Dancefloor Dualities: Relational Power, Persistent Tensions, and Hybridization in Creative Ecosystems

Creativity is not merely the work of an individual genius but rather a collective action embedded in social and historical contexts. This understanding raises important questions about how to organize for creativity. When creativity is viewed as the interaction between diverse individuals, communities, and institutions, these interconnected actors must navigate complex systems characterized by conflicting interests and goals. These systems often balance cultural and economic values, compliance with normative systems, and the need to defy these norms to create novel outputs. This dissertation examines the oppositional tendencies inherent in organizing for collective creativity, employing various theoretical lenses, methodologies, and datasets to explore these dynamics. The first part of this work focuses on relational power within creative ecosystems. Power in these ecosystems is not hierarchical but interactional, accessible to all actors. I examine how interdependencies—both technological and cognitive—shape power dynamics among ecosystem members. These dynamics can lead to ecosystem change or stasis, depending on whether they reinforce or contradict one another. This analysis advances a more inclusive understanding of power and its role in creative ecosystems, emphasizing the importance of interdependency types in driving ecosystem dynamics. Building on this foundation, the first empirical study explores how relational power fosters "discontinuous continuity" in the techno-music ecosystem of a large European city. Creative outputs must break societal norms while simultaneously finding legitimacy within them. The ecosystem is structured into three layers—underground, middleground, and upperground—each producing distinct creative outputs. Power dynamics ensure balance by uniting and dividing these layers. Uniting actions sustain the ecosystem’s continuity, while dividing actions maintain the distinctiveness of each layer. This interplay creates a recursive process of creative output, offering new insights into how relational power shapes creativity. The second empirical study examines persistent tensions in the same techno-music ecosystem, focusing on three key oppositions: competition versus collaboration, deviance versus compliance, and hedonistic escapism versus social reflexivity. These tensions, though unresolved, are not static. Over two years, ecosystem members strategically foreground or background these tensions in response to value-creating activities, regulatory interventions, and disruptive incidents. The interplay of these tensions can culminate in significant events, such as ecosystem-wide protests. This study reframes persistent tensions as dynamic and interactive, highlighting the active role of ecosystem members in navigating them. The final empirical study investigates oppositional tendencies at the intra-organizational level through a year-long ethnographic study of a former illegal rave collective undergoing hybridization. The process is driven by interpersonal conflicts arising from metaphorical incongruence between members' visions, which combine deviant subcultural and compliant mass-cultural elements. These conflicts prompt individuals to adapt their perspectives, leading to key organizational turning points. While uncomfortable, such conflicts drive the collective's evolution by balancing divergent ideas. This study advances the literature on hybridization by showing how individual and collective processes interact through conflict. In sum, this dissertation sheds light on the complex dynamics of organizing for collective creativity. It argues that oppositional tendencies in creative ecosystems are socially constructed, negotiated, and balanced by members through recursive and parallel processes. By adopting a relational and temporal perspective, this work contributes to an emerging body of research on collective creativity, emphasizing the dynamic interplay of power, tensions, and conflicts. While this dissertation is only a starting point, it paves the way for future research into the intricate constellations of collective creativity.