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Anthropological Theory
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(de)creative turn in DOI: 10.1177/14634996241227272
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heritage

Peter Bille Larsen

Geneva Heritage Lab, University of Geneva and College of
Humanities, EPFL, Geneva, Switzerland

Florence Graezer Bideau

Heritage, Anthropology and Technologies Research Group,
College of Humanities, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract
Heritage processes are today increasingly entangled with multiple forms and discourses of
creativity. Connections between creativity and heritage form part of a new consensual
authorised discourse, where creativity and (heritage) entrepreneurship are projected as
mutually beneficial in a win-win scenario, while co-existing with ever-more visible practices
of destruction and loss. Challenging the celebratory narrative, the article unpacks the less
visible political, economic, cultural and social processes underpinning the heritage–creativ-
ity nexus. This is necessary in order to confront and analyse the domination of space,
place and history in the context of depoliticised neoliberal forms of governance.
Juxtaposing the contradictions of authorised heritage discourse within the hegemonic pol-
itics and profitability in the neoliberal creative economy, we propose a critical anthropo-
logical approach centred around the decreativity of contemporary practice.

Keywords
Heritage, creativity, neoliberalism, entrepreneuralism, destruction, cultural policy

Corresponding author:
Peter Bille Larsen, Geneva Heritage Lab, University of Geneva and CDH, EPFL, Switzerland.
Email: peter.larsen@unige.ch
2 Anthropological Theory 0(0)

‘How well Your Majesty’s new clothes look. Aren’t they becoming!’ He heard on all sides,
‘That pattern, so perfect! Those colors, so suitable! It is a magnificent outfit’.
The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hans Christian Andersen ([1837] 1983)

Unpacking the creative turn

Heritage processes are today increasingly entangled with multiple forms and discourses
of creativity. Connections between creativity and heritage form part of a new consensual
discourse, where creativity and (heritage) entrepreneurship are projected as mutually
beneficial. Never before have natural and cultural heritage and creativity been so
present in the public imagery, nation-state politics and the creative economy while at
the same time co-existing with ever-more visible practices of transformation, destruction
and loss. Creativity has not only become the new buzzword in authorised heritage dis-
course (Smith, 2006), it has, in many respects, reshaped public policy frameworks and
decision-making. A google Ngram search illustrates the largely exponential growth of
linking heritage and creativity in the last 15 years. We argue that this connection spans
all fields of heritage, whether framed as natural or cultural, intangible or tangible, land-
scapes or objects. What, then, is behind this growth in framing the world as ever-more
creative and heritagised? The creative turn is sometimes presented as a depoliticised
shift to arts, poetry and performance as the subject or field of activity by doing arts or
otherwise being creative (Madge, 2014). At stake here, however, are a set of very differ-
ent social, economic and political processes underpinning the creative move. Consider
the drama of urban neighbourhoods demolished and beautified in the name of creative
transformation (read destruction) and attractiveness (Harms, 2012). Such complexities
have been addressed separately by several disciplinary perspectives, yet a critical
theory of the heritage–creativity nexus remains in its initial stages.
If creativity, etymologically, is about bringing something into life, the heritage–creativ-
ity nexus can also be the very opposite; one of decline, stifling life and producing
uniformisation. The very notion of “creative destruction” (Schumpeter, 2003 [1942])
encapsulates this dilemma. How then do we deal with the often-degraded nature of the
ordinary, the hidden ‘out of site/sight’ places and the insignificance and displaceability
of people within spaces of ‘creative’ heritage proliferation? Anthropological concepts
and ethnographic perspicacity are well-positioned to unveil such contradictions and fric-
tions. We might, for the sake of argument, even name this a focus on de-creativity in heri-
tage in order to shift from win-win discourses to recognising (de)creative processes of
destruction and rupture. Transmission may be blocked, creative practices devalued, even
criminalised, while others are officialised. Recent analysis by the NGO Freemuse
(2023), for example, details the systematic violations of artistic freedoms, attacks against
artists and censorship across the world. In so many cases, creative actors with alternative
visions are reduced to political opposition or otherwise de-created, ostracised and even
dehumanised. The contrasts between these different realms of creativity are not accidental
but firmly embedded within larger neoliberal processes shaping contemporary heritage and
creativity dynamics. This depoliticised valorisation of certain elements obscures deepening
Larsen and Florence 3

neoliberal value politics excluding alternative potentialities. This enables a laissez-faire pol-
itics not only in terms of what is heralded as heritage, but also of what can be transformed
into the normalised cultural production of neoliberal selves, values, societal engagements
and practices. The neoliberal elephant in the room spurs ever-more diverse forms of heri-
tage recognition within normalised landscapes of extraction, degradation and exclusion.
Gentrified creative heritage spaces co-existing with degraded neighbourhoods have
become a normalised part of urban landscapes. Shaped by asymmetrical political econ-
omies and the production of neoliberal subjectivities, these relationships depend on deepen-
ing practices of decreativity. Such practices range from material transformations such as
demolishment and deforestation under the guise of rejuvenation to symbolic devaluation
and denigration of citizenship and voice. The erasure of old neighbourhoods in the historic
centre of Beijing and the displacement of traditional residents by gentrified creative clusters
are a case in point. The growth of the creative cities network equally illustrates the emer-
gence of a layer of official recognition, which systematically ignores, overshadows or
obscures socio-spatial inequalities. This coincides with and is reinforced by how global
policy guidance in the heritage field emphasises win-win scenarios combining the creative
economy and heritage in hegemonic consensual politics across the world. As a conse-
quence, a space of contradiction is maintained between heritage discourse and pressing
societal challenges and planetary concerns. Global decision-making in the World
Heritage context has, for example, overruled scientific advice and repeatedly fails to
address human rights concerns (Larsen, 2023), climate change and mega-infrastructure
pressures.

Genealogies
How do we address the imbrications of corporate players, techno-fixes and political
power elites in contemporary depoliticised spectacles of creativity and heritage?
Taking a step back to reflect on the genealogy of both concepts offers a good starting
point. Just as the biblical nature and divine genealogy of ‘creation’ may be unpacked
(Hartley et al., 2012: 66), the modernist narrative reconciliation of heritage, innovation
and creativity is, today, ripe for interrogation. Whereas the romantic ideal stressed
divine intervention, muses and Maecenas nourishing creativity, current creative conjunc-
tions arguably rely on different flows and mechanisms of interpenetration between capital
accumulation, creativity and the heritage sphere.
Both creativity and heritage have a long pedigree as cultural policy fields. ‘Culture is
the fountain of our creativity and progress’, the Our Creative Diversity’s report noted
in 1995, signalling a culture-ideological pitch from UNESCO constituents on the role
of culture in development as a societal, economic and necessity for state crafting
(UNESCO, 2020). Government-initiated cultural policies emphasising the benefits of cre-
ativity, particularly since the end of the twentieth century, include the rise of the creative
industries aimed at creating, producing and commercialising creative content as goods or
services.1 Almost two decades after the publication of The Rise of the Creative Class
(Florida, 2002), the engineering, development and innovation of creative sites and work-
places are increasingly also present in the heritage field.
4 Anthropological Theory 0(0)

The link between heritage and creativity economy was not immediate,2 yet today plays
a growing role (Keane, 2013; Keane, 2016; Galloway and Dunlop, 2007; Li, 2011; Fung,
2017). A wealth of discourses and practices around creative entrepreneurship, economies
and heritage innovation today converge in what has been summarised as the ‘creative
or orange economy seeking to unleash the productive potential of heritage, culture and
creativity’ (Buitrago Restrepo and Duque Márquez, 2013).3 The UN General Assembly
even declared 2021 the ‘International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable
Development’. Sponsored by Indonesia alongside Australia, China, India, Mongolia,
Philippines and Thailand, this initiative highlighted a distinct Asia–Pacific perspective.
Moreover, the text also reignited the globalised discursive linking of creativity, heritage
and the economy by:

Recognizing that the creative economy, known as the “orange economy” in a number of
countries, involves, inter alia, knowledge-based economic activities and the interplay
between human creativity and ideas, knowledge and technology, as well as cultural
values or artistic, cultural heritage and other individual or collective creative expressions.
(United Nations, 2021: 2)

Such language is not merely policy rhetoric, but also reflects shifting investments,
property relations and value transformation. The ‘creative orange economy’ involves
a set of circulations and transformations of ideas into products and associated values
for growth potential. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD) Creative Economy Outlook report (2018), for example, reveals vernaculars
and categories of accounting adding economistic terms and metrics such as creative
goods and services. This global market more than doubled between 2002 and 2015
(UNCTAD, 2018: 9).4 Although cinema and music, from Nollywood in Nigeria to
Kpop in Korea, occupy privileged positions in this economy,5 heritage spaces and
places are equally emerging as profitable fields of investment. For more than four
decades, former industrial areas, national parks and neighbourhoods have been undergo-
ing heritagisation, creative clustering and gentrification (Harvey, 2008; Smith, 1996).
This process is now accelerating and making it evident that different social processes
are at stake. Heritage tourism economies offer emblematic illustrations (Di Giovine,
2009) revealing intensified dynamics of dispossession, private profit capture and chan-
ging gazes co-existing with glossy visual representations; this has elsewhere been
termed neo-aesthetics (Graezer Bideau and Larsen, 2023).

Heritage and neoliberal (de)creativity

This proliferation of new heritage economies, their narratives and ordering mediations
is often underpinned by a political win-win language of innovation, entrepreneurialism
and creative industry expansion. We suggest requalifying this creative turn as part of a
broader neoliberal shift in the heritage field towards invisibilising underlying power
relations, including privatisation and dispossession. The neoliberal turn shifts heritage
and creativity from being fields under threat by markets, commodification and
Larsen and Florence 5

homogenisation to that of a mutually reinforcing relationship in a reconfigured

authorised discourse.
Far too often, the branding of a new creative heritage economy coexists with and
easily obscures processes of destruction, change and displacement. Whereas the triad
of newness, value and utility is constantly evoked (Hartley et al., 2012: 67), contradic-
tions ranging from its environmental dimensions (Oakley and Banks, 2020) and social
inequalities to paradigmatic tensions between transformation and continuity are conveni-
ently reconciled through confined heritage mechanisms (Larsen and Logan, 2018).
Consider the spectacular transformation of urban skyscraper landscapes in hyper-
capitalist oil cities of the Middle East (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha) co-existing with heritage
listed bazaars, mosques and vernacular housing. Another example would be the World
Heritage listing of natural enigmatic sites in the Amazon, such as the Manu Biosphere
Reserve in Peru, while deforestation and biodiversity loss continues (Junior et al.,
2021). Critical authors have challenged the inscription of ethnic minority heritage in
Vietnam, which co-exists with and even results in further appropriation and disconnec-
tion by state and market forces (Salemink, 2012, 2016) or the recognition of historical
urban landscapes next to demolished traditional neighbourhoods in Beijing (Graezer
Bideau and Yan, 2018).
Heritage and creativity are not merely mutually resonating and reinforcing forces of
the cultural good but drivers of and subject to competition, contradiction and conflict.
Creative practices and heritage phenomena are increasingly mobilised in distinct political
and financialised ‘spectacular’ terrains. Gaston Gordillo observes how capitalism ‘rules
through the production of spectacular places’ (2014: 81). This may leave ‘a path of
destruction and vast fields of rubble’, as Harms noted in his ethnography of Ho Chi
Minh City (2016: 4–5). Gordillo terms this ‘destructive production’, which we might
here paraphrase and consider as destructive creativity in and of heritage.
Schumpeter, in 1943, considered creative destruction an ‘essential fact about capital-
ism’ (2003: 83), speaking of how the economic structure is revolutionised as old struc-
tures are destroyed. He characterised creative destruction as innovations in the
manufacturing process that increase productivity, describing it as the ‘process of indus-
trial mutation that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, inces-
santly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one’ (2003: 83). Heritage
was in this line of thinking projected as the victim of creative destruction, bound to
disappear.
The magic of the heritage–creativity win-win discourse seemingly resolves this
dilemma by retaining the old in the new and vice-versa. However, as critical literature
has amply demonstrated, the contradictions remain. David Harvey’s critique of neo-
liberalism reminds us how such matters of creative destruction affect ‘not only …
prior institutional frameworks and powers, but also … divisions of labor, social relations,
welfare provisions, technological mixes, ways of life, attachments to the land, habits of
the heart, ways of thought’ (2006: 145). Tackling the creative turn as a neoliberal shift
thus involves situating the nexus within a broader historical process. Creative economies,
start-ups and artist neighbourhoods do not appear from a tabula rasa but in many
cities emerge alongside the dynamics of de-industrialisation, re-appropriation and
6 Anthropological Theory 0(0)

gentrification of urban spaces. The creativity–heritage nexus as a public policy practice

thus potentially reinforces and deepens such dynamics (Harvey, 2008).

Anthropological perspectives
Creativity in colonial and post-colonial anthropological gazes has ranged from the collec-
tion and museification of ‘primitive arts in civilized places’ (Price, 2001) to culturalist
gazes of the other (Hall, 1992). Couched in vocabularies of difference, exoticism and
the collective other, the anthropology of traditional creativity entailed objectified heritage
subject to classification and scientific description ontologically different from the
Renaissance ideal of ingenuity and individual creation. This gaze centred on (collective)
repetition and tradition rather than (individual) innovation and rupture. It underlined cre-
ativity as collective cosmologies, crafts and artisan skills rather than technological innov-
ation, individual creation, authorship and improvisation. If outputs were recognised as
creative, agency was limited in a structural and hierarchical vision of radicalised,
racialised and depersonalised other. Objects and rituals appeared without identifying crafts-
men and women, authors or practitioners. Challenging this colonial legacy and subsequent
modernist binaries (collective vs. individual subjectivities, practice vs. technology, handi-
crafts vs. arts), we acknowledge that both, nonetheless, entail forms of recognition, whether
in terms of collective or individual creativity.
Indeed, dynamics of collective anonymisation are arguably also present in Western
heritage sites, from distinct urban landscapes – such as Venice, to specific religious
edifices – such as cathedrals. From another angle, heritage studies today often have a
firm focus on how state or non-state actors creatively use ‘the past in the present’ for
local political, economic and wider social agendas (Harrison, 2013). Contemporary phe-
nomena include the role of heritage for cultural diplomacy, nation-building and domestic
modernisation narratives (Winter, 2015). Convergences between heritage, culture and
power are age-old, not least in the Asian context (see, e.g. Callahan, 2006; Graezer
Bideau and Larsen, 2023).
Anthropology offers multiple perspectives to better capture contemporary de-creativity
phenomena. First, we propose understanding heritage and creativity as total phenomena
rather than pigeon-holing creativity and heritage within official discursive boundaries of
aesthetics, innovation, design or archaeology. For example, a critical holistic anthropology
would need to be able to capture Disneyfication (commodification, entertainment values
and mass tourism) as part of the heritage process without simply relegating this to inauthen-
tic ‘noise’.
Second, this also entails leaving behind a set of normative biases shaped by Western
heritage notions. This includes the celebration – and simplification – of virtuous creative
solutions, creative individuals and creative attitudes (Löfgren, 2001: 71). Critical heritage
studies have long challenged the assumptions of late-modern and Western-centric gazes
found in authorised heritage discourse (Smith, 2006: 17) and the risk of obscuring power
relations and, as a consequence, even ‘suppressing creativity and innovation’ (Brumann,
2014: 174). Anthropological critiques of Euro-centric epistemologies (Winter, 2014)
provide the foundations for a more inclusive approach of the creative turn.
Larsen and Florence 7

Third, anthropologists generally emphasise the social context of creativity, not merely
the ‘romantic ideologies’ of individual genius and ‘creativity as ex nihilo creation of pro-
ducts’ so present in Western cosmology (Wilf, 2014: 398). Herzfeld (1987) eloquently
described this as the social poetics between convention and invention. A key character-
istic of holism involves scrutinising the multiple discursive dimensions of heritage and
creativity practices in terms of ‘the relationships of power they facilitate’ (Harrison,
2013: 5). This also entails exploring the cracks, divergences and practices of dissonance
(Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996; Kisić , 2013) to capture what we propose as
de-creativity.
Fourth, anthropology is arguably well-attuned to shed light on ordinary heritage cre-
ativity. Three decades ago, Rosaldo et al. located creative processes of ‘frolic, play and
joking’ in the margins and interstitial zones (1993: 2) in reference to Victor Turner’s work
on play, liminality and performance: this ethnographic sensitivity was not merely about
‘stepping out of seriousness’ (1993: 7), but about taking ‘mundane everyday activities’
seriously (1993: 5). Indeed, anthropological attention has been paid to creative, trans-
formative and improvisational forms of agency range from acts of playfulness (homo
ludens) to wider poetics of social life (Herzfeld, 1987) and ‘practices of making’
(Ingold, 2013). Just as Arendt questioned the homo faber utilitarianism as the ‘degrad-
ation of all things into instrumental means’ (1958: 156), the anthropological perspective
on creativity goes beyond acts of heritage engineering and tool-making. Indeed, the
anthropology of homo creativus needs to capture a wider spectrum of both the social
and the individual, the playful and the serious, the performative and the meaningful as
well as juxtaposing construction and destruction. Where design thinking tends to singu-
larise and decontextualise talent and individual genius as homo creativus, anthropology
offers a contextual epistemology.
In sum, anthropology is well-suited to capture decreativity in its multiple dimensions.
In contrast to the holy trinity of heritage, creativity and innovation personified by homo
faber, the anthropological perspective offers a de-essentialised and less normative gaze of
homo creativus. This allows the capture of diverse social poetics between convention and
invention at various scales and from a diversity of stakeholders.

Normalising standards and heritage normativity

Liep considered creativity as an ‘activity that produces something new through the
recombination and transformation of existing cultural practices or forms’ (2001: 2,
italics added). Challenging the sanitised convergence of culture, heritage and creativity
as a (unified) motor of development and change (Eriksen, 2012) requires situating the dis-
cursive production of heritage creativity and authenticity within wider regimes of state
control,6 censorship and constraint together with deepening entrepreneurialism and com-
modification of the other. Indeed, the creative industries can be described as ‘often
routine, frequently standardised and generally derivative’ (Hartley et al., 2012: 68).
Such routine depoliticised practices stand in stark contrast to the creative genius in
the Renaissance sense. In fact, heritage studies often underline how heritagisation
detaches places, objects and practices from everyday contexts, while formalising and
8 Anthropological Theory 0(0)

homogenising them in order to respect universal heritage criteria. Recognition and pro-
tection of heritage diversity and creativity, in this sense, paradoxically requires some
kind of homogenisation. We may here evoke Bohm’s idea of creativity as the interplay
between similar differences and different similarities (1968: 140).7 In order for a given
place, object or practice to become or remain recognised as heritage, it needs to fit exist-
ing criteria, while at the same time distinguishing itself as unique. A double process of
uniformisation and singularisation is, in other words, required in the name of recognition.
Such dynamics of normalisation prompt questions around the making or transformation
of what, for whom and how of heritage creativity. It also draws attention to tensions
between spaces and practices of individual creativity grounded in freedom of expression
versus creativity as a corporate, state-driven and top-down defined normalising project.
Investments in the creative economy and corporate or state-sanctioned cultural heritage
promotion and diplomacy offer relevant illustrations. Consider, for example, the
Korean or Japanese waves of promoting pop culture, music or entertainment interlinking
nation branding, exports and global cultural diplomacy (Ryoo, 2009; Yano, 2013).
As such practices of reification and commodification spread, they may coexist with
narrow corporate, state-sanctioned practices of authorised cultural expression, control
and censorship.
Consider also the growth of urban regeneration projects for promoting creative dis-
tricts or clusters and valorising the creative class (Richards and Wilson, 2007). Such
efforts, including global initiatives such as the UNESCO Creative Cities Network,8
support officialised creative spaces for artists, performers, designers and innovators,
yet also potentially introduce, deepen and police standardised and commodified practices
of creativity, invisibilising and ruling out contradictions, alternative urban visions, critical
authorship and social contestation (see, e.g. the critique by Peck, 2005 or Krätke, 2011).
Whether formalising practices of martial arts as Intangible Cultural Heritage (Su,
2016) or retrofitting natural diversity into universal criteria of outstanding universal
natural World Heritage values (Larsen, 2018), both kinds of transformation build
on new regulatory approaches, changing relationships and bureaucratised practices.
Neoliberal governance is often described as a distinct deregulatory attack on state prota-
gonism, liberating entrepreneurialism and asserting economic value metrics. In the heri-
tage field, this project translates into new cultural commodities, the displacement of
alternatives, gentrification and, even, over-tourism. From concrete materialities in West
Africa (Choplin, 2023) to neoliberal tourism rationalities in Southeast Asia, contempor-
ary scholarship points to the acute need for the critical analysis of such entrepreneurship,
value creation and profit-making. This, in practice, prompts the need for further attention
to the public policy frameworks exploring shifting values, legitimising de-creative inter-
ventions and neutralising shifting power (im)balances on the ground.
The dual process of creativity becoming heritage-oriented and heritage becoming cre-
ative, in other words, potentially normalises a slippery depoliticised terrain of ‘anything
goes’. This involves a somewhat disguised conundrum of harmonised front-staged heri-
tage creativity with less visible backstage dynamics potentially obscuring elite capture
and the complicit state by pre-empting building blocks for alternative futures.
Larsen and Florence 9

Neoliberal valorisation of heritage

[T]his creativity we award ourselves requires that we exploit the creativity of others. ln
endlessly producing ‘products’ Western bourgeois culture is constructed as endlessly cre-
ative, a model that does not simply involve the permutations of products but the notion
that production is also control, including control over the values given to things
(Strathern, 1987: 21).
Interrogating destruction, restoration and transformation of heritage has a long pedi-
gree in heritage-related disciplines such as architecture, art history and archaeology.9
There has long been a fine line – amply negotiated in heritage discourse – where creativity
was no longer seen as a source of value but one of transgression and destruction. Whereas
heritage discourse long challenged change, the creative turn, in turn, valorises it.
Holtorf sees a tension between theories perceiving heritage as ‘a non-renewable
resource in need of protection’ vs. heritage as ‘frequently updated manifestations of chan-
ging perceptions of the past over time’ (2020: 277). He specifically argues that ‘the con-
servation of cultural heritage means to manage and testify to ongoing change, not to
prevent it’ (2020: 279). Where narrow heritage gazes are easily caught within the discur-
sive boundaries of protecting the authentic object, site or its designated qualities, anthro-
pology insists upon the historical and social contexts. Interrogating the heritage–
creativity nexus allows for new questions around value, authenticity and the market.
When Jonathan Friedman insisted that ‘the understanding of creativity must pass
through the social and existential conditions that are its foundation’ (2001: 49), the neo-
liberal dimension is arguably a central piece of the current puzzle. Wilf, for example,
associates the creative turn with the neo-liberal agency requiring subjects to ‘imagine
and fashion their own future by engaging with risk and making decisions under condi-
tions of increased uncertainty’ (2014: 407).
From cultural traditions to copy culture10 and creative cities, Asia offers an emblem-
atic region to study the massive investments and what, at first sight, might appear as
‘hypercreativity’, in the heritage field. Reflecting the entrepreneurial efforts of both
private and public actors, the region accounts for almost half of this global creative
economy – 228 billion USD out of 509 billion in 2015 (UNCTAD, 2018: 9). Heritage
is increasingly part of the ‘soft infrastructure’ or domains of activity mobilised in this cre-
ative economy. The region encompasses the valorisation of millennia old practices of
renovation to the mushrooming of heritage infrastructure, World Heritage site prolifer-
ation and newly formed massive entertainment complexes.11 The case in point here
is that of heritage creativity as a ‘value-added industry’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1995:
373) integral to neoliberal governance, while repeatedly excluding alternative forms of
valorisation. These include the domestication and instrumentalisation of heritage creativ-
ity with distinct market politics, privatised creative entrepreneurship and the heralding of
individual action (see, also, Coombe, 2012). An interesting example concerns the repro-
ducibility of Angkor Wat and its reconstitution in China as an entertainment park.
Combining heritage creativity and entrepreneurship around heritage commodities, trans-
ferability of new heritage commodities relies on distinct neoliberal regulatory technolo-
gies and shifting social relationships in the heritage marketplace. Recent studies have
10 Anthropological Theory 0(0)

precisely underlined the neoliberal normalised grab of culture, culture as resource

(Yúdice, 2004) and ethnicity incorporated (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009). What
matters, from the neoliberal perspective, is not a matter of authentic attributes or situated
context but one of creating experiential intensity and a willingness to buy and procure
cultural consumption pleasure. This, in turn, obscures, or transforms, the boundaries
between true and fake, new and imitation, singularisation and commensurability (Wilf,
2014). Such dynamics are particularly evident with the spectacular growth in and role
played by technology in the proliferation of virtual voyages and depoliticised ‘heritage
experiences’ across time and space.
Neoliberal use of digital technologies further blurs the boundaries between the mater-
ial and immaterial. Indeed, technological innovation is even seen as a new way of
(re)constituting heritage creatively (sometimes off-setting destruction elsewhere). No
longer confined to intrinsic cultural significance, material protection and heritage
values, the neoliberal project leads to detached, beautified and commodified places,
objects and heritage practices ready for wider circulation and consumption. Country
houses featured in TV exports ‘selling in more than 100 territories’, Branding Britain
and the Creative Industries Sectors Deal underline ‘the essential role heritage plays in
the success of the creative industries’ (The Heritage Alliance, 2020: 5). Low-hanging
heritage fruits are repackaged by public private partnerships for creative experience
economies and tourism development, while contested heritage is annulled and less
emblematic sites neglected or simply devalorised. Heritage is also recycled in the
gaming industry and 3D reconstructions for tourism. Bird, for example, speaks of the
digital dispossession of Native Americans as ‘meaningful connections to land’ are
lost in virtual translation (2021). Digital technology projects, in one sense, render the
world more accessible but may also conversely render invisible or reproduce power
geometries, social inequalities and even spatial conflicts. This leaves back stories of
the decreativity, exclusion and destruction conspicuously absent or underreported,
such as on-going territorial conflicts and land claims by Indigenous Peoples. As
Belfiore notes, cultural value allocation cannot be separated from resource distribution
reflecting sites of ‘tensions, struggles for power, and the scene of a complex politics
of representation, identity, taste and class’ (2020: 394). In the arts sector in Beijing,
for example, Ren and Sun underline how the ‘local state has extended its creative
control over artists by using interlocking directorates’ (2012: 504). The authors argue
that government officials thereby extend control over both cultural production and
real estate development. Theorising the creative turn necessarily requires focussed atten-
tion to such neoliberal instrumentalities across different political contexts leading to new
commodity forms and practices of accumulation.

Concluding remarks
‘But he hasn’t got anything on!’ the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for
he suspected they were right. But he thought, ‘this procession has got to go on’. So he walked
more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.
The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hans Christian Andersen ([1837] 1983)
Larsen and Florence 11

How to anthropologically theorise and problematise the discursive convergence

between heritage-making and depoliticised creativity? Is creativity yet another add-on
or fad to be added to the already loaded list of positives tagged on to heritage discourse
(sustainable, community-based, multicultural, inclusive, creative)? In quoting
Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, we question the celebration of the heritage–cre-
ativity nexus as the novel panacea for heritage-making. This is not only of academic
importance.
In contrast to this celebratory discourse, addressing the less visible political, economic,
cultural and social dimensions of what we call de-creative agency is becoming urgent.
Whereas homo creativus progresses steadily towards a brighter world in tandem with
the economy, critical heritage studies have long highlighted the limited space to
address questions of inequalities, conflict and friction illustrating the tensions between
an ethics of probability and an ethics of potentiality (Appadurai, 2013 quoted by
Ortner, 2016: 64–65).
Anthropology allows us to explicate this contradictory space, hegemonic politics and
the uneven political economies involved in the ‘creative’ reappropriation of public space,
memory and nature. The common absence of indigenous and local community voices in
shaping heritage decision-making illustrates the corporate and state-driven mobilisation
of the creative turn alongside the triumph of a normalised entrepreneurial market-gaze
enhancing displacement, appropriation and capture.
Whereas creative design thinking tends to reiterate the idea of decontextual talent,
individual genius as homo creativus, taking into account the creative class, contested
identities and the wider political economy reveals the necessity to tackle neoliberal foun-
dations of contemporary policy prescriptions head-on. We thus challenge the heritage–
creativity nexus on at least two core accounts. First, the sanitised win-win discourse
far too easily leads to the blind acceptance of corporate, state-sanctioned performance,
economic value metrics and a narrow utilitarian gaze framed around the capitalisation
of creativity. New heritage experiences are repackaged for cultural consumption with
scant attention to the inequalities, displacements and frictions involved in or resulting
from these transformations.
Second, building on increasingly normalised non-democratic governance of diversity,
this process both invisibilises and neutralises alternative value projects, spatial dynamics
and people replaced by new creative forms of cultural homogenisation. Such normalised
anti-politics of creativity leaves limited space to rethink corporate state-driven frame-
works and maintain space for alternatives and resistances. In response, not only the hege-
monic dynamics, but also the subaltern voices and social struggles, need to be addressed
head-on regarding the meaning and practices of heritage, creativity and cultural
expressions.
Anthropological critique is today fundamental to democratise, problematise and even
decolonise heritage policy and practice out of its corporate, state-sanctioned space in
order to enable counter-discourse, dissonance and future imaginaries to take root. By
highlighting the discursive regimes, politics and power asymmetries at stake in the cre-
ative turn, a historically oriented anthropology offers multiple openings to unmask pol-
itical contradictions, de-creative practice and market conveniences.
12 Anthropological Theory 0(0)

Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the EPFL College of Humanities for the visiting fellowship, which
allowed for the joint preparation of this article as well as the international workshop where a
first draft of the paper was presented.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or
publication of this article: a visiting fellowship grant to Peter Larsen by the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL). The Swiss National Science Foundation funded the international
workshop, where the first draft of the paper was presented.

ORCID iD
Peter Bille Larsen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8908-1788

Notes
1. The term “creative industries” refers to ‘those industries which have their origin in individual cre-
ativity, skill and talent which have a potential for job and wealth creation through the generation
and exploitation of intellectual property’ (Department for Culture, Media and Sport 1998: 3).
2. Historically, creative industry discourse has its roots in top-down cultural policy making rather
than organically grown (Hartley et al., 2012: 67). The British example, often considered as the
origins of the creative industry idea, is an interesting case.
3. This orange economy is defined as: ‘the production or reproduction, promotion, distribution or
commercialisation of goods, services and activities of content derived from cultural, artistic or
heritage origins’ (World Bank, 2020; UNDP and UNESCO 2013).
4. This particularly reflects growth in countries such as China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore,
Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico and Philippines.
5. https://blogs.worldbank.org/jobs/dont-overlook-orange-economy-five-reasons-why-creativity-
key-jobs-agenda
6. Such differences are well-recognised, grounded in anthropologies of the state regimes and bur-
eaucratisation, experts and authorised heritage discourse (Smith 2006) and more generally in
ethnographies of heritage (Bendix et al. 2012; Brumann and Berliner 2015).
7. This compares to the etymological ambiguity of originality between the primary state and that
of being novel.
8. See, for instance, https://bangkok.unesco.org/content/unesco-creative-cities-13-asia-pacific-
cities-celebrated-innovation-creativity.
9. See, for instance, Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1848) and Viollet-le-Duc,
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (1854).
10. Darlington, for example, describes China as ‘the undisputed leader of copyist heritage in
modern times’ (2020:77), underlining the controversies often associated with contemporary
forms of heritage-making.
Larsen and Florence 13

11. See, for instance, the Angkor Wat replica in the Fantawild ‘Asian Legend’ theme park in
Nanning, Guizhou Province, China (https://southeastasiaglobe.com/chinese-theme-park-
risks-offending-cambodians-with-angkor-wat-replica/).

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Peter Bille Larsen is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University
of Geneva and a senior researcher at University of Zurich. Visiting fellow at the College
of Humanities of the EPFL in 2021, he recently founded the Geneva Heritage Lab. Recent
books include Post-Frontier Resource Governance (Palgrave, 2015), The Anthropology
of Conservation NGOs (Palgrave, 2017), World Heritage and Human Rights (Routledge,
2018) and World Heritage and Sustainable Development (Routledge, 2018).

Florence Graezer Bideau is a senior scientist at the College of Humanities and at the
Faculty of School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) at
the EPFL. Her recent publications include: Politiques de la tradition: Le patrimoine
culturel immatériel with Hertz E, et al. (PURR, 2018), “Re-creating memories of
Gulou: Three temporalities and emotions” with Yan H in: Madgin R and Lesh J (eds).
People-Centered Methodologies for Heritage Conservation: Exploring Emotional
Attachment to Historic Urban Places (Routledge, 2021) and Porter le temps.
Mémoires urbaines d’un site horloger co-edited with De Pieri F (Mē tisPresses, 2021).