Culture and its Role in the Volatile Environment of Knowledge and Creative Age in View of Crisis

Abstract

We live in the Knowledge Age, which is based on the implementation of knowledge for the further development. In addition, in the last decade a new phenomenon was highlighted – the Creative Age (Florida, 2002), in which the creative labour has been recognized as a vital force for the future development. In view of culture there is a certain antagonism between the advocates of these two approaches. However, Kelemen et al. (2007) point out the unprecedented intersections between culture & the arts, the science & research and information technologies resulting into a new space – so called cyberculture. But how does the continuing recession change our view of the role of culture in the nowadays world? Recent studies have shown (Keegan, 2008; Tajtakova, 2012) that people do not abandon cultural participation in times of crisis. Moreover, Kloudová (2010) explicitly suggests that the way out of crisis lies in the new style of life where the consumption of spiritual assets prevails over the struggle for material property. The aim of this paper is to discuss different facets of the role of culture in a volatile environment in the era of knowledge and creative economy with a particular regard to the crisis.