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6 Reconceptualising Creativity

What would a model of creativity that is neither completely agent centred, like the genius model, nor overly privileges the bio- psychological or socio-cultural structures that are seen to determine an individual’s action look like? Whereas social theorists of art attempt to de-emphasise the individual and emphasise societal patterns (e.g. Kavolis 1972) or valorise co-operative and collective effort in cre- ativity (e.g. Becker 1982), others with a biological, psychological or psychoanalytic base to their work have attempted to investigate creativ- ity through a focus on individuals (e.g. Galton 1892, Lombroso 1891, Freud 1959, Guildford 1950, 1970). In addition, some theorists con- cerned with looking beyond the determinisms of an either individualist or structural approach (e.g. Barthes 1977, Foucault 1977) have called for a reconceptualisation of the way the initiators of the creative process are perceived. It is argued here that the most adequate reconceptualisation of creativity may lie not in any one of these single positions but in the confluence of a number of them.

The basis for this position may be found in the fact that, despite the emphasis in psychology on studying creativity as a trait of individu- als, a dominant paradigm in Western culture, anthropological research indicates that this conception is not universal (Sawyer 2006, p. 113). Furthermore, ‘historical research has discovered that the individualist conception of creativity is relatively recent, and wasn’t common 500 years ago’ (ibid.) even in the West. In other words this way of think- ing about creativity is itself socially, culturally and historically located. In this case there must be other more reliable, and possibly more uni- versal, ways of accounting for creativity; as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests, ‘perhaps more than new research, what we need now is an effort to synthesise the various approaches of the past into an integrated theory’ (1988, p. 338).

McIntyre, P.. Creativity and Cultural Production : Issues for Media Practice, Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/michstate-ebooks/detail.action?docID=815882. Created from michstate-ebooks on 2018-08-10 05:31:23.

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Sternberg, in the introductory section to his book, Handbook to Cre- ativity (1999), suggests that confluence approaches to creativity may be a more useful and fruitful way to think about creativity. This approach hinges on the idea that ‘multiple components must converge for cre- ativity to occur’ (1999, p. 10). It has been supported more recently by a number of researchers and can be found, for example, in Teresa Amabile’s work in social psychology, Howard Gardner’s (1993) confirma- tion of the systems model and Sternberg and Lubart’s (1991) investment theory of creativity. In addition, John Dacey and Kathleen Lennon sug- gest that ‘all human capacities have biological, psychological, and social elements’ (1998, p. 8), and it is the interplay or confluence of these ‘salient factors that collectively make creativity most likely to develop’ (Dacey & Lennon 1998, p. 10).

While there are a number of these approaches being suggested, I want to argue here that the systems model of creativity proposed by psychol- ogist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1997, 1999, 2004), coupled with the recent work on cultural production by empirical sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990, 1993, 1996), could quite readily replace the older Ptolemaic, or person-centred view, with a more Copernican conception, where the individual agent is still seen to engage in creative activity but is now constituted as part of a much larger structured system in operation (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, p. 336). We used to think that the individual was the only locus of creativity. But on the evidence it has to be recognised that, while they are still involved and do what they have continually done, we need to see individuals as part of a much larger process at work. They are only one of a number of active factors that need to coalesce in order for creativity to occur.

Given this view, it now seems that we should be paying attention to the interdependent forces at work in creativity. These forces come from the social and cultural structures involved, including the ones that revolve around the production, dissemination and reception of creative products; the part played by formal and aesthetic structures (Zolberg 1990, p. 169) of the type embedded in bodies of knowledge; as well as the part individuals play when they undertake creative actions in relation to those structural elements. This includes not only produc- tion but also the creative action of interpretation that most audiences undertake. As Janet Wolff asserts, ‘all action, including creative and innovative action, arises in the complex conjunction of numerous struc- tural determinants and conditions. Any concept of “creativity” which denies this is metaphysical and cannot be sustained’ (Wolff 1981, p. 9). Both Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Pierre Bourdieu, explicitly and more

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broadly, attempted to explain creativity and cultural production in just these terms.

Concerning himself with cultural production rather than creativity per se, Bourdieu’s theory of practice was ‘a probing reflection on one of the oldest problems in the Western intellectual tradition, namely, the relationship between the individual and society’ (Swartz 1997, p. 96). Bourdieu himself stated that ‘all of my thinking started from this point: how can behaviour be regulated without being the product of obedience to rules?’ (Bourdieu quoted in Swartz 1997, p. 95). He wanted to rein- troduce the concept of agents ‘that Levi-Strauss and the structuralists, among them Althusser, tended to abolish, making them into simple epiphenomena of structure’ (Bourdieu 1990, p. 9). As Randall Johnson explains, in his writings:

Bourdieu sought to develop a concept of agent free from the volun- tarism and idealism of subjectivist accounts and a concept of social space free from the deterministic and mechanistic causality inherent in many objectivist approaches. (Johnson in Bourdieu 1993, p. 4)

Bourdieu also suggests that rather than these two forces, subjectivism (agency) and objectivism (structure), being diametrically opposed they are in fact interlinked. Bourdieu, attempting to locate agency, an indi- vidual’s ability to freely make choices, and structure, those objects that are perceived to determine behaviour, as a set of complementary pairs, argues that producing culture is always informed by an ability to under- stand and control our own actions (agency), but ‘the possibilities of agency must be understood in terms of cultural trajectories, literacies and dispositions’ (Schirato & Yell 1996, p. 148). From this perspective it is the interplay between agency and structure that actually makes practice possible. As David Swartz asserts, Bourdieu argues against:

conceptualising human action as a direct, unmediated response to external factors, whether they be identified as micro-structures of interactions or macro-level cultural, social, or economic factors. Nor does Bourdieu see action as the simple outgrowth from internal factors, such as conscious intentions and calculations, as posited by voluntarists and rational-actor models of human action. For Bourdieu, explanations that highlight either the macro or the micro dimension to the exclusion of the other simply perpetuate the clas- sic subjective/objective antimony. Bourdieu wants to transcend this dichotomy by conceptualizing action so that micro and macro,

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voluntarist and determinist dimensions of human activity are inte- grated into a single conceptual movement rather than isolated as mutually exclusive forms of explanation. He thus proposes a struc- tural theory of practice that connects action to culture, structure and power. (Swartz 1997, p. 9)

For Bourdieu what connects agency and structure is habitus, a concept which has become one of his theoretical trademarks. However, before we proceed further with this idea, it is pertinent here to give another very brief description of the activity a reflective practitioner undertakes in accumulating usable knowledge in their own production of culture. Donald Schon in his book, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (1983), suggests that ‘knowing’ for a reflective practi- tioner can have a number of properties. He suggests that in the process of learning to adjust their action, while in the process of acting, practi- tioners are absorbed into ‘a kind of reflection on their patterns of action, on the situations in which they are performing. And on the know-how implicit in their performance. They are reflecting on action and in some cases, reflecting in action’ (1983, p. 55). It is the utilization of the above processes that Schon describes as practitioners ‘finding the groove’ or having a ‘feel’ for their material (ibid.). These ideas correspond quite well to Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus which, using similar terminology, has been described as:

a ‘feel for the game’, a ‘practical sense’ (sens practique) that inclines agents to act and react in specific situations in a manner that is not always calculated and that is not simply a question of conscious obedience to rules. Rather it is a set of dispositions which generates practices and perceptions. The habitus is the result of a long pro- cess of inculcation, beginning in early childhood, which becomes a ‘second sense’ or a second nature. (Johnson in Bourdieu 1993, p. 5)

Habitus has also been described as an ‘acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constituted’ (Grenfell & James 1998, p. 14). Bourdieu himself described it as a set of ‘generative principles of distinct and distinctive practices’ (1998, p. 8). As a term it accounts for the way people like to be, their preferences and taste, values, desires, ideas and narratives that have been produced by the social institutions, such as family or religion, they engage with. It is revealed in the cultural preferences a person pos- sesses. According to this theory, people have long-term ways of seeing

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the world that are peculiar to them but also shared by many others. Bourdieu argued that these components of habitus are not produced idiosyncratically but are actually produced in the wider society, and the agents within that society choose from within these sociocultural limits:

The habitus is the product of the work of inculcation and appropri- ation necessary in order for those products of collective history, the objective structures (e.g. language, economy, etc.) to succeed in repro- ducing themselves more or less completely, in the form of durable dispositions. (Bourdieu 1977, p. 85)

In essence, agents make choices out of the available conditions on offer to them, but these conditions, echoing Marx, are made for them. That is, the social and structural conditions both delimit and provide the possi- ble choices seen in action and, as far as we are concerned, this is certainly the case for creative action. Furthermore, agents, while capable of free choice within the realms of what is possible, ‘do not act in a vacuum, but rather in concrete social situations governed by a set of objective social relations’ (Johnson in Bourdieu 1993, p. 6). These concrete social situations have been labelled ‘fields’ by Bourdieu.

Fields are characterised by relations between agents, and since these relations are dynamic, a field, according to Randall Johnson, is ‘a dynamic concept in that a change in agent’s positions necessarily entails a change in the field’s structure’ (Bourdieu 1993, p. 6). They are thus spaces where struggles for dominance take place. For example, Bourdieu argues in relation to the field of literature or art that this field:

is at all times the site of a struggle between the two principles of hier- archization: the heteronomous principle, favourable to those who dominate the field economically and politically (e.g. ‘bourgeois art’), and the autonomous principle (e.g. ‘art for art’s sake’), which those of its advocates who are least endowed with specific capital tend to identify with a degree of independence from the economy, seeing temporal failure as a sign of election and success as a sign of compro- mise. The state of the power relations in this struggle depends on the overall degree of autonomy possessed by the field, that is, the extent to which it manages to impose its own norms and sanctions on the whole set of producers. (Bourdieu 1996, p. 60)

Fields, however, can’t also be simply equated to institutions as the boundaries between them can’t be sharply drawn. While there has been

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some comparison of Becker’s notion of ‘art worlds’ and Bourdieu’s con- cept of ‘field’, it should be noted that Bourdieu has written elsewhere that:

without entering into a methodological expose of everything that separates this vision of the ‘world of art’ from the theory of the literary or artistic field, I will merely remark that the latter is not reducible to a population [italics in original], that is to say, to the sum of individual agents linked by simple relations of interaction, or more precisely, of cooperation: what is lacking, among other things, from this purely descriptive and enumerative evocation are the objective relations which are constitutive of the structure of the field and which orient the struggles aiming to conserve or transform it. (Bourdieu 1996, p. 205)

Fields are thus structured arenas and they are built around particular types of capital. Bourdieu makes a crucial set of distinctions between the types of capital he recognises. These include:

Economic capital, which is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalised in the form of property rights; . . . cultural capital, which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalised in the form of educational qualifications; and . . . social capital, made up of social obligations (connections), which is convertible, in certain condi- tions, into economic capital and may be institutionalised in the form of title nobility. (Bourdieu 1986, p. 243)

Social capital is important as the ability to maintain social relations within the field is critical for success in that field. Symbolic capital, seen in awards and so on, also contributes to the maintenance of reputations and provides a way of making distinctions between players within the field. Bourdieu suggests that ‘a work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded’ (Johnson in Bourdieu 1993, p. 7). Possession of these various codes results from a long process of immersion where they are acquired or inculcated through ‘the pedagogical action of the family or group members (family education), educated members of the social formation (diffuse education) and social institutions (institutionalised education)’ (ibid.).

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Capital, as used by Bourdieu and like its economic counterpart, has value but only within the context that particular knowledge can be used in, that is, the field appropriate to the knowledge. Within the field of film, for example, cultural capital could be the acquisition of the abil- ity to engage with the audio and visual language of cinema and the knowledge necessary to reproduce this for the screen. Differing fields are, therefore, differentiated by the modes of production and use that they are put to. As Johnson suggests:

To enter a field (the philosophical field, the scientific field, etc.), to play the game, one must possess the habitus which predisposes one to enter that field, that game, and not another. One must also possess at least the minimum amount of knowledge, or skill, or ‘talent’ to be accepted as a legitimate player. Entering the game, furthermore, means attempting to use that knowledge, or skill, or ‘talent’ in the most advantageous way possible. (Bourdieu 1993, p. 8)

Bourdieu adds another component to his view of cultural production by asserting that the possibilities of action are produced in a field of works. The field of works, as distinct from fields themselves, can be conceived of as the accumulated cultural work completed up to this time in a par- ticular field. According to Jason Toynbee (2000) it includes techniques and codes of production. For Bourdieu it is a ‘system or schemata of thought’ (1996, p. 236). As such, the heritage of collective works built up over time is accessible to each creative agent as ‘a space of possibles, that is, as an ensemble of probable constraints which are the condition and the counterpart of a set of possible uses’ [italicised in original] (Bourdieu 1996, p. 235). From this perspective, it is the choice made from what is possible that accounts for action in the creative process.

We can therefore claim that Bourdieu’s concern with cultural pro- duction, coming about through practice that is both enabled and constrained by the structures that are interacted with, and is manifest in a person’s habitus, allows for the conception that creativity can be con- ceived as an interaction between agents and the structures they engage with. It is this interaction that produces novel products, original ideas and unique processes.

Following Bourdieu, it can also be argued that producers of media content, while having the ability to make creative choices, are not free in the absolute sense in making those creative choices (1996, p. 235) as they do so utilising aspects of the field of works and within particular

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fields. The field of contemporary Western television production, for example, is occupied by other agents who also have access to the cul- tural, symbolic, social and economic capital pertinent to this field of cultural production. It is to the field that a producer must take a tele- vision series idea in order to have its merits judged as a worthwhile possible series. In this scenario the television producer draws on, via their own habitus and accumulated cultural, social and symbolic capi- tal, the specific sets of knowledges pertinent to the cultural practices of a television producer. These knowledges, conventions and techniques reside within the accumulated works that exist within the traditions of the field of contemporary Western television production, that is, its accumulated field of works. In undertaking this cultural production the television producer and their crew, as agents working within the struc- tures of the television industry, exemplify the notion that practice is always informed by a sense of agency and that the possibilities of agency must always be grounded in ‘cultural trajectories, literacies and disposi- tions’ (Schirato & Yell 1996, p. 148). It can therefore be suggested that it is the interplay between the spheres of an individual’s habitus, the field they operate in and the accumulated knowledge that exists in the field of works that makes practice possible. This conclusion seems to me to be remarkably similar to the ideas proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his elucidation of the systems model of creativity which, as will be explored more fully immediately below, accepts that, in this example, television producers work within a system that shapes and governs the creativity they engage with while these creative agents contribute to and alter that system.

Although these two authors are dealing in similar territory and may be describing essentially the same phenomenon, Csikszentmihalyi’s prime concern is to pinpoint the phenomenon of creativity itself and explain the mechanisms which surround it. Unlike Bourdieu, his concerns are primarily rooted in Darwin rather than Marx. However, the similar- ities between them occur in the idea that Bourdieu’s elucidation of cultural practice, one that attempts to coalesce agency and structure, appears to complement that of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose con- ception of creativity also locates a creative agent within a structured system, although it isn’t described in these precise terms. Nonetheless, both authors emphasise the location of the agent in a sociocultural con- text. There are also similarities to be observed in regard to Bourdieu’s conception of field and Csikszentmihalyi’s use of the same term. The concepts of field of works, set out by Bourdieu in his book Rules of Art (1996), seem remarkably similar to that of the domain, explained more

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fully in a moment. In addition, the concept of habitus could prove useful in attempting to provide a mechanism for including an indi- vidual’s personal yet shared background as a factor in the process of creativity. However, before we pursue these comparisons too much fur- ther, an elucidation of the systems model is of most immediate concern as it is Csikszentmihalyi who works more directly with the notion of creativity.

Csikszentmihalyi sees creativity resulting from a complex sys- tem that is, for him, less Ptolemaic than Copernican in operation (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, p. 336). He doesn’t ascribe sole responsibility for creativity to the productive individual but neither does he assert that creativity is beyond the locus of individual producers and located solely within the societies and cultures they inhabit. From this perspective cre- ativity is the result of an interactive process that incorporates a person, a field and a domain in a non-linear system. Csikszentmihalyi asserts that:

What we call creative is never the result of individual action alone; it is the product of three main shaping forces: a set of social institutions, or field, that selects from the variations produced by the individual those that are worth preserving; a stable cultural domain that will preserve and transmit the selected new ideas or forms to the follow- ing generations; and finally the individual, who brings about some change in the domain, a change that the field will consider to be creative. (ibid., p. 325)

Instead of looking at the separate elements in the creative process these are incorporated within an interactive and non-linear system which can be studied by investigating moments within it. Csikszentmihalyi argues that our customary view is that creation takes place firstly with an idea manifesting itself from within the creative person’s head as it were – the flash of lightning, the light bulb turning on or the stroke of creative genius within, as Freud characterised it, a quasi-neurotic individual. Csikszentmihalyi then goes to great lengths to state his view that the information that goes ‘into the idea existed long before the creative per- son arrived on the scene. It had been stored in the symbol system of the culture, in the customary practices, the languages the specific notation of the “domain”’ (1988, pp. 325–39), in other words the conventions, rules and ideas the person has access to. It is the task of the person working within the creative process to produce some variation in this inherited information or domain.

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The person may be an unusual individual in one of many ways pre- disposed to make those variations. For instance, they may be born with sensitivities to light or sound not possessed by others or have a set of environmental factors operate on them such as sibling position, social class or educational opportunities which incline them to use, for exam- ple, information processing strategies in an unusual way. In other words they contribute an idiosyncratic set of skills and predispositions that are peculiar to them but also shared amongst many others. Howard Gardner, who was one of the prime movers, in collaboration with David Feldman and Csikszentmihalyi, in the systems model’s inception, states that ‘a creative individual is one who regularly solves problems, fash- ions products, and/or poses new questions in a domain in a way which is initially considered novel but which is ultimately accepted in at least one cultural setting’ (Brockman 1993, p. 32). If what this person pro- duces is seen to be creative by the people working within this area, then creativity is said to have taken place. ‘It is the task of the “field” to then select promising variations and to incorporate them into the domain’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, p. 330).

Pursuing these ideas a little further, it can be seen that the domain is the symbol system that the person and others working in the area utilise. It is the culture and conventions the person becomes immersed in. It includes all the work done to this point within that particular field and may be held within a person’s idiosyncratic knowledge base or accessible from other sources within the field. There are three main ways the domain can contribute to the creative system. These include the clarity of structure of the domain, its centrality within the culture and its accessibility (Csikszentmihalyi 1997, p. 38). The clarity of structure within the domain works to hinder or help creativity, by providing a basis for assessment. The more consistent the internal logic of a domain, that is, the more there is no doubt about what constitutes novelty, the easier it then is to make decisions about creativity within the domain. For example, it is faster to resolve problems of creativity within the domain of maths, a clearly structured domain, than it is to perceive what is a creative contribution within, as a contrast, cultural studies. In terms of the centrality within a culture of particular domains it can be argued that medicine is a central discipline within this society. Therefore, it is easier for those concerned with this domain to access resources to contribute to creative endeavours within it. The third dimension, acces- sibility, is important for creativity as the speed with which information is processed within the domain correlates directly to the amount of nov- elty the field is capable of generating since ‘no person or work or process

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can be considered creative unless it is so deemed by relevant social insti- tutions’ (Gardner in Brockman 1993, p. 33). This, of course, is where the domain intersects with the field.

For Csikszentmihalyi, ‘the easiest way to define a field is to say that it includes all those who can affect the structure of a domain’ (Sternberg 1988, p. 330). ‘Field’ used in this sense not only correlates well with Bourdieu’s use of the same term but it also, despite the very strong caveats Bourdieu placed alongside it, has some correspondence with Becker’s use of the term ‘art world’, in that it is related to the social organisation of the world the person operates in. Just as Peterson (1982, 1985) argues that there are societal structures that affect creative output, Csikszentmihalyi asserts that fields can affect creativity in one of three different ways; firstly, by being reactive or proactive. A reactive field, according to this thesis, does not solicit novelty whereas a proactive one does by actively demanding novelty from the creative individuals concerned. As an example, the social organisation that constitutes the field of popular music requires constant novelty in order to maintain its commercial base. Secondly, the field can affect creativity by choosing a broad or narrow filter in the selection of novelty:

Some fields are conservative and allow only a few new items to enter the domain at any given time. They reject most novelty and select only what they consider best. Others are more liberal in allowing new ideas into their domains, and as a result these change more rapidly. At the extremes, both strategies can be dangerous: It is possible to wreck a domain either by starving it of novelty or by admitting too much unassimilated novelty. (Csikszentmihalyi 1997, p. 44)

Thirdly, the field affects creativity by being ‘well connected to the rest of the social system and thus able to channel support’ into that particular domain (ibid.). In line with the idea that there are limited resources available in any economy and a set of unlimited wants, each field must engage in negotiations for access to those limited resources. Those fields that are at the centre of, and well regarded within, the political economy they exist in are more likely to channel resources to the activities that the particular field favours.

Csikszentmihalyi gives a compact analogy that explains the interde- pendence of the three components in this system. He uses the idea that a fire cannot exist without tinder, air or a spark. However it is the spark, or in this analogy the person, that appears to be active in the pro- cess and thus is seen as having chief responsibility. Not so according

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to Csikszentmihalyi; ‘the spark is necessary but without air and tinder there would be no flame’ (1997, p. 7). Each element is necessary but not sufficient, in and of itself, in the production of the flame. A fur- ther analogy also highlights the interdependence of the system at work. Csikszentmihaly argues that:

to study creativity by focusing on the individual alone is like try- ing to understand how an apple tree produces fruit by looking only at the tree and ignoring the sun and the soil that support its life . . . . In other words, if one wants to understand creativity, it does not make any more sense to turn to a study of the individual than it would to a study of the field or of the domain. Real understand- ing may, however, come from investigating the interaction among all three. (Quoted in McIntyre 2004, p. 6)

This interactive system can therefore provide a holistic view of the way media practitioners bring cultural artefacts into play as it goes beyond thinking of cultural producers as supra-human specially gifted individ- uals and allows for the recognition of multiple factors that contribute to, influence and shape creativity. It also doesn’t deny, importantly, that individuals have a significant role in the creation of any cultural arte- fact. Instead, it brings them into a systemic relationship that provides a cohesive explanation of creativity which sees each factor in the system as necessary but not sufficient.

While Runco has argued that the systems view is largely process ori- ented (Runco 2004, p. 661), he also tends to misrepresent the holistic and integrated aspects of the model by laying it out in a strictly linear fashion, echoing the Hegelian dialectic in its action. This may be the result of Csikszentmihalyi using the term ‘circular causality’ to indicate that the system may start at any point, but the use of this somewhat misleading term misses the essential non-linearity of the model. Runco, seeing the model as a linear one, suggests it is a theory ‘in which creative ideas originate with an individual, may then influence a particular field (e.g., experts and curators and others devoted to one interest or area), and may eventually even have an impact on the more general domain’ (Runco 2004, p. 661). While this précis provides a convenient and famil- iar description that falls back into a linear cause-and-effect process, this representation misconstrues how the system actually works, that is, in a non-linear way. As explained above, the process doesn’t necessarily start with a person. The evidence for this can be seen, for example, in the idea of a field as a generative force (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, p. 333).

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There have been other critiques of the model where some have used a rejection of its basic assumptions, such as value distinction, as a way to defend disciplinary territory. For example, Robert Weisberg, performing an about face from his earlier stance (2006, p. 68), argues that the rela- tivist nature of creative attribution makes it difficult to be absolute and precise in an objectivist and positivist sense when examining creative people. He states:

Let us say that we want to study the thought processes or personality factors involved in creativity in painting. Whom are we to study? As a start, we could study living painters whose work has been deemed important by the field. Let us say we do that, and we draw some conclusions as to what factors are important in making someone a creative painter. However, let us assume that in 10 years those painters are no longer in favor; that is, their work is no longer val- ued, which means that, if we use value in our definition, they are no longer creative. Therefore, our conclusions from 10 years ago are no longer relevant to creativity. (2006, p. 66)

Apart from this objection, which itself neatly illustrates the positivist’s dilemma when confronted with a relativist argument, one that has occurred a number of times in the history of science, it is not really a sufficient reason for rejecting these ideas. As an example, Weisberg later argues that:

creative thinking occurs when a person intentionally produces a novel product while working on some task. Sometimes those intentional novel products are valued highly by society, and sometimes they are not, but all of them are creative products. A novel product inten- tionally produced by a person is a creative product, and the person who produces such a product is a creative person [italics in original]. (2006, p. 70)

In his efforts to concentrate solely on a psychologically reductionist approach, in ascribing novelty to a work, Weisberg overlooks the idea that the basis for ascribing that novelty will always be relative to the position of judgement being used. That is, in order for a judgement to be made as to whether a work is novel or not, even if it is the person themselves deciding this prior to literally taking the work to the field, this person must have initially had access to the criteria of judgement well before ascribing novelty. This criteria has most often become so

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82 Theories about Creativity and Cultural Production

naturalised for them, a form of habitus, that they forget that it had been originally sourced from the field and domain when they learnt how to manipulate aspects of it themselves. As Csikszentmihalyi argues:

In order to function well within the creative system, one must inter- nalise the rules of the domain and the opinions of the field, so that one can choose the most promising idea to work on, and do so in a way that will be acceptable to one’s peers. (1999, p. 332)

As Foucault and others have demonstrated, there are very few persons working within cultural domains who can escape the conditioned dis- courses they operate within. It is therefore inescapable that judgements, of the type used to decide whether something is novel or not, are, in fact, relative to the knowledge one has about what is being judged. As Janet Fulton (2010) asserts, one then needs to consider the connec- tion Boden had made between P- and H-creativity in order to provide a way out of what is essentially a constricting ontological debate. Boden argues that ‘there can be no psychological [P] explanation of this histori- cal [H] category. But all H-creative ideas, by definition, are P-creative too’ (1994, p. 77).

Rob Pope (2005, pp. 67–70) does argue more directly that the sys- tems model, or more correctly Csikszentmihalyi himself, who despite his sensitivities to social networks and contexts, ‘still privileges the notion of creator as a “person” singular [thus] playing down creativ- ity as an overtly collective or collaborative activity’ (Pope 2005, p. 68). However, despite this being the obverse reaction to that of Weisberg above, this criticism downplays the arguments presented in the papers Csikszentmihalyi produced in 1988 and 1999. In his 1988 paper he suggests that:

In his 1999 paper, ‘Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity’, Csikszentmihalyi argues that:

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The occurrence of creativity is not simply a function of how many gifted individuals there are, but also of how accessible the various symbolic systems are and how responsive the social system is to novel ideas. Instead of focusing exclusively on individuals it will make more sense to focus on communities that may or may not nurture creativ- ity. In the last analysis it is the community and not the individual who makes creativity manifest. (1999, p. 333)

Despite this, as Pope suggests, ‘the systems approach as practiced by Csikszentmihalyi’ (2005, p. 68), fails to fully explore the nature of collective enterprises. While this criticism may have some validity in terms of Csikszentmihalyi’s concentration on ‘the person’ and his lack of an explanation of multiple and temporally contiguous points of decision making, it does not entirely negate the applicability of the model itself to collective activity. This application can be illustrated by Csikszentmihalyi himself when he uses it to explain the collabora- tive production of films (2004). Furthermore, Keith Sawyer, who adapts the model for his own research work, has little difficulty in using it to explain the collective activity of, for example, an improvisatory drama group in Chicago or a jazz ensemble in New York. He also has no hesitation in using it in his book Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (2007) as the basis to explore creativity as it occurs within a corporate setting. As a further indicator of the model’s applicability to group creativity, the notion of an agent encompasses collective enter- prises, for example in the way this term is used in actor network theory (Callon 1987, Latour 2005). By assuming that a creative agent can be either individual or collective, the model’s relevance to collaborative activity becomes clearer.

Pope also challenges the model by asserting that it doesn’t explain the interaction between domains that leads to what he labels ‘hybrid forms’ (Pope 2005, p. 68). Noting that there is opportunity for indi- viduals, who have a personal background partially routed in their idiosyncratic experiences, to bring information from other domains they may be familiar with into the one they are currently working in, it could be said that this criticism seems a little disingenuous. In order to be valid this criticism would require a field that was hermetically sealed from the rest of society. However, as the model indicates, all fields are in fact subcategories of the societies they exist in. Just like indi- viduals, fields do not act in a vacuum. Through this process the cross- fertilisation Pope sees as necessary appears to be built into this dynamic model.

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The third criticism Pope suggests is problematic for the systems model is that he claims there is insufficient discussion on Csikszentmihalyi’s part of the field not recognising creative acts that are outside its experi- ence (ibid.). In contrast to this proposition Sharon Bailin argues (1988, pp. 96–7) one can never have a case where the symbol system is so radically altered that it is no longer at least partially recognisable to a field of experts. Even if they reject the work because they can’t under- stand it or they feel threatened by the new ideas and a new domain mutates out of the old, as happens periodically, that new domain will still owe some of its characteristics to the old domain. There will be familiarities to deal with in new domains just as much as there will be dissimilarities.

Finally, Pope also suggests that Csikszentmihalyi didn’t recognise the poststructuralist implications of the model (2005, p. 69). This is not sur- prising given the discipline Csikszentmihalyi works in, but this situation doesn’t mean, however, that those implications are not there. In many ways the model supports the dissolution of the author-genius model which both Barthes and Foucault had advocated. However, rather than just stopping at the point of deconstruction, what the model does differ- ently is put in place a new and reconceptualised way of seeing creativity. In essence if the model holds true, it will do so regardless of the views the person who developed it has. Without drawing too many parallels this same process can be seen, for example, in Charles Darwin’s initial development of the theory of evolution, which then proceeded to have a life of its own well past its developer’s initial formulations (Watson 2001).

Despite these caveats Pope still believes that this ‘systems based approach offers a powerful corrective to notions of creativity focused exclusively on creators or on creative products’ (2005, p. 69). Placed alongside this point of view is the appeal made by Beth Hennessey and Teresa Amabile in their most recent review of the psychological research into creativity (2010). In this review they suggest that:

The staggering array of disciplinary approaches to understanding cre- ativity can prove to be an advantage, but only if researchers and theorists work together and understand the discoveries that are being made across creative domains and analytical levels. Otherwise, the mysteries may deepen. Only by using multiple lenses simultaneously, looking across levels, and thinking about creativity systematically, will we be able to unlock and use its secrets. What we need now are all encompassing systems theories of creativity designed to tie

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Reconceptualising Creativity 85

together and make sense of the diversity of perspectives found in the literature – from the innermost neurological level to the outermost cultural level. (2010, p. 590)

Working from the point of view of sociology, Bourdieu suggests some- thing similar. In order to understand cultural production we need to reject the direct relation of individual biography to the work of art as well as reject internal analyses of the individual work and even that of intertextual analysis. ‘This is because what we have to do is all these things at the same time’ (Bourdieu 1990, p. 147).

Finally, drawing all of this together, it can be argued that the systems conception of creativity appears close to what Bourdieu was attempting to do with the concepts of habitus, field, various forms of capital and field of works, that is, provide a way of seeing that recognises the degree of freedom an individual possesses within the constraints and enabling factors of the sociocultural sphere they exist in. As such the systems view of creativity points to the tension that exists between the agency of the individual and both the possible strictures placed upon them by the institutions or structures that govern society and culture and the ground for action afforded by them. It also provides a model that illustrates in many ways Anthony Gidden’s concept of structuration (which we will be examining more fully shortly). As a result, it goes a considerable distance in attempting to resolve the tensions that exist between the agency of the individual and the power of the structures they operate within, in as much as both Bourdieu’s ideas and the system model are ways of resisting the polarising dichotomies that are thought to exist between the agency of the individual and the determinist positions of structuralist approaches. It is to an exploration of the question of agency and structure and in particular its relationship to free will in creativity that I wish to turn to now examining this question through the lens of radio production.

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