Academic publishing as 'creative' industry and recent discourses of 'creative economies': some critical reflections

his

paper

continues

recent

discussions

on

the

(geo)politics

of

the

production

of

academic

knowledges,

in

relation

to

the

recent

rise

of

narratives

of

'the

creative

economy'.

Creativity

and

the

'creative

industries'

are

increasingly

common

components

of

urban

economic

development

discourse,

especially

following

the

release

of

a

set

of

key

books

-

most

notably

Charles

Landry's

The

Creative

City

(2000),

and

Richard

Florida's

The

Rise

of

the

Creative

Class

(2002)

-

that

have

become

popular

among

economic

development

planners

and

cultural

policy

makers.

This

paper

focuses

on

the

traffic

of

these

books,

and

their

authors,

beyond

the

Anglo-American

core.

It

also

briefly

discusses

policy

discourses

interpreted

from

these

texts.

It

is

principally,

though,

a

critique

of

the

ways

in

which

academic

knowledges

circulate,

stemming

from

theorization

of

academics

as

creative

producers,

and

of

knowledge

production

as

part

of

the

creative

economy.

The

article

seeks

to

critique

the

means

by

which

particular

northern

economic

knowledges

become

normative,

framed

as

universal

and

'global',

and

are

distributed

and

absorbed

via

intellectual

'scenes'

and

an

academic

'celebrity'

circuit.