Cultural politics of creativity : a comparative study of the development of the cultural policy discourses of creativity in England and Korea

This thesis examines the recent development of the policy discourses of creativity in England and Korea. It aims to analyse the values that the word „creativity‟ represents in policy terms, challenge their underlying assumptions, and explore how the idea of creativity has been implicated in each country‟s cultural policy formations. It also provides a critical examination of the similarities and differences between the two countries. In so doing, this thesis attempts to challenge the absence of cultural policy research on creativity and provide a meaningful scholarly contribution to the existing field of cultural policy studies. In order to provide a comprehensive and critical analysis of the emergence and development of the creativity discourses in England and Korea, the study employs a social scientific method of relational thinking that draws on Pierre Bourdieu‟s field theory. By challenging the existing tradition of cultural policy discussion that is either implicitly or explicitly informed by a dichotomous thinking between intrinsic and instrumental values of culture, the study proposes a new critical approach to understanding and examining the complex dynamics of cultural policy issues surrounding the idea of creativity in policy terms. Based on the Bourdieusian heuristic tool of relational thinking, the thesis explores how the idea of creativity has become politically reconstructed so as to serve specific interests, values and dispositions that correspond to a particular political position, rather than a recognised field of cultural or creative practices. By closely examining the policy contexts of the government‟s creative education initiatives Creative Partnerships in England and Korea Arts and Culture Education Service in Korea, the thesis suggests that there are distinctive parallels between the English and Korean cases; not simply in the developmental trajectory of creativity discourses, but also in the broader aspect that relates to the shaping of cultural policy formations and recent paradigm shifts in cultural policy thinking. The study examines the extent to which these commonalities can be interpreted as an instance of „policy convergence‟ between the two countries.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceUniversity of Warwick (UoW)GBUnited Kingdo