An outline of a creativity-centered theory of agency

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Published 14-03-2016
Javier Luis Cristiano

Abstract

Different theoretical traditions in sociology have readily admitted that inventiveness, imagination and creativity are distinctive features of human action. Yet these same traditions have focused in other elements of action, such as rationality, allegiance to social norms, spontaneity in everyday practices, or linguistic and communicative abilities. This article intends to offer a flexible framework for developing a creativity-centered conception of agency. From a social science perspective, this is relevant because of the intuitively obvious —yet undoubtedly complex— link between creativity and the emergence of new identities and forms of social organization. The framework builds upon a concept of agent as a stratification of self-consciousness and self-control levels: a drive level of creativity, a prereflexive-practical level, and a discursive level. Specific mechanisms of creativity are identified in each level, in order to sketch a few hypotheses on the links between all three levels, and a set of future research lines that may strengthen this proposal.
 
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Keywords

action, fantasy, practice sense, narrativity

Section
Research Articles