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As an undergraduate at Brown University, Tyler Denmead founded New Urban Arts, a nationally recognized arts and humanities program primarily for young people of color in Providence, Rhode Island. Along with its positive impact, New Urban Arts, under his leadership, became entangled in Providence's urban renewal efforts that harmed the very youth it served. As in many deindustrialized cities, Providence's leaders viewed arts, culture, and creativity as a means to drive property development and attract young, educated, and affluent white people, such as Denmead, to economically and culturally kick-start the city. In The Creative Underclass, Denmead critically examines how New Urban Arts and similar organizations can become enmeshed in circumstances where young people, including himself, become visible once the city can leverage their creativity to benefit economic revitalization and gentrification. He points to the creative cultural practices that young people of color from low-income communities use to resist their subjectification as members of an underclass, which, along with redistributive economic policies, can be deployed as an effective means with which to both oppose gentrification and better serve the youth who have become emblematic of urban creativity.
At century’s close, American social scientists, policy analysts, philanthropists and politicians became obsessed with a fearsome and mysterious new group said to be ravaging the ghetto: the urban “underclass.” Soon the scarecrow category and its demonic imagery were exported to the United Kingdom and continental Europe and agitated the international study of exclusion in the postindustrial metropolis. In this punchy book, Loïc Wacquant retraces the invention and metamorphoses of this racialized folk devil, from the structural conception of Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to the behavioral notion of Washington think-tank experts to the neo-ecological formulation of sociologist William Julius Wilson. He uncovers the springs of the sudden irruption, accelerated circulation, and abrupt evaporation of the “underclass” from public debate, and reflects on the implications for the social epistemology of urban marginality. What accounts for the “lemming effect” that drew a generation of scholars of race and poverty over a scientific cliff? What are the conditions for the formation and bursting of “conceptual speculative bubbles”? What is the role of think tanks, journalism, and politics in imposing “turnkey problematics” upon social researchers? What are the special quandaries posed by the naming of dispossessed and dishonored populations in scientific discourse and how can we reformulate the explosive question of “race” to avoid these troubles? Answering these questions constitutes an exacting exercise in epistemic reflexivity in the tradition of Bachelard, Canguilhem and Bourdieu, and it issues in a clarion call for social scientists to defend their intellectual autonomy against the encroachments of outside powers, be they state officials, the media, think tanks, or philanthropic organizations. Compact, meticulous and forcefully argued, this study in the politics of social science knowledge will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, urban studies, ethnic studies, geography, intellectual history, the philosophy of science and public policy.
Contemporary society has seen an unprecedented rise in both the demand and the desire to be creative, to bring something new into the world. Once the reserve of artistic subcultures, creativity has now become a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society. In this new book, cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz investigates how the ideal of creativity has grown into a major social force, from the art of the avant-garde and postmodernism to the ‘creative industries’ and the innovation economy, the psychology of creativity and self-growth, the media representation of creative stars, and the urban design of ‘creative cities’. Where creativity is often assumed to be a force for good, Reckwitz looks critically at how this imperative has developed from the 1970s to the present day. Though we may well perceive creativity as the realization of some natural and innate potential within us, it has rather to be understood within the structures of a very specific culture of the new in late modern society. The Invention of Creativity is a bold and refreshing counter to conventional wisdom that shows how our age is defined by radical and restrictive processes of social aestheticization. It will be of great interest to those working in a variety of disciplines, from cultural and social theory to art history and aesthetics.
Class ends. Students pack up and head back to their dorms. The professor, meanwhile, goes to her car . . . to catch a little sleep, and then eat a cheeseburger in her lap before driving across the city to a different university to teach another, wholly different class. All for a paycheck that, once prep and grading are factored in, barely reaches minimum wage. Welcome to the life of the mind in the gig economy. Over the past few decades, the job of college professor has been utterly transformed—for the worse. America’s colleges and universities were designed to serve students and create knowledge through the teaching, research, and stability that come with the longevity of tenured faculty, but higher education today is dominated by adjuncts. In 1975, only thirty percent of faculty held temporary or part-time positions. By 2011, as universities faced both a decrease in public support and ballooning administrative costs, that number topped fifty percent. Now, some surveys suggest that as many as seventy percent of American professors are working course-to-course, with few benefits, little to no security, and extremely low pay. In The Adjunct Underclass, Herb Childress draws on his own firsthand experience and that of other adjuncts to tell the story of how higher education reached this sorry state. Pinpointing numerous forces within and beyond higher ed that have driven this shift, he shows us the damage wrought by contingency, not only on the adjunct faculty themselves, but also on students, the permanent faculty and administration, and the nation. How can we say that we value higher education when we treat educators like desperate day laborers? Measured but passionate, rooted in facts but sure to shock, The Adjunct Underclass reveals the conflicting values, strangled resources, and competing goals that have fundamentally changed our idea of what college should be. This book is a call to arms for anyone who believes that strong colleges are vital to society.
A buoyant, creative economy can be seen as the saviour of many cities, but behind such 'urban makeovers' lie serious problems such as widening inequalities and gentrification. Blending lively city case studies with broader theoretical debates, this book explores the opportunities for a more just and sustainable urban future.
This book provides an up-to-date, critical review of theoretical concepts connecting artists and urban development. It focuses on the multidimensionality of potential and actually observed interactions between artists and cities and their impacts on urban space, its form, functions and perceptions. Departing from the viewpoint that a more nuanced geography of artists is still needed to fully conceptualise the diversity of roles artistic creatives play in urban transformations, the book presents contributions with a common denominator of distinguishing artists as a unique professional and social group. The essays focus on the complexity of the artists’ spatial preferences and analyse a myriad of expressions of artists’ presence in urban centres in different geographic, political, economic, social, and spatial contexts drawing on experiences from 16 cities across Europe. The book presents several case studies ranging from Spain to Russia and from Scandinavia to Slovenia, and offers new pathways into understanding the implications of artists’ residence and activities in contemporary cities. Apart from presenting less obvious expressions of artists’ involvement in urban transformations such as their participation in urban planning or grass root urban movements, the volume explores the ambivalence of artists’ interactions with cities. Particular chapters test several divergent narratives of artistic creatives as inspirers and instigators of urban changes, pioneers of gentrification, contesters and resisters of neoliberal urban policies or mere indicators of transformations inspired by other actors, instrumentalized by public and private stakeholders.
This SpringerBriefs presents a case study and theoretical analysis of an artistic enclave that emerged within Lawrenceville Pittsburgh. It briefly describes the history of greater Pittsburgh, and Lawrenceville’s transition from thriving blue-collar community to depopulated low-income neighborhood to gentrifying site of artistic and creative culture. It draws on multiple methods (e.g., interviews, observations, and survey data) to discuss the advantages and disadvantages associated with being a Pittsburgh artist, and offer a detailed description of the origins and ongoing development of Lawrenceville’s artistic enclave. It discusses this enclave in the context of sociological, historical, and interdisciplinary work on urban artistic communities (i.e., bohemian and quasi-bohemian communities), and situates it within the larger urban artistic tradition, and within its contemporary urban context. It maintains that this enclave constitutes a successful (i.e., sustainable) example of an artistic creative class enclave, a heuristic concept that clarifies and amends Richard Florida’s brief commentary on contemporary urban artistic life. It concludes by offering policy suggestions for those who wish to promote such enclaves, and a preliminary critical appraisal of their potential impact on society.
A history of how, in the mid-twentieth century, we came to believe in the concept of creativity. Named a best book of 2023 by the New Yorker and a notable book of 2023 by Behavioral Scientist. Creativity is one of American society’s signature values, but the idea that there is such a thing as “creativity”—and that it can be cultivated—is surprisingly recent, entering our everyday speech in the 1950s. As Samuel W. Franklin reveals, postwar Americans created creativity, through campaigns to define and harness the power of the individual to meet the demands of American capitalism and life under the Cold War. Creativity was championed by a cluster of professionals—psychologists, engineers, and advertising people—as a cure for the conformity and alienation they feared was stifling American ingenuity. It was touted as a force of individualism and the human spirit, a new middle-class aspiration that suited the needs of corporate America and the spirit of anticommunism. Amid increasingly rigid systems, creativity took on an air of romance; it was a more democratic quality than genius, but more rarified than mere intelligence. The term eluded clear definition, allowing all sorts of people and institutions to claim it as a solution to their problems, from corporate dullness to urban decline. Today, when creativity is constantly sought after, quantified, and maximized, Franklin’s eye-opening history of the concept helps us to see what it really is, and whom it really serves.
This book focuses on overlooked contextual factors that constitute the urban creative climate or innovative urban milieu in contemporary cities. Filled with reflections based on interviews with a diverse range of creative actors in various local neighborhoods in Tokyo, it offers a rare glimpse into the complex set of elements that provide long-term, physical, and sociocultural support to urban creativity. Ursic and Imai highlight the interplay between physical and soft (social) factors in the process of place-making and explore how a city’s creativity is influenced by financial support and accessible infrastructure, as well as the sets of informal networks, services, and tacit, locally embedded knowledge that provide the basic layers of stimuli needed for creativity to fully develop. The authors show how the future development of creativity and the overall development of a city depend not only on the (top-down) planning strategies of formal authorities, but also on the appropriate (bottom-up) inclusion of heterogeneous elements that are provided and embedded within the small, hidden context of city spaces.
In the past, ‘Global Management’ meant optimizing production and commercialization activities around the world in an international business context. With the emergence and rise of the creative economy, the global game has changed. This book is about the global management of creativity and related innovation processes, and examines how companies, organizations and institutions can foster the transformation of an original idea to its successful execution and international diffusion. The Global Management of Creativity gives a clear framework for analyzing creativeness in organizations in an international context, and pinpointing important key elements that should be tracked. Comprising expert contributions and written by a wide array of leading scholars in economics, management of innovation and creativity, this book is an insightful resource. This volume provides empirical and theoretical material for managers, students and academics in the field of international management of creativity and innovation. It is also suitable for those who are interested in industrial economics, management of technology, and innovation and industrial studies.