Organizers: Sociology of Gender section, Department of Sociology, University of Graz; FH JOANNEUM– University of Applied Sciences Graz; and Graz University of Technology

Time: 26th–27th March 2018
Venue: RESOWI Zentrum, 8010 Graz, Austria
Abstract Submission: 30th September 2017

In 2008 the then Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, proposed funding cuts in the arts sector, reasoning that the arts were a „niche interest“ that did not concern „ordinary people“. The writer Margaret Atwood wrote a powerful polemic in The Globe and Mail in response. She argued that not only was the arts sector beneficial to the Canadian economy, but also that „ordinary“ Canadians were creative. She went on to compile a list of everyday creative activities from making music or films for the Net, through knitting and quilting, to gardening, cooking and home woodworking shop to demonstrate that creativity is a part of being human, rather than a niche interest [1].

Atwood echoed Raymond Williams‘ proposition of „ordinary“ culture, a culture created not by the arts, but in the process of everyday activities of ordinary people [2]. Building on his work, a group of researchers led by Paul Willis lamented in 1990 that there was „decreasing room for creativity in the necessary symbolic work of most paid work“. As a consequence, … read more and source (PDF).