Subjectivity, Creativity, and the Institution

Abstract

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that examine the subjective experiences of the moulding of creativity, for good or bad, by institutional values. It is essential reading for anyone who wishes to gain a glimpse into the circumstances that surround the creative individual in our current globalising world. In chapters ranging from the function of the internet in building creative social spaces to an examination of the dreaming of their history by the Zapara Amazonian people, this book will introduce the reader to critical analyses of the many differing creative spaces we have made for ourselves across the world. In a radical break from the traditional academic practice of keeping specialists and disciplines separate, this collection brings international scholars and practitioners together from many disciplines all of whom have the shared intention of understanding creative self empowerment in the new conditions of what the sociologist Ulrich Beck calls Second Modernity.

An innovative text that illuminates the contemporary global cultural space in which multiple histories and traditions are intersecting and slowly rupturing the certainties of the first modernity of colonialism, nationalism and industrialisation, this collection presents essays that had their origins as papers in the Subjectivity, Creativity, and the Institution Conference that was convened by the Chinese Australian Studies Research Centre at Sun Yat Sen University, Guangzhou, China and held at the John Curtin Gallery, in Perth, Australia. It includes the keynote presentation by the distinguished Australian sociologist Professor Raewyn Connell.

About the Author

Dr. Christopher Crouch is Director of the Chinese Australian Studies Research Centre at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou and Professor of Visual Arts at Southwest University, Chongqing, China. He has written widely on art and design and is the author of the standard text 'Modernism in art design and architecture' that has recently been translated into Chinese.