Global view : from conceptual discontents to a research agenda

How to provide a synoptic international view of the 'creative economy' as a development strategy - the brief I was given - without having mapped the global landscape empirically? The solution I have adopted is to do so in conceptual terms. I shall do this, first, by looking critically at the notion of 'creative economy' itself, hence the scare quotes. This critical stance is motivated by concerns that are both general and specific. My general concern is with the semantic inflation, the slipperiness of terms that characterizes the rhetoric, advocacy, and self-representation of the cultural sector.