The Ideology of Creativity and Challenges of Participation

which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Anna Craft, a leading researcher on creativity and education, described a condition that many of us have watched accelerate: " Creativity is an important element of the zeitgeist in the early twenty-first century, worldwide " (2005, p. ix), encompassing discourses on genius and individualism, democracy and politics, the social good, technological advances and educational practice, among others (Banaji, Burn, & Buckingham, 2006 as cited in Craft, 2010). It is important to note just how distinctive our times are in this regard. The ancient world did not subscribe to a psychological view of creativity, and during the Middle Ages in Europe in most places to assert that someone was creative would have been blasphemous (Weiner, 2000). God created. People only made things. In other words, we do not need a psychological concept of creativity to write great literature, develop philosophies, lay the foundations of democracy or build beautiful temples and cathedrals. In addition, the idea of " creating " or being " creative " retained implications of the dangers as well as the promises that come with change until the late nineteenth century. Then a wholly positive view of creativity largely eclipsed its negative connotations as dangerous, hubristic and potentially destructive (Mason, 2003). Since creativity came to be viewed as almost wholly positive, its importance has steadily grown. In particular, an ever-broader range of creativity theories in psychology and sociology have contributed to the creativity zeitgeist. There is a consensus definition of creativity in social science: producing something novel and of value in a context. As it turns out, though, that definition is just a starting point for a wide range of controversies. Early psychological views of creativity included sublimated infantile desires (Freud's views of the sources of creative ideas and motivations), sudden restructuring of perception (Gestalt views of insight) and the traits of divergent thinking (ideational flexibility, fluency and originality). Then the humanistic psychologists argued that creativity was the expression of a universal self-actualizing drive and its development was necessary to be a " fully functioning person " (Rogers, 1969, p. 278). Since the cognitive revolution in the mid-twentieth century, psychologists have developed a range of cognitive views from creativity as systemic evolution of thought


The Challenges of Participation
My view of creativity as ideology is not original. Robert Paul Weiner (2000) wrote about it 15 years ago. Other social and critical theorists have written about creativity as ideology (for example, Raunig, Ray, & Wuggenig, 2011;Rehn & De Cock, 2009). Even one of the most authoritative voices in creativity research, Mark Runco, longtime editor of Creativity Research Journal, and Robert Albert, another well-established researcher on the topic, have included ideology as one way to think about creativity (Runco & Albert, 2010).

Claiming and Taking Responsibility for the Ideology
My own intention in viewing creativity as ideology is not to discredit the concept but to claim it more fully. The challenge is to participate in defining the core concept of this powerful ideology. Every time educators, politicians, businesspeople, philanthropists or social scientists invoke the concept of creativity for their purposes, they participate in the ongoing evolution of the concept. The challenge is to do so knowledgably, intentionally and responsibly.
Even if -no, especially if -your participation imposes constraints on change, resisting the neophilic, westerncentric, market-driven exuberance of much of the rhetoric of the ideology of creativity, participate! Creativity without limits, conceived as the ability to do or be anything, as meaning outside of contexts ("outside the box"), is ideology run amuck. Saying "recreate yourself!" to someone whose life has fallen into chaos after years of work because of economic or technological shifts is insensitive and insulting. The practical necessity may be real and the sense of hope useful. At the same time, the enthusiastic rhetoric celebrates an oppressive slight of hand, individualizing responsibility for systemic problems. Treating traditions that give people's lives meaning as devalued in the face of "creative" (neophilic) market dynamics can amount to a smokescreen for oppression. And discounting the value of those who devote their lives to maintaining culture -average people as well as scholars and virtuosos -compared to those who change culture is laughable. Without legions of the former the few who get credit for being creative geniuses would have nothing to change. (For different articulations of similar critiques of the ideology of creativity, see Weiner, 2000.) To be clear, even the most optimistic theories of self-actualization of the humanistic psychologists (for example, Maslow, 1954Maslow, /1970Rogers, 1961Rogers, /1989 did not contend that people could recreate themselves at will -"be anything you want to be." They all recognized constraints of individual development, and largely aimed at Nietzsche's imperative: "become what thou art" (1882/1910, p. 209). Yet the rhetorical flourishes that introduce and justify much creativity research imply a panacea for personal, economic and cultural problems.
An alternative to the exaggerated rhetoric of creativity is acceptance of the underlying assumption that change is constant, real and uncertain but necessarily and fortunately occurs within many constraints and social dynamics.

Extending the Ideology to Participation
As noted earlier, I have taught creativity theories for many years, but only recently finished a book putting the views outlined above in the context of the history of psychology. One of the striking themes that I found in writing that book was how consistently creativity theories and research have been used to try to extend the social franchise.
From the mid-twentieth century on, the concept of creativity was defined as an alternative to exclusive focus on traditional views of intelligence. Theories of intelligence and intelligence testing have a long history in discourses of racial and cultural dominance (Jensen, 1998;Simonton, 2003). Creativity has been presented as different but equally valuable. J. P. Guilford was already a famous psychometrician when he made his famous 1950 presidential address to the American Psychological Association. Addressing a room dominated by behaviorists and psychometricians, he called for the study of creativity. That speech was just part of a much larger, lifelong goal of disproving the concept of a general intelligence factor (g-factor) and replacing it with a wider, more nuanced view of intelligence.
from the group along with the idea.) For me, thinking of Freud as a determined and temperamental producer or as a curator trying to find the right, provocative and generative combination of ideas is more helpful than simply thinking of him as a "creator." The latter term comes with too many magical implications of decontextualized ("outside-the-box") ideation and god-like ex-nihilo conjuring and too few cues of where to look for the psychological or social goals, processes, advantages and costs.

An Aha! Moment: Education
This all sounds reasonable, I hope. But it may seem a little abstract. My own Aha! moment came when I considered how useful participatory views could be to education. The role of creativity in education has been a persistent concern since at least the mid-twentieth century (for example, Beghetto & Kaufman, 2010;Craft, 2005;Guilford, 1950;Maslow, 1971Maslow, /1993Rogers, 1969;Starko, 2014). Like the rest of the creativity discourse, much of the discussion of education has concerned how to be more inclusive of students' abilities. Trying to promote creativity through education comes with pitfalls, though. For one thing, education traditionally assesses outcomes, and creativity research has provided tests for such assessment, particularly divergent thinking tests, many of which come with age-specific norms. The relation of divergent thinking tests to creative performance is controversial, but the current most optimistic claims are that divergent thinking provides an estimate of a potential for creative work (Runco, 2010). Critics have seen little reason for assuming a causal link between divergent thinking and actual creative performance (for discussions see, Hanchett Hanson, 2013b, in press;Runco, 2010;Weisberg,