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Creativity and cultural improvisation

Book: English. Library collection
Author(s)
Hallam, Elizabeth ; Ingold, Tim
Title
Creativity and cultural improvisation / edited by Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold
Publication
Oxford ; New York: Berg, 2007
Collection
Association of Social Anthropologists Monographs ; 44
Subjects
Kolagni
Physical description
XX, 327 or. : ir.
Type of material
Book
Localization
XDZ - Xenpelar Dokumentazio Zentroa
ISBN / ISSN
978-1-84520-527-0
There is no prepared script for social and cultural life. People work it out as they go along. Creativity and Cultural Improvisation casts fresh, anthropological eyes on the cultural sites of creativity that form part of our social matrix. The book explores the ways creative agency is attributed in the graphic and performing arts and in intellectual property law. It shows how the sources of creativity are embedded in social, political and religious institutions, examines the relation between creativity and the perception and passage of time, and reviews the creativity and improvisational quality of anthropological scholarship itself. Individual essays examine how the concept of creativity has changed in the history of modern social theory, and question its applicability as a term of cross-cultural analysis. The contributors highlight the collaborative and political dimensions of creativity and thus challenge the idea that creativity arises only from individual talent and expression.
List of Illustrations ...IX
List of Contributors ...XIII
Preface ...XIX
1 Creativity and cultural improvisation : an introduction
Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam ...1
2 Improvisation and the art of making things stick
Karin Barber ...25

Part I Modes of creativity in life and art
Introduction
Tim Ingold ...45
3 Structure, innovation and agency in pattern construction : the Kōlam of southern India
Amar S. Mall ...55
4 Creating or performing words? observations on contemporary Japanese calligraphy
Fuyubi Nakamura ...79
5 Creativity, subjectivity and the dynamic of possessive individualism
James Leach ...99

Part II Creative appropriations and institutional contexts
Introduction
Melissa Demian and sari Wastell ...119
6 Locating authorship : creativity and borrowing on the writing of ethnography and the production of anthropological knowledge
Elizabeth Cory-Pearce ...119
7 Revolution as a convention : rebellion and political change in Kabylia
Judith Scheele ...151
8 "You knit me together in my mother's womb" : English Baptists and assisted procreation
Jeanette Edwards ...167

Part III Creativity and the passage of time: history, tradition and the life-course
Introduction
Eric Hirsch and Sharon Macdonald ...185
9 Performing the world : agency, anticipation and creativity
Kirsten Hastrup ..193
10 "Tradition and the individual talent" : T.S. Eliot for anthropologists
Felicia Hughes-Freeland ...207
11 Back to the future : temporality, narrative and the ageing self
Catherine Degnen

Part IV The creativity of anthropological scholarship
Introduction
Mark Harris ...239
12 From documenting culture to experimenting with cultural phenomena : using fine art pedagogies with visual anthropology students
Amanda Ravetz ...247
13 Creativity in advertising, fiction and ethnography
Robey Callahan and Trevor Stack ...267
14 (Re)constructing the field through sound : actor-networks, ethnographic representation and "radio elicitation" in south-western Uganda
Richard Vokes ...285

Epilogue
15 A world without anthropology
Clara Mafra ...307

Index ...321