On the Creative Class, Or, The Study of Hipsters

It's a hipster reference to James Joyce and Humph's namesake. Google it!

It had been a long time since Humphrey had seen his hipster West highland terrier friend, Sir Percival Puddles.

“Sir Percival Puddles?” Humphrey exclaimed, seeing him in the organic grocery store.

“It’s Dr. Sir Percival Puddles!” the dog exclaimed with delight. “How are you Humphrey?”

“Congratulations on the doctorate, Perce! What are you doing with your days now?”

“I now study the ‘creative class,’ quite fascinating really!”

“The what?”

“The ‘creative class’ as coined by Richard Florida – or some call it ‘creative industries’ – it’s a big deal these days, dontcha know! Like, policy to cultivate creative workers, how location can impede or cultivate creativity in economies, intellectual property, that kind of shizzle. My ‘thing’ is mapping that estimates the ‘significance’ of the creative industries to the modern economy in order to re-orient economic policy in accordance with that significance. My work totally extends beyond just the manifest production of cultural goods and employment of creative people. It has a more general role in driving and facilitating the process of change across the entire economy. It’s awesome.”

“Wow, those are a lot of air quotes you just used, man,” Humphrey replied. “Basically isn’t your work just, like, the academic study of hipsters?”

“Yes it is. But it’s more than that. It’s like, how can we create spatial communities for creativity, and how can we create and sustain ways for the creative people to do cooler and cooler work. ”

“Do you just hang around Parkdale and Ossington or something?” Humphrey asked, quite sure that Percival himself was a hipster, studying his own kind.

“Exactly, Humph!” Dr. Puddles said, nodding with exuberance. “That’s just where Toronto’s creative class flourishes! And they are leading edge, these artist-entrepreneurs. That is our future, their future!”

“But it’s really just the government saying, ‘hey, let’s promote these entrepreneurs, so people can be unemployed and not complain about it!’?”

 “They’re entrepreneurs, ergo they’re not unemployed, though. So, um, no.”

 “But they are unemployed, in the sense that they can’t rely on social safety nets like Employment Insurance or employer-sponsored retirement and healthcare programs.”

“Well, that’s what some of the policy can look at – like, their own collectives for those things. But who cares. They are the future.”

“Perce, are you sure you’re not falling into the trap of ‘irrational exuberance’?”

At that moment, Dr. Sir Percival Puddles wandered off, as dogs often do, nose wiggling following the scent of artisanal bacon coming from the store’s deli counter. Humphrey didn’t mind – he sniffed some heirloom cabbage, their vibrant greens and purples delighting his eyes as he thought about roasting some for supper.

The creative class, he thought. This reminded Humph of something. Aristotle elaborated three basic human activities, each corresponding to a type of knowledge. There is theōria (contemplation, what Humphrey was doing at that very moment) which corresponds to episteme (knowledge, know-what), whose end goal is truth. Then there’s poïesis (making) which corresponds to technē (method involved in producing an object, know-how), whose end goal is production. This seems to be what the creative class is concerned with. Finally, there’s praxis (doing) which corresponds to phronēsis (practical wisdom), whose end goal is action. Aristotle implied in Ethics that poïesis and praxis always precede any mode of theōria in that dealing with everyday needs and responsibilities comes before the non-productive activity of seeing and knowing.

So, human activity is making, doing, and thinking. But this new-found emphasis on the creative class is about the importance of making over thinking and doing. So, you do need people to do a bit of each for a society to function: but is all this excitement about “creative industries” a problem?

 
For example, philosopher Hannah Arendt called praxis the highest and most important level of the active life, arguing that philosophers need to engage in everyday political action by way of praxis, which she saw as the true realization of human freedom. Paulo Freire took the position that praxis as a central defining feature of human life and a necessary condition of freedom. So does all this attention to poïesis endanger the kind of action that is necessary for freedom?

Humph, of course, acknowledges that his questions imply a dichotomy – and that the three activities are not always separate. But, when he sees the kind of “irrational exuberance” that Dr. Sir Percival Puddles displays, it gives him pause about the nature of “creative industries,” the push for certain types of policies, and how all this will affect the public good.

He knows he's got a lot more thinking to do on this matter!