Cultural Resonance and Creativity Processes

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the incidence of place in urban cultural creativity process from a sociological perspective. We seek to understand the social mechanisms through which certain characteristics of the urban environment are incorporated in cultural productions. Following the contributions of Harvey Molotch (1976, 2002) and Randall Collins (2005, 2009, 2013), we elaborate the concept of resonance. We understand resonance as the ability to certain cultural creativity processes to use some characteristic elements of the place and turn them into unique cultural products that, in turn, participate as content in other cultural creativity processes. From a qualitative methodological approach, based on interviews and observation, we analyze the resonance processes occurring between designers of Palermo in Buenos Aires and visual artists of Poblenou area of Barcelona.