obtains belief”

(Bourdieu 1998:34). This myth is “the main weapon in the battles against the gains of the

welfare state” (Bourdieu 2003b:38). It is similar to the anti-politics machine of James Ferguson;

Globalization is “conscious and deliberate policy” that is “paradoxical in that is a policy of

Depoliticization” (38). A key means through which this depoliticizing myth is spread is through

the media.

Bourdieu and Harvey noted the importance of the control of the media by upper-class

interests. To Harvey the myth of neoliberalism, of which the myth of globalization is an

element, permits the propagation of the idea that “certain sectors failed because they were not

competitive enough, thereby setting the stage for even more neoliberal reforms” (Harvey

2007:34). Correspondingly, “increased social inequality” is made to appear “necessary to


48

encourage entrepreneurial risk and innovation” which, “in turn, conferred competitive

advantage and stimulated growth” (34). Should the resulting conditions among the lower

classes deteriorate, “it was because they failed for personal and cultural reasons to enhance

their own human capital (personal emphasis) through education, the acquisition of a protestant

work ethic, and submission to work discipline and flexibility” (34).

Bourdieu explained the naturalization of social inequality described by Harvey using a

concept borrowed from Weber. Weber believed that dominant groups require a “’theodicy of

their own privilege” (Bourdieu 2003b:43). This theodicy of the elites Bourdieu equated to a

sociodicy, “a theoretical justification of the fact that they are privileged” (43). Significantly,

Bourdieu noted that the contemporary form that this takes is “competence” (43).

Competence manifests throughout creative capital theory. It is a component of the

“Creative Class Values” that Florida “discovered” through “field research across the United

States” (Florida 2004:77). He grouped creative class values under three headings: Individuality,

Meritocracy, and Diversity and Openness. Competence relates to meritocracy.

Concerning “meritocracy” he wrote “Creative Class people no longer define themselves

mainly by the amount of money they make or their position in a financially delineated status

order” (Florida 2004:78); Money may be an indicator of success but it is “not the whole story”

(78). He noted that creatives “try” to defy the “economic class into which they were born” and

that this “struggle” is “particularly true of the young descendants of the truly wealthy – the

capitalist class” (78). Leaving aside the fact that ten pages earlier in his book Florida denounced

“the analytical utility…in these broad categories of bourgeoisie and proletarian, capitalist (my

emphasis) and worker”, Florida explains that these privileged youth and other creatives, “want


49

to get ahead because they are good at what they do” (78). In this simple sentence, Florida

reveals the relationship between competence and the creative class.

To his credit Florida noted the “dark side” of meritocracy, writing that “papering over of

the causes of cultural advantage, meritocracy may subtly perpetuate the very prejudices it

claims to renounce” (78). Creatives may falsely believe that individuals with “qualities that

confer merit, such as technical knowledge and mental discipline…were born with them, or

acquired them all on their own, or that others just ‘don’t have it’” (78). In other words, the

sociodicy of competence furthers the misrecognition of the creatives. Yet, as is typical of

Florida, this declaration comes with a caveat; “meritocracy comes with a host of values and

beliefs we’d all agree are positive - from faith that virtue will be rewarded, to valuing self-

determination and mistrusting rigid caste systems” (78). After all, “researchers have found such

values to be on the rise, not only among the Creative Class in the United States, but throughout

our society and other societies” (79).

Creative capital theory was applied across the globe through various economic

development initiatives despite the fact that these initial policy formulations were based on a

theory that at the time lacked academic studies verifying its validity (Hoyman 2009:4).

Regardless, projects based on the theory proliferated, spreading into the hinterland after an

initial focus on “creative city” regions with a central urban core. Fortunately, corresponding

with the adoption of the theory as a development tool by diverse municipalities was the

publication of various studies supporting or critiquing the work. The common thread in these

works is the use of Florida’s indices and classifications.


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A European project named “Technology, talent and tolerance in European cities: a

comparative analysis” analyzed data from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the

Netherlands, and Germany to “examine important aspects of the locational preferences of

knowledge-based industries” (Cooke 2007:16). Adopting the premises of creative capital

theory, as well as the Bohemian and Diversity indices, researchers developed additional indices

“in order to grasp the fundamental differences in certain aspects of life between North

American and European societies” (Clifton 2008:67. The public provision index was one such

measure. In the case of the United Kingdom, researchers concluded that their results displayed

“similar properties to those ascribed to it in the USA” (79). Comparable conclusions were

reached by other European scholars (Bowen/De Voldere 2006/Boschma 2009). However, each

report noted the difficulty in determining the causality observed and issues related to the

qualitative aspects of the indices utilized.

In Canada a study similar to one conducted in Europe was implemented to test the

relationship between tolerance and economic health and growth (Sands 2008). The study

involved 40 midsized Canadian urban areas. It determined that there were positive

relationships between economic growth and the presence of the creative class. The researchers

determined that regions that rated high on the Diversity and Gay indices had larger numbers of

creatives but found no relationship between high-tech employment, economic growth, and the

other indices used by Florida. These findings led the authors to conclude that while Florida’s

strategies are “important to overall quality of life”, there is “little connection between the

various creativity measures and generally accepted metrics of economic well-being” (18). These

results led the authors to suggest that while creative capital inspired development may be


51

effective it must be combined with more traditional policies, like infrastructure improvement,

to be effective. It is not a “silver bullet” (20). Additionally, they note that specific qualities of a

geographic locality, “place luck,” are an intangible important factor.

In 2008 Timothy R. Wojan, Dayton Lambert and David McGranahan produced a report

that built on their previous efforts to use the presence of artists “to construct a more robust

indicator of creative places” (Wojan 2008:1). Through the creation of more robust indicators

and the clarification of relationships to place, the authors attempted to solve the tautology of

creative capital theory that made related studies “unproductive” and “empirically dubious” (1).

Their attempt to introduce empiricism into the debate was a major contribution to the

discourse because their research “does not rely on the location of particular quantities in a

place (e.g., human capital, creative class, R&D spending, transportation infrastructure) but on a

proxy for a particular quality of a place” (12); the authors attempt to demystify place luck.

Wojan et al noted that “the answer to whether the creative class fuels growth is

dependent on the integrity of the competing model specifications” (Wojan 2008:2).

Accordingly, the authors used artists as proxies for creative class growth since their prior

research confirmed the relationship between artists and “growth in the creative class other

than artists, confirming that creative people are attracted to creative places” (2). Moreover, to

the authors artists establish the presence of a “creative milieu”, “an amorphous collection of

associative structures and social networks, which has eluded empirical analysis”; creative milieu

is a quality of a place and thus corresponds to creative capital development (1).

Believing that talent alone is an insufficient indicator to determine growth, Wojan et al

included private employment/entrepreneurship, associated with the establishment of new


52

firms, in their research to resolve the exclusion of the self-employed by Florida in his analyses

(Wojan 2008:3). Their empirical model of the qualities that may contribute to the creative

milieu of a place incorporated natural amenities using four measures of climate and residential

amenities. The latter included “proxies for less auto-dependent planning espoused by Jacobs”,

such as New Urbanism planning features like walkability, the age of the housing stock, the

number of “bigbox” retailers, Florida’s diversity index , and an approximation of Florida’s gay

index. They also included the number of non-profit organizations, “a rough proxy for social

capital and a proxy for place authenticity provided by the number of sites on the National

Registry of Historic Places” (7).

Upon completion of the application of the requisite indices developed, the report

determined that place contributes to “entrepreneurial dynamism” (Wojan 2008:12). Aside from

the comedic implications that creativity is required to “prove” creative capital theory, the

report ended with a critical observation; “a persuasive explanation of this creative milieu will

require rigorous qualitative research” (12). Yet, while this is not lost on other proponents of

creative capital theory the work is left to other empirical scholars who typically criticize the

theory more than they support it.

Using data provided by Richard Florida and his colleague Kevin Solarick, two researchers

from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill compared the alleged “economic growth

machine” that is creative capital theory with the social capital theory articulated by Putnam and

the human capital theory of Becker (Hoyman 2009). Their statistical tests revealed “the creative

class variable” did “not correlate with any measure of economic growth” (18). The human

capital theory was a better predictor of income and job growth. Social capital provided the


53

most accurate means to predict the average wage (22). The policy implications, they wrote,

favor human capital investment as a strategy.

Whether a scholar favors human capital, social capital, or creative capital as a

development strategy, most agree that the argument furthered by Florida is one of false

equivalencies. For example, Ann Markusen argues that “the creative class bunches together,

purely on the basis of educational attainment, occupations that exhibit distinctive spatial and

political proclivities and with little demonstrable relationship to creativity” (Markusen

2006:1921). In other words, to Florida NBA All-Star millionaire Kevin Durant, Anthropologist

Brett Williams, financier Jamie Dimon, rapper Snoop Lion, political scientist Francis Fukuyama,

artist Cool Disco Dan, and Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan have so

much in common that they are all members of a class whether they recognize it or not. Further,

Markusen declares that an occupational approach to the study of economic development must

be undertaken to quantify the qualitative contributions of the arts and other occupations to a

place (Markusen 2007/2010).

Whereas Markusen criticized Florida for his self-serving occupational sorting, Allen J.

Scott adopts the theoretical framework of Bourdieu to argue that creative capital does not

provide an explanation for why individuals gather and remain in an area. To Scott “creativity is

not something that can simply be imported into the city on the backs of peripatetic computer

hackers, skateboarders, gays, and assorted bohemians (Scott 2005:32). Rather, creativity must

be organically developed through systems of production, reproduction, and social life (Scott

1999, 2005 & 2010); the clustering of firms provides the basic infrastructure for growth.


54

In a paper sympathetic to creative capital theory, four scholars compared economic

development policies used in Atlanta, Austin, and Wilmington to determine the best approach

to the development of New Orleans (Liu 2010). They stated “strength of the creative media

cluster” and the authenticity of place in New Orleans made the development of the creative

industries optimal (274). Accordingly, the authors argued for the adoption of programs to

attract the creative class through subsidies and other mechanisms of support for the creative

industries. After all New Orleans does have the French Quarter and the “dangerous” areas

beyond Esplanade, Rampart and Canal were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, displacing the

population that “preyed” on tourists. Further, this type of development was ideal because

“creative industries tend to create high-salary and high-skilled positions while also attracting a

younger and more diverse workforce” (274); these new migrants would be the socio-economic

antithesis of the masses who sought shelter in the Super Dome.

As Harvey noted, crises are a feature of the neoliberal growth strategy of accumulation

by dispossession. Although he was referring to man-made catastrophes, such as those created

by financial capital, socio-economic restructuring is present in natural disasters as well. The

impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and surrounding communities has been well

documented, particularly in regards to privatization (Smith 2008). Consequently, the

development strategies encouraged by Liu, Kolenda, Fitzpatrick and Todd link creative capital

theory to the neoliberal project.

Direct cash rebates and fee waivers for industries to film on state-owned property are

two of the policy recommendations made by the authors (Liu 2010:263-264). They also endorse

modifications to the tax code to support the digital media and video game industries with tax


55

incentives (273). These policy suggestions combine with a number of others, such as the

creation of loft-style housing that provides the creatives to be attracted with the urban

aesthetic they allegedly desire. Thus, the authors recommend policy positions that are

descriptive elements of what Harvey related to the neoliberal state; beyond accumulation by

dispossession the neoliberal state “seeks redistributions through…revisions in the tax code to

benefit returns on investment rather than incomes and wages,” the “promotion of regressive

elements in the tax code…displacement of state expenditures and free access to all by user fees

(e.g., on higher education), and the provision of a vast array of subsidies and tax breaks to

corporations (my emphasis)” (Harvey 2007:38-39). It was recognition of this relationship

between the state, neoliberalism, and creative capital that encouraged Geographer Jamie Peck

to write the most powerful critique of creative capital theory.

Struggling with the Creative Class (Peck 2005) is polemic. The article is a systematic

deconstruction of creative capital theory seemingly line-by-line over the course of twenty eight

plus pages. It frames creative capital theory within the discourse of neoliberalism analyzed by

Harvey. Accordingly, following Harvey (1990) Peck associated creative capital with

“entrepreneurial” urban strategies of competition long-since normalized. He argued that

creative capital is an element of “’neoliberal’ development agendas, framed around interurban

competition, gentrification, middle-class consumption and place-marketing” (Peck 2005:740-

741). City leaders are encouraged to establish a contemporary cargo cult to “attract” homo

creativus with hookah bars, microbreweries, bike lanes, and loft-living in former industrial

warehouses and factories (762).


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Borrowing a style from Peck, I will summarize the thrust of the critique through an

artificial narrative; Florida’s pitch is “If you just looked and felt like Austin, you will still be

Tyson’s Corner (I mean, Tysons), just a better version; you will be Austin+. If you need help, call

my wife at the Creative Capital Group or hire Catalytix. They will tell you where you are and

how to get where you need to be.” In this competition the only losers are the places that fail to

creatively apply creative capital theory.

Peck’s indictment of Florida encouraged scholars to examine creative capital projects

from a critical perspective. Yet, befitting his elevated position within the field of politics, Florida

responded to the confrontational style of Peck and later authors through an uncharacteristically

restrained response; “Whereas some have dubbed the very concept of the Creative Class as

elitist and accused me of privileging it over other classes, or derided me as a ‘neo-liberal’ with a

naively optimistic faith in the power of markets, I assure you that neither is the case” (Florida

2012:xi). Undoubtedly Peck and others critical of Florida were relieved by his declaration. Yet, in

his defense, Florida has never completely ignored neoliberalism.

Inequality has always been a topic of discussion in the writings of Florida. From his

earliest publications to the present, he has recognized that scholars have associated the shift in

relations of production to increased inequality. Yet, to Florida the true danger lies not in the

development strategy he espouses but the elitist view of “the persistence of a social order in

which some people are considered natural creators, while others exist to serve them, carry out

their ideas and tend to their personal needs” for “creativity is not the province of a select few”

(Florida 2004:323). These are strong words from a man who literally promotes a vision of a


57

polarized society in which the service class serves the creative class. After all, the service class

has been created “out of necessity because of the way the Creative Economy operates” (71).

To alleviate the increased inequality present in the creative economy, Florida

recommends that creativity be incorporated into the work of all people. He uses anecdotes

about his personal hairstylist, his housekeeper, and the ingenuity of his father on the shop floor

to make his case. If these people were just encouraged, nay say permitted, to use their

creativity they would prosper. The cost of their services/labor would increase. This possibility is

obvious because in Japan and Northern Europe “creativity combines with much lower levels of

income” (Florida 2012:279). This ahistorical, apolitical observation aside, Florida does provide a

“solution” to the problems facing America: his creative compact (387-398).

Florida describes the creative compact as “a new set of institutions that can provide a

Creative Economy analog to the compact of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, which expanded and

accelerated the growth of the industrial economy and led to the last great golden age of

prosperity. This Creative Compact would be dedicated to the creatification of everyone”

(Florida 2012:384-385). He provides a list of six policy issues that must be resolved in order to

establish a society based on the equality that creativity affords. They include investment in

human capital, openness and diversity, a new educational system “that spurs, not squelches

creativity” (390), the construction of new social safety net, the promotion of density, and to

move beyond the idea that “growth is good for itself” through the application of “new and

better metrics of creativity, human potential, and well-being” (396-397). Fortunately the work

is not left to the lumpen two thirds, busy as they are just trying to survive in this Spencerian

social Darwinist world, but rather to the creatives.


58

Ignoring his relentless efforts to legitimize his class construct but accepting that

“asymmetrical money power does not necessarily promote class consciousness (Harvey

1990:347), Florida asserts the creative class is beginning to develop “what Marx would have

called class consciousness; that the dynamic issue of becoming a class for itself may be

overtaking the more academic questions of class of itself” (Florida 2012:399-400). To prove his

belief he uses the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring (398). He stated that the creative

class was the impetus for these movements. These occupiers and anti-authoritarian protestors

“began to make themselves, though not under conditions of their own choosing” (Harvey

2007:42). In doing so Florida again exemplifies through a false equivalency. Regardless,

creatives were tasked with mollifying the inequality created through the construction of their

proverbial landing strip.

In adopting the economic theory of human capital, Florida constructed a class out of

elements of the existing social order devoid of class conflict. Rather, it is all about cooperation.

Creatives just want to be creative. They want everyone to be creative. Who else will “bond”

over an online game of Call of Duty: New Orleans Zombie Apocalypse? For these and other

reasons, the majority of contemporary scholars research the practical implications of the

adoption of creative capital theory. Inequality and class (Miles 2005/McCann 2007/Donegan

2008/Catungal 2009/Bedore 2011) are areas of study but, as with most of the work related to

creative capital theory, the research is framed within the greater discourse of the new

economy, creative industries, creative city, knowledge industries, or other synonymic fields of

study. Accordingly, the corpus of literature related to creative capital established a strong

counter-narrative.


59

Creative capital theory has been described as a form of aesthetic capitalism and as an

intellectual technology. “Aesthetic or Designer capitalism” refers to a form of advanced

capitalism in which “the economy and information and ideas, and traditional and related

notions of freedom, self-expression and creativity, become central themes” (Peters 2009:43-

44). Accompanying this “brand” of capitalism are intellectual technologies (Miller 2008) that

serve as “a way of making visible and interrelating certain types of actor, their everyday

conduct, agency and sense of belonging to the urban political community” (Ponzini 2010:1038).

Creative capital theory, like the human capital theory that forms its intellectual core, is an

intellectual technology.

Like their counterparts in cultural studies and other fields, anthropologists engage with

the intellectual technology that is creative capital theory in numerous ways. Intellectual

property is one area in which anthropologists, such as Michael F. Brown (1998) and Rosemary J.

Coombe (1998), have provided critical contributions. Similarly, anthropologist David Vine (2003)

prior to his focus on the military industrial complex engaged cultural development. He applied

the writings of Harvey (1990) and Neil Smith (1996, 2002) in the construction of an argument

that the labeling of projects as cultural obscured the commercial aims. Like creative capital

development, the resulting gentrification is made to appear as at best an only partially related

consequence. However, as important as are the anthropological contributions to the

understanding of the creative economy, an inherent danger exists in the academy.

Cultural studies theorist Toby Miller warned that a critical cultural studies was needed

to deter appropriation by the orthodox right. He believed that too much focus was being given

to consumption and not enough on labor (Miller 2004:62). Anthropology at first glance appears


60

as the bastion of the left in the academy. Yet, the evidence provided by Miller about cultural

studies applies to anthropology as well; As evidence he cited a Wall Street Journal article in

which a writer said that the field threatened the academic left and even abetted the right by

training students to conduct market research.

Published in the March 2013 issue of The Atlantic, Anthropology Inc. describes the

proliferation of corporate anthropological consulting. These services provide the qualitative

data missing from work conducted by traditional consulting firms. Employees conduct

ethnographic fieldwork similar to Rapid Ethnographic Assessment Practices without oversight

of an Institutional Review Board or other neutral third party. Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson

noted the problematic nature of this facet of corporate anthropology but qualified it by saying

“we don’t license anthropologists, so we can’t unlicensed them either” (Evans 2013:56).

To borrow a militaristic metaphor, anthropology is fighting a war on two fronts. The

discipline is battling efforts to legitimize its utility literally on battlefields, like the uranium

depleted ammunition littered battlefields of Iraq, while at the same time fending off claims by

corporate anthropologists practicing their craft on the pristine social sparring grounds of the

Gatsbyesque cocktail party social scene of the elites. Yet, the two fronts are not efforts by

Gusterson and others to discourage anthropologist from joining Human Terrain Systems teams

(the US government is the largest employer of anthropologists) or to join the ranks of

Microsoft, the number two employer of anthropologists in the world (Evans 2013:51). The two

fronts are the internal struggle for representing anthropology and the struggle for legitimacy in

public policy debates vis-à-vis economics.


61

Anthropologists have proven themselves in the analysis of structural adjustment

programs in the developing world and developed world. The parallels between development

anthropologists challenging the Washington Consensus mirrors contemporary public policy

struggles related to creative capital theory and its related creative industry development

theories (Evans 2009:1012-1013). We must hope that the outcomes are not the same;

economic theory continues to inform international policy; a critical, popular ethnography is

needed as a palliative to structural adjustment/austerity.

In 2010 an ethnography of the resistance to creative capital was published. It is a book

exploring the means through which residents of Austin, Texas, the exemplar city of Richard

Florida, resist efforts to modify the cultural landscape of their city. Through methods typical of

anthropologists, academic research, interviewing, long term fieldwork, and thick description,

geographer Joshua Long compiled and presented the material for his book. Yet, despite being

written for non-academic audiences it is not devoid of critical theory. Rather, he spends the

final chapter on it (Long 2010:152-173). In contrast, anthropological work to date that deals

specifically with creative class development remains at the moment consigned to the academy.

East Nashville Skyline is the title of anthropologist Richard Lloyd’s 2011 article about

gentrification in Nashville, Tennessee. The article was published in the journal Ethnography to

contribute “a detailed examination of the encounter between ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy

agendas…using thick description to unpack the sedimentary processes of transformation, and

the contributions of state and non-state actors to new identity formation (Lloyd 2011:114). A

cultural event, the Tomato Festival, is used by the author as a metaphor for the actual and

symbolic violence related to development in the neighborhood. Moreover, it serves as an


62

example of accumulation by dispossession through the commodification of intellectual

creativity; the “exploitation of grassroots culture and creativity” described by Harvey (Harvey

2007:36). The accompanying images are powerful and convey multiple meanings that the

author co-constructs with the reader. Yet, while the article is a major anthropological

contribution to the study of contemporary neoliberal economic development practice of which

creative capital theory dominates, it is not meant for popular audiences.

By situating human capital within a popular sociological framework, Florida embedded

his work within the discursive framework of economics. This associated him with the rhetorical

strategy of economics. It is this strategy which furthered the ascendance of economics within

the social sciences and the corresponding naturalization of the economic way of seeing things

(Gudeman 2009). Thus, it is not surprising that Rise of the Creative Class continues to be a

national best seller and its policy recommendations remain widespread.

Unlike East Nashville Skyline, Rise of the Creative Class is pop sociology. It weaves

theoretical discussions with statistics throughout the text to support his articulation of the

classic 5W’s of who, what, when, where, and why. Creatives (who) provide economic growth

(what) today (when) anywhere they are present (where) because their creative ethos and

human capital make them valuable (why). With those “facts” established he moves on to the

next set of Ws; any municipality (who) will benefit from economic growth (what) after they

attract creatives (when) in their municipality (where) because the products of creative work are

highly valued (why). Florida supports his developmental logic with personal examples to

connect with the reader and provide points of departure from the dry, “just the facts ma’am”

theoretical argument for his theory. His simplistic characterization of society, like Putnam’s


63

before him, resonated with the political and economic power elite. It provided, to use common

parlance “a means to an end.” Its simplicity was so attractive that followers ignored and

continue to ignore the clear problems in adopting the model.

Florida as the “expert” argues that attracting creatives will bring you success. However,

a skilled salesman, he is careful to note that his expertise is subsidiary to that of the client; “the

development of such environments cannot be planned from above…the solution lies in the

hands of each region – in the knowledge, intelligence and creative capabilities of its people”

(Florida 2004:xxiii). With this bold declaration Florida recuses himself of any responsibility for

the articulation of development methods other than via example, “be like Austin, Dublin, or San

Francisco. Here is how they did it.” Moreover, by placing the responsibility with the residents of

an area and his clients, the real experts as patriarchal/matriarchal representatives of the

people, any negative results experienced from the adoption of creative capital are not his fault

but rather a product of his clients’ misunderstanding his theory. Similarly, Florida distances

himself from negative externalities because the only development “tools” he articulates are the

creatives themselves. They will mediate the impacts resulting from policies implemented to

attract them. Presto! A gentrification-free development policy appears. Although this is surely

not what Vine envisioned (Vine 2003:88); Long, Lloyd and others have shown that the

gentrification occurs and exacerbates over time rather than receding once the creatives get

there to fix the “problems.”

Economist Richard Swedberg reminds us that there are moral judgments in the

interpretation of empirical analysis (Swedberg 2009). The work of Florida is a prime example of

this fact. Therefore anthropologists must engage their fellow academics, particularly members


64

of the dominant discipline in the social sciences, for control over the generation of knowledge

about society; “The challenge to social scientists, who are suspicious of the ideological basis of

the economists, is to build a more compelling theory of institutions and institutional

change…towards a broader conception of regulatory regimes and social groupings that give

meaning to economic life.” (Milberg 2009:60). That economics is again evolving in a manner

that seeks to reestablish its imperialism in the social sciences reveals that this is pertinent and

requires immediate attention. That the new economics is atheoretical (60) only solidifies this

assertion.

Like the previous departure from the labor theory of value, economists have abandoned

the “universal grammar” associated with rational choice theory in favor of econometrics and

induction. They are the new tools of “intellectual imperialism” (Milberg 2009:59). These tools

are associated with the New Institutional Economics (NIE), an approach that appears to link

back to Karl Polanyi; NIE broadened its applicability through the replacement of narrow

assumptions with broader ones, rationality becomes bounded rationality, to admit a “wider

range of observable behavior” (Cosgel 2009:95). Corresponding to the rise in prominence of

this new school within economic thought, anthropologists must show that this new provision of

certainty through the “transformation of contingencies into necessities” and “local

constructions into a particular rhetorical form” (Gudeman 2009:79) is only one interpretive

vision. For example, Gudeman espouses a belief that “economies themselves are built on a

dialectic of persuasions that must be the subject of continuing political conversations” (79);

absent these conversations, the differing epistemologies, models, and rhetorics, such as those

held by anthropologists, became subordinated to those of the dominant discipline (79).


65

It appears that the postmodern dilemma of anthropology discussed by James Clifford

and George Marcus in 1986 has received a retread at the hands of Gudeman and his colleagues;

Economic anthropology questions human nature whereas economics only seeks to explain it.

Correspondingly, development practices based within economic discourse, such as human

capital, social capital and creative capital models, fail to alleviate more social ills than they

create. Fortunately, current anthropological practice and theory provide possibilities to alter

the existing dynamic towards one that rebalances the proverbial equation, holding promise for

a productive anthropological relationship with economic development rather than one based

on reaction.

Incorporation of modern “creative” media into anthropological fieldwork facilitates the

transmission of anthropological knowledge and its respective values. The photo-ethnographic

collaborative approach of Phillipe Bourgois (2009:11-12) and the broader subfield of visual

anthropology assist practitioners as they attempt to establish connections with popular

audiences. Yet, as Clifford and Marcus highlighted decades ago, the adoption of a literary focus

is in itself productive (Clifford 1986:263). Having eschewed simplicity in favor of complexity we

must learn to write better; we must connect with our audience on an experiential level.

Corresponding with these practical efforts is a theoretical approach favored by David Graeber

(2001)

Taking a page from Graeber, whose intellectual synthesis of “value” began a process of

imagining “a humanistic social science,” anthropologists should consider a similar synthesis of

“capital” (Graeber 2001:xiii). It would examine the assumptions and foundational concepts

operationalized in all forms of capital. Situating these models within


66

anthropology/ethnography, academic critiques, and cross-disciplinary schools of thought, an

anthropological theory of capital would move beyond the simplistic idea of misrecognition and

the alignment of capital with the neoliberal project. Rather, like Marx did for political economy

it would historicize capital, stripping it of its ahistorical and apolitical nature that masks

structural violence and efforts at the consolidation of class power.


67

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Creative (in)Equality: Capital in Crisis

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