Creativity And Time A Sociological Exploration

This book defends that the pursuit of originality constitutes one of the most important characteristics of creativity, but that originality refers, etymologically, to both origin and originary. Hence, the book is structured into two parts, dedicated, respectively, to the creative categories of origin and the creative categories of originary. Within the former are creation myths, games – the origin of all cultural activity, the dialectic chaos-order, axial civilizations – the germ of our time, and the struggle between generations – a factor of social transformation, and, within the second, creative capitalism, creative work in the context of the global economy of risk and uncertainty, and representative democracy. However, these two concepts are not isolated, but deeply interrelated, in a way that explains how creative originality builds a temporal narrative. It has been dislocated in late modernity and, with it, creativity has been broken.

This groundbreaking book brings creative writing to social research. Its innovative format includes creatively written contributions by researchers from a range of disciplines, modelling the techniques outlined by the authors. The book is user-friendly and shows readers: • how to write creatively as a social researcher; • how creative writing can help researchers to work with participants and generate data; • how researchers can use creative writing to analyse data and communicate findings. Inviting beginners and more experienced researchers to explore new ways of writing, this book introduces readers to creatively written research in a variety of formats including plays and poems, videos and comics. It not only gives social researchers permission to write creatively but also shows them how to do so.

This Handbook brings together an international cast of experts to explore the social nature and context of creativity studies, focusing on methodology as a key component in advancing the social study of creativity. Two decades on from the pioneering work of Alfonso Montuori and Ronald E. Purser, the authors present a timely appraisal of past and present work in social creativity studies, and look ahead to future developments within this field. The authors collectively offer a rigorous examination of the methodological and empirical issues and techniques involved in studying social creativity. They examine the phenomenon as a form of communication and interaction within collaborative relationships; contending that creativity happens not within a vacuum but instead from a nexus of personal, social and contextual influences. This comprehensive work is organized in three parts, focusing first on the various methodological approaches applicable to the social in creativity studies. It secondly turns to empirical findings and approaches relating to the social nature of creativity. In the book’s final part, the authors offer reflections on the state of social research into creativity, pinpointing areas requiring further methodological scrutiny and empirical verification, and areas that may inspire further theoretical or applied work. Combining classic ideas with cutting-edge, emerging methods, this work provides a vital methodological ‘toolbox’ for investigators within social creativity.

This edited collection examines the globally rising phenomenon of civic innovation. Combining nuanced theory with rich empirical examples, this book defines the dynamic and complex process of civic innovation as the multiple economic, political and social processes where peoples, organizations, movements and ideas are shaping struggles for global justice on the interface of capitalism. Exploring Civic Innovation for Social and Economic Transformation reflects the increasingly holistic approach to development in terms of both teaching and research, and illustrates how civic innovation happens everywhere; at the global and institutional level as well as in communities and for individuals. Through conceptual debate and narrative accounts, this book explores the new practices emerging from varying economies, transformative empowerment strategies in global value chains, local politics of social movements and the struggles for rights in regards to race, gender and sexuality. Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, this book would be of interest to post-graduate students of development studies, with an interest in social research.

In a time where governments and civil society organizations are putting ever-greater stock in social innovation as a route to transformation, understanding what characterizes social innovation with transformative potential is important. Exciting and promising ideas seem to die out as often as they take flight, and market mechanisms, which go a long way towards contributing to successful technical innovations, play an insignificant role in social innovations. The cases in this book explore the evolution of successful social innovation through time, from the ideas which catalysed social and system entrepreneurs to create new processes, platforms, projects and programs to fundamental social shifts in culture, economics, laws and policies which occurred as a result. In doing so, the authors shed light on how to recognize transformative potential in the early stage innovations we see today.

This invaluable Encyclopedia presents an interdisciplinary and comprehensive overview of the field of social innovation, providing an insightful view into potential future developments both practically and theoretically. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Creativity in organizations has become a key topic of organizational research. This work expands on existing research by exploring creativity in the dynamics of social networks. Collective creativity is introduced as a central part of organizational learning and seen as the expression of creativity on the collective level. The research is able to empirically assess creativity in the development of social structures. For the assessment of creativity this work applies a longitudinal study design by combining social network analysis with creativity studies. The approach enables to relate creativity indicators with social network measures. It is based on an empirical study of innovation projects in the automotive industry and thereby extends existing research and theories on creativity, social network dynamics and organizational learning.

'Social innovation’ can be simply defined as the new ideas and initiatives that make it possible to meet our society’s challenges in areas such as the environment, education, employment, culture, health and economic development. It is currently becoming increasingly important as a central concept for social theories and politics. This edited volume brings together interdisciplinary contributions which examine the complex interrelation between innovation and social problems, a link which has been surprisingly underexplored in academia and practice thus far. Social Innovation: New Forms of Organisation in Knowledge–Based Societies examines the mutual interdependence of innovation processes and social affairs. This interdependent relationship is characterised by a high degree of complexity which stems on the one hand from the true uncertain character of innovation and on the other hand from the different time scales in both domains. The alliance between innovation and social policy is highly relevant to the challenges which we are facing in the 21st century, such as resource scarcity, ageing societies and climate change. All of these issues demand substantial, continuous and sustainable structural change to maintain international competitiveness. Social change can only be understood by improving our knowledge about the impact of innovation processes in their co-evolutionary alliance with social evolution. The purpose of this book is to increase awareness of social participation among civil society organisations, SMEs, governments and research institutions, in order to promote economic, political and social changes that enhance collective welfare. This volume offers a key starting point for those looking to further explore this important realm of social research.