9th International Conference of

Finland Futures Research Centre and Finland Futures Academy

in Collaboration with Turku 2011 – Finland’s Candidate for the European Capital of Culture 2011

WORKSHOP 5: Cultural Theory and Creativity

Thursday 7 June at 14.30-16.30
 Chair: Olli Hietanen
 

Creativity - the Heart of Culture
Katriina Siivonen (Ethnology, University of Turku and Finland Futures Research Centre Turku, School of Economics, Finland)

An essential question concerning the concept of culture is:
- What is the relationship between a culture as a whole, and heterogeneous cultural processes with change and variation?

I will argue that culture is primarily a global and heterogeneous semiotic interaction process. In this process cultural, both verbal and material, phenomena are in constant change and variation. It is not possible to distinguish different cultures from each other with clear boundaries.

Secondly, culture is a condensation of relatively constant cultural phenomena among interrelated people. These phenomena consist of both conscious symbols and unconscious elements. In the mutual interaction process people give influences and they adapt them, and the process develops with relative homogeneity. In this process it is possible to perceive different, original cultures with some kind of boundaries.

Thirdly, culture is a symbolic and clearly argued knowledge of the original essences of different cultures. On this level, cultures are “imagined communities”. The essential qualities of these symbolical cultural wholes are not necessarily the same ones, than the ones that can be observed among interrelated people described above. However, both symbolic knowledge of different cultures as well as condensations of constant cultural phenomena are subordinate to the primary global, heterogeneous and creative process of culture.

It is necessary to take into consideration all these ontological sides of culture for to understand cultural creativity and innovativeness in all different contexts.

THE FUTURE BIRCHBARK CULTURE
Pekka Virtanen (University of Helsinki, Finland)

The culture concept is strongly coming by the conversation of the economical and ecological values of forest. However culture is often seen concisely and at a distance of the dynamic content it has in the culture theory. Culture is useful concept to reach the creativeness of the future but often it creates images of the past birchbark culture.

What Do You Mean, Creative Economy? – A Conceptual Mapping from Five Fields of Science
Tomi Kallio, Taina Rajanti, Kirsi-Mari Vihermaa & Hanna Willner (Pori University Consortium, Turku School of Economics, Finland)

During the last few years, various concepts, books, articles, etc. linked to the term ‘creativity’ have colonized both academic and everyday life discourses. If someone should be raised above others, it is, perhaps, Richard Florida who opened the Pandora’s Box. Soon after the debate on ‘creative class’, various other, similar concepts have faced their triumph, such as creative industry, creative economy, creative leadership.

Different concepts attached to creativity overlap several fields of science, and scholars use these creativity related concepts even in conflicting ways. It is therefore only fair to say that scholars from different fields should pay much more attention to defining their concepts and thus clarifying their messages.

The ambitious purpose of this paper is to try to clarify the meaning of creative economy by bringing together the perspectives of five scholars from different fields, approaching the concept from their own academic backgrounds. The respective fields of science are: marketing, accounting and finance, management and organizations, sociology, and content design.

The goal of this paper is find a common ground or at least a field where the mentioned approaches can encounter, and open room for further discussion. The analysis will be looking for interfaces and intersections, as well as gaps in the present discussion. While it is obvious that the mentioned fields make only a portion of the overall mixture of the heterogeneous academic discourse connected to creative economy, a synthetic analysis from five different fields should have its novelty value.

Re-Thinking ‘Knowledge Culture’: What It Isn’t
and What It must Be in the 21st Century
Ruben Nelson (Foresight, Canada)

The paper will re-think what we must mean in the 21st Century by such phrases as ‘knowledge culture’, ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’, if the human species is to survive the century with a reasonable degree of prosperity, grace and humanity.  This paper can be seen as an exercise in conceptual clarification driven by the insights of strategic foresight into the emerging conditions of the 21st Century.

To set up the core of the paper, the following views will be briefly sketched but not detailed.  These views are background to the paper, but not the heart of the paper.

  • Sustained success by any culture in the 21st Century requires that the culture is able to see, understand and respond creatively to the emerging conditions of the 21st Century as a culture.
  • The emerging conditions of the 21st Century require, among other things, non-trivial culture change, i.e. the evolution and transformation of existing human cultures into some variant of a genuine knowledge culture. 
  • The concepts of ‘knowledge culture’, ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ are now in widespread use.  The common assumption appears to be that our present understandings of these concepts are adequate to the work at hand.
  • Since one of the uses of strategic foresight is risk analysis, it is legitimate, and may even be important, to ensure that our grasp of these core concepts is in fact adequate; that they will actually bear the weight we must put on them.

Given the above, the heart of the paper will explore and lay out:

  • The present dominant understanding of the concepts of ‘knowledge culture’, ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy,’ the major implications of the understanding and the rationale for the emergence, importance and use of these concepts.
  • A critique of today’s common understandings in light of features of the 21st Century that are already visible.  It will be argued that today’s common understandings are not adequate to allow us to cope with the emerging conditions of the 21st Century.
  • A fresh understanding of the concepts of ‘knowledge culture’, ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ – one that is required by the emerging conditions of the 21st Century.
  • Some of the practical implications of the new understanding.
     

 

The conference organisers reserve all rights to
any programme or schedule changes.