University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses March 2018 RETHINKING THE CREATIVE ECONOMY: THE DIVERSE ECONOMIES OF ARTISTS AND ARTISANS IN RURAL MASSACHUSETTS Abby Irene Templer Rodrigues University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Community-Based Research Commons, Human Geography Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Rural Sociology Commons, and the Work, Economy and Organizations Commons Recommended Citation Templer Rodrigues, Abby Irene, "RETHINKING THE CREATIVE ECONOMY: THE DIVERSE ECONOMIES OF ARTISTS AND ARTISANS IN RURAL MASSACHUSETTS" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1183. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1183 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. 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RETHINKING THE CREATIVE ECONOMY: THE DIVERSE ECONOMIES OF ARTISTS AND ARTISANS IN RURAL MASSACHUSETTS A Dissertation Presented by ABBY IRENE TEMPLER RODRIGUES Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2018 Sociology © Copyright by Abby Irene Templer Rodrigues 2018 All Rights Reserved RETHINKING THE CREATIVE ECONOMY: THE DIVERSE ECONOMIES OF ARTISTS AND ARTISAN IN RURAL MASSACHUSETTS A Dissertation Presented by ABBY IRENE TEMPLER RODRIGUES Approved as to style and content by: _________________________________________________ Millie Thayer, Chair _________________________________________________ Robert Zussman, Member _________________________________________________ Myrna Breitbart, Member _________________________________________________ Susan Jahoda, Member _____________________________________________ Michelle Budig, Department Chair Department of Sociology DEDICATION For M and others who struggle with belief in themselves. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people who supported me in arriving at this moment. As an undergraduate at Missouri State University, then Southwest Missouri State University, it was John Harms who introduced me to the revolutionary potential of sociology and the potential in me to pursue a PhD. At the University of Massachusetts, Millie Thayer and Julie Graham provided me with invaluable intellectual and emotional support. They supported me in learning the academic and institutional basics of graduate school, introduced me to feminist theory, and supported me in doing the type of community- based, critical, ontologically playful scholarship that I wanted to pursue. Without Millie and Julie, I would not have stayed in graduate school. As my chair, Millie has been a constant champion and Julie has been there in spirit. Other professors also played a key role in my graduate career. Robert Zussman provided invaluable feedback along the way that helped ground me in the practice of sociology in the midst of a very interdisciplinary dissertation project. As my outside committee members, Susan Jahoda and Myrna Breitbart brought new perspectives to my dissertation. Myrna helped to more strongly root my work in critical conversations about the creative economy. Susan has helped strengthen my connection to intellectual conversations within the arts. Joya Misra also played a key role in my graduate career. She and Jen Lundquist modeled how feminist ideals of equality can shape the working relationship between professors and their research assistants. Working with them not only increased my writing and methodological skills but also served as a model for how I would interact with the community researchers who formed the backbone of this v dissertation. Joya later played another important support role by facilitating an online dissertation-writing group. This allowed me to connect meaningfully with my peers while living a hemisphere away. I would also like to thank Richard Wilkie, who immediate stepped-in to serve as the Principal Investigator on the grant that funded this research after Julie’s passing. Community-based research takes a community to conduct. I would like to extend my deep gratitude to the artists and artisans who so openly shared their experiences for this research. This research would not have been possible without the artists and artisans who comprised the Rethinking the Creative Economy Research Team: Al Ladd, Jessamyn Smyth, Kiran Bhowmik, Heather Cohen, Rochleigh Z. Wholfe, Amy Gardiner, Brad Peters, Phyllis Labanowski, Morning Star Chenven, Diane Worth, George- Moonlight Davis, Zoe Ma, Daniel Mahoney, Don Campbell, Judi Campbell, Eric Deluca, Jeanne Douillard, Andy Chase, Kim Parkhurst, Cheryl Rezendes, Jerilyn Kolbin, Robin Parsons, and the project co-coordinator, Leo Hwang. A heartfelt thanks to the staff at Greenfield Community College (GCC) and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass) who administered the grants that funded the project and assisted with other administrative elements of the project. Regina Curtis at GCC and Nicole Pietraszkiewicz at UMass figured out how to split the administration of the funding between the two institutions, figured out the logistics of how to pay the community researchers, and then administered the funds. Jan Ross at GCC made sure that we got all the proper employment paperwork needed to pay the researchers and provided additional assistance such as answering calls, taking messages, scheduling rooms for our events. Thanks to Brad Peters, who was not only one of the community researchers but vi also devoted a substantial amount of time to transcribing the interviews. I would also like to extend my by deep gratitude to the staff in the Department of Sociology at UMass, Amherst. Over the years, they provided amazing support in navigating all aspect of my graduate career. Community research also requires innovative research design. A number of colleagues assisted in this process. Julie Hemment shared her informed consent forms, which provided the model for ours. She later served as a committee member for my Master Thesis. Steven Healy also gave generously of his time, meeting with me to discuss the research design and outcomes of the Pioneer Valley PAR study on which he was an academic researcher. Anasuya Weil, a community researcher on the same project, provided me with the researcher packet used by the community researchers, serving as the model for our packets. Thank you to members of the Community Economies Collective for support and feedback both on theory and method over the years. The intellectual work that undergirds my research was further cultivated through an amazing network of graduate student peers who exploded my previous ways of thinking, while providing important friendships: Kathryn Worley, Swati Birla, Elsa Wiehe, Yasser Munif, Vanessa Adel, Sofia Checa, Christopher Hamilton, Nicole Stokes- DuPass, Dustin Avent-Holt, RJ Barrios, Anna Curtis, Jeremy Wolf, Marianne Neal- Joyce, Dee Roberts, Kyla Walters, Celeste Curington, Karen Brummond, Cassaundra Rodriguez, Yetunde Ajao, Sonny Nordmarken, Ghazah Abbasi, Jackie Stein, and Tim Sacco. A very special thanks to the members of The Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Franklin County; your friendships truly carried me over the last several years while your successes provide continual inspiration. vii My family has been a constant support through this process. My parents, Marvis and Bruce Templer, provide an endless well of support. Over the years, it was a pleasure to explore learning to write with my brother, Chapman Templer. Herbert Rodrigues, my husband, provided and continues to provide a model for living life in balance with academics. His love made finishing manageable and his support made finishing possible. Abraços para a minha família no Brasil que me recebeu com tanto amor. Finally, my family-like friends, Mandy Kocevar, Eliane Alves da Silva, Sarah Miller, Laura Heston, and Mahala Stewart provide so much love. viii ABSTRACT RETHINKING THE CREATIVE ECONOMY: THE DIVERSE ECONOMIES OF ARTISTS AND ARTISANS IN RURAL MASSACHUSETTS FEBRUARY 2018 ABBY IRENE TEMPLER RODRIGUES, B. S. MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY M.A. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST PH.D. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed By: Professor Millie Thayer This dissertation explores the contours of artistic economic activity through participatory action research conducted with artists and artisans in the Greater Franklin County, Massachusetts. The creative economy has drawn significant attention over the past ten years as a principle economic sector that can stimulate the redevelopment of post-industrial cities. However, dominant creativity–based development strategies tend to cater to the tastes of an economically privileged, and implicitly white, “creative class,’ leading to gentrification and social exclusion based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender. These exclusions also apply to artists and artisans, occupational groups whose economic activity and needs have been paradoxically erased from dominant creativity-based development prescriptions. The data were collected as part of a collaborative research project in which twenty-two artists and artisans were hired from the region to conduct interviews to explore the economic lives of their peers.