Creative hubs and cultural policies: a comparison between Brazil and the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article presents a comparative analysis of ten creative hubs located in London, Birmingham, and São Paulo. It expolores how cultural policies in the UK and Brazil have constituted in distinct ways the boundaries between ‘culture’ and ‘innovation’. Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’, ‘habitus’, and ‘capital’ inform this analysis and its account of the ‘cultural-production subfield’ and the ‘innovation-production subfield’ within the creative economies and cultural policies of the UK and Brazil. The article also draws on Pier Luigi Sacco’s cultural history and theory to make an argument about the key factors underpinning recent changes in cultural policy.