Suchergebnisse

Common understandings of creativity reduce it to a flash of insight or to a personal characteristic of a highly-gifted person. This paper develops an alternative way of understanding creativity departing from a series of interviews with local painters by conceptualizing creativity as a process of articulating and getting caught up in a "meshwork" of materials, places, spaces and social encounters. Using assemblage theoretical framework, my perspective examines how different elements (both human and non-human) are brought together in flows of connections. Looking at the art world this paper takes into account also the materiality of the creative process and inquiry into how the materiality of working materials (paint, coal, brushes etc.) and the materiality of the space affect and are affected in the creativity assemblage. As such, departing from an anthropocentric perspective on artistic creativity, that takes only in consideration the meanings attributed by people (especially the artist) to forms, social uses and trajectories of artistic objects.

Refugees are possibly the most creative people. Forced to move by any number of pressures — military, social, political, economic — they make perilous journeys to places safer than those of their origin, which may nevertheless be fraught with danger. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai states that as refugees move through shifting contexts and "can never afford to let their imaginations rest too long, even if they wished to." The requirement for refugees to "build worlds" in response to the destruction of their homes — places that have constituted their worlds for years — highlights both their closeness to, and their distance from, those into whose worlds refugees now impact. We all need to build worlds, but for some this imaginative requirement is more pressing. This is a moment of heightened importance for the many senses of dignity, subjectification and anticipation that Hannah Arendt had already noted.

A review of available literature on creativity was undertaken to determine the definition of creativity, the common traits displayed by those perceived as being creative and how those traits may possibly be nurtured. The word 'creativity' has been used by politicians as if it is tangible commodity that must be developed in time of economic recession. Indeed, Dublin City Enterprise Board, a local government authority are in the process of staging 'Idea Generation' workshops, "this workshop not only shows you what ideas are good ideas but also introduces you to the concepts of thinking laterally" (Dublin Regional Authority, 2011). The Science Gallery in Trinity College, Dublin has held a series of events called Connector Brainstorm. "Einstein once said 'We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.' Age old policies need new age thinking and with this in mind our team of experts came up with some radical suggestions on how the future of Irish politics and economy should be ran." (Lynch, 2010). The elusive commodity of creativity and creative thinking has been heralded as the panacea to rescue us from the grip of the recession. But what defines creativity? What are common traits? And can we nurture them?

Jan Łukasiewicz's article "Creativity in Science" is translated into Ukrainian for the first time.

Creativity and play erupt in the most solemn of everyday worlds as individuals reshape traditional forms in the light of changing historical circumstances. In this lively volume, fourteen distinguished anthropologists explore the life of creativity in social life across the globe and within the study of ethnography itself. Contributors include Barbara A. Babcock, Edward M. Bruner, James W. Fernandez, Don Handelman, Smadar Lavie, José E. Limon, Barbara Myerhoff, Kirin Narayan, Renato Rosaldo, Richard Schechner, Edward L. Schieffelin, Marjorie Shostak, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Edith Turner.