Locating Cultural Creativity

This book reexamines the interconnectedness of culture and creativity in an increasingly hybrid world. They argue that while many of the old certainties about high culture and artistic canons may now be disintegrating, culture and creativity themselves are still very much a reflection of social processes involving power and the control of resources. Case studies include youth subcultures in Europe; experimental theatre derived from the Brazilian candomblé dance; the role of memory in mythology among the Pukapukan of Polynesia; the evolution of football and polo in Argentina; gender relations in Algerian raï music; the notion of authenticity in artistic movements in Zanzibar; traditional and modern practices of the Lio in Indonesia; and kula exchange and social movements in the Trobriand Islands in the Pacific.

Contributors Introduction by John Liep Acknowledgments Part I: CREATIVITY IN ACTION AND ANALYSIS 1. Creative Arguments of Images in Culture, and the Charnel House of Conventionality by James Fernandez 2. Othello's Dance: Cultural Creativity and Human Agency by Kirsten Hastrup 3. The Iron Cage of Creativity. An Exploration by Jonathan Friedman 4. Wondering about Wutu by Robert Borofsky 5. Celebrating Creativity: On the Slanting of a Concept by Orvar Lofgren 6. The Construction of Authenticity: The Case of Subcultures by Rolf Lindner Part II: LOCALIZED CREATIVE PROCESSES 7. Nationalism, Football and Polo: Tradition and Creolization in the Making of Modern Argentina by Eduardo Archetti 8. The 'Playing' of Music in a State of Crisis: Gender and Rai Music in Algeria by Marc Schade-Poulsen 9. Creative Commoditization: the Social Life of Pharmaceuticals by Susan Reynolds Whyte 10. Escaping Cultures: the Paradox of Cultural Creativity by David Parkin 11. Recontextualizing Tradition: 'Religion', 'State' and 'Tradition' as Co-existing Modes of Sociality Among the Northern Lio of Indonesia by Signe Howell 12. Kula and Kabisawali: Contexts of Creativity in the Trobriand Islands by John Liep Index