Cultural work in the Recôncavo of Bahia: an approach from the organization of creative classes

Abstract

Recôncavo da Bahia has a cultural strength strongly anchored in African heritage. Although the region was insidiously structured under a slave-like regime, this historical constitution resulted in a diverse panorama of cultural expressions that contributed greatly to the formation of the state's cultural identity. Supported by the concept of cultural development, the article presents socioeconomic indicators on the configuration of the Recôncavo's creative labor market in order to indicate its participation in the region's economic dynamism. This analysis is based on Richard Florida's concept of creative classes, whose class typology guides the construction of the indicators we adopt to analyze the region's labor market. By the interpretation methods used in this study, it is concluded that Recôncavo has considerable creative dynamism, because it reaches about 10% of the global labor market of the selected municipalities. However, the limits of aggregate indicators are recognized, because they obliterate the complex processes of labour market dynamics that mark the transformations of post-industrial societies. Moreover, the indicators have restrictions because they do not capture amateur or non-formal activities - a defining feature of the cultural dynamics of the Recôncavo, strongly shaped by expressions of popular culture. In this sense, the economic dynamism mobilized by cultural production in the region may be even more significant than the data reveal, given the limits of quantitative methods.