The contradictions of creative activism. Situated meanings and everyday practices in a Milan case-study

Abstract

Abstract The growing literature on creative activism highlights a variety of tensions and ambiguities, including the contradictions that arise between activists’ declared goals and the everyday practices that they use to pursue them. Far from suggesting that they could or should be removed, these contradictions are valorized in this paper, as they illuminate the situated meanings of creativity reproduced through everyday practices of creative activism. The argument is illustrated through a case-study of a cultural organization that led a local mobilization which, in spite of its significant efforts and resources, did not manage to move from single initiatives and instrumental coalitions to a more stable social movement devoted to the enhancement of bottom-up creativity and public space in Milan. Drawing on insights from movement studies and the pragmatist sociology of engagement regimes, the study establishes an original theoretical framework, illustrated with the analysis of three specific initiatives promoted by the observed mobilization. The main results show how different situated meanings of creativity set unequal conditions for the process of “commonizing cognition” required for the extension of single mobilization into larger urban movements.