Social Values and the Creative Ethos in the Greek Knowledge Society: A Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

Departing from Richard Florida's theory of the Creative Class, this article attempts to delineate the Greek creative ethos. The research involved in-depth interviews with knowledge and service workers in Greece. Adopting an existential view of creativity, which emphasizes the natural human inclination to create and engage with one's acts, and using valuing processes as tools to analyze workers' discourses opens up the elements that underpin workers' efforts to experience authenticity across life spheres and construct the meaning of work and good living. These efforts were sketched against a backdrop of adverse lived realities and intersected with anxious, alienated, and disempowered constructions of selfhood. Contrary to Florida's claims, the present article goes beyond positions of more or less creative workers and examines the various meanings of creativity underpinned by different lived realities. VALUES AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTThe relationship between social values and economic processes has attracted the attention of various scholars for decades, dating back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the industrial revolution paved the way for higher wealth levels.