Bringing the Everyday into the Culture/ Creativity Discourse 1

Abstract

This article critiques and offers an alternative conceptualization of ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ using an actor-based and relational epistemology. ‘Culture’ and ‘creativity’ have been socially constructed in scale-specific terms that overlook everyday practices that can diverge from dominant patterns and suggest hopeful possibilities, which ironically are lost in many Left-leaning narratives. Hopeful possibilities are traceable analytically to circuits of material and discursive value, which are inextricably related but can entail different trajectories across scales. Tracing these trajectories requires analytical attention to microscale activity, that is, to individual actors’ material practices, which produce mutable, discursive and material value at multiple scales.