Creative Challenges Research Articles

Jesus Huerta de Soto, Book review of The Austrian school: Market order and entrepreneurial creativity

I imagine that Jesus Huerta de Soto’s new book The Austrian School: Market Order and Entrepreneurial Creativity must have been extremely difficult to write. He explains his goal for the text as: “we shall explain the fundamental principles of the dynamic, Austrian concept of the market, and we will point out the main differences between the Austrian perspective and the neoclassical paradigm” (p. ix). In short, de Soto tries to respond to the popular but pesky question, “what is so special about Austrian economics?” I say that this book must have been difficult to write not because this question is difficult to answer. On the contrary, de Soto does an excellent job surveying the many distinctive features of Austrian economics. Communicating the uniqueness of Austrianism comes easy to de Soto, for he has clearly researched widely in the tradition and mastered its positions. Instead, I imagine that this book was a great challenge to put together because there are so many different ways that the material could be structurally organized and presented. The creative challenge of this book was not a matter of conducting original research or formalizing original theoretical insights. Instead, it was likely a process of synthesizing a broad swath of expertise (for which the reader is lucky to have an author like de Soto) into a clear and compact presentation. When answering, “what exactly is unique about Austrian economics?” one could concentrate on the uniquely aprioristic and methodological foundations of the tradition: deductive reasoning, the analytical compatibility between means and ends, meaningful distinctions through Aristotelian essentialism, and the use of hypothetical constructs and counterfactuals. Or one could emphasize the unique theoretical contributions of Austrian economics: the knowledge and calculative roles of market prices, the impossibility of socialism, Rev Austrian Econ DOI 10.1007/s11138-009-0101-9

Reframing economic development: thing or mystery?

The aim of this article is to contribute to the conceptual platforms for a critical and creative approach to economic development. Economic development is a practical matter, but practice depends on the frame within which the situation is experienced, conceptually and emotionally. At a general level, the article discusses critical and creative thinking in relation to economic development and with particular focus on reframing. The key point is that a critical and creative approach challenges the problematic aspects of an actual frame and enters into a process of changing the frame. At a specific level, the article discusses one approach to reframing economic development, namely by the introduction of two core concepts, ‘thing’ and ‘mystery’. ‘Thing’ is oriented towards objects. ‘Mystery’ is oriented towards meaning. ‘Thing’ points at expert‐based calculation and manipulation; ‘mystery’ points at participation and communication, as well as hermeneutics and art. A focus on mystery challenges the expansive and dominative power of the reification embedded in conventional economic thinking and practice.

The Regulation of Creativity Under the WIPO Internet Treaties

The WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WIPO Internet Treaties) recite a need for a digital copyright framework to facilitate 'adequate solutions to questions raised by new economic, social, cultural and technological developments.' It can hardly be contested that the social and cultural developments to which the Treaties refer do not derive from the cultural or economic conditions (much less technological developments) of the developing and least-developed countries. Consistent with their predecessors, the WIPO Internet Treaties marginalize collaborative forms of creative engagement with which citizens in the global South have long identified and continue in the tradition of assuming that copyright’s most enduring cannons are culturally neutral. Recently, however, the rise of Web 2.0 and the salience of new forms of creativity mediated by digital technologies and social networking sites have exposed structural tensions in copyright laws of OECD countries similar to those which developing countries have historically raised in opposition to the Berne Convention. This Essay reviews the evolution of the WIPO Internet Treaties and argues that the framework established just over a decade ago is increasingly less relevant in addressing the challenges of creativity in the digital age. The Treaties do not provide a meaningful basis for a harmonized approach to encourage new creative forms in much the same way the Berne Convention fell short of embracing diversity in patterns and modes of authorial expression. The growing social and legal recognition of new forms of creativity enabled through digital technologies offers an important opportunity to challenge anew claims that globally mandated copyright norms can effect incentives to create that are relevant across geographical, cultural and technological boundaries.

Skryfkunsstudente se ervaring van hulle eie kreatiewe proses binne die konteks van die <i>Op die spoor van kreatiewe kreature</i>-projek: ’n narratiewe ontleding

Creative writing students’ experience of their own creative process within the context of the Tracking creative creatures project: a narrative analysis First-year students in Creative Writing at the North-West University took part in an interdisciplinary investigation into the creative process, which posed certain creative challenges to them. The students’ reaction to the project indicated that they experienced the assignment as challenging and enriching. This article investigates the question whether the narrative analysis of students’ personal reports on the creative process can contribute to a better understanding of the individual experience, the project, and the creative process as such. A framework for analysis was developed against the theoretical background of contextual approaches to creativity, practice-based research and the method of narrative analysis. Amabile’s componential framework of creativity served as a basis for the framework to investigate the three levels of the narrative (form, content and context). The article discusses the project, collection of data, theoretical framework and research procedures, and illustrates and discusses the application and value of narrative analysis of students’ reports with reference to identified themes and selected examples.

The Creativity Challenge

ABSTRACTThe advertising landscape has experienced dramatic change over the past several years, as consumers spend more time online, have more control over traditional advertising vehicles, and chose to create and share their own content. As a result, some advertisers are evolving to a confluence culture where traditional methods of work must adapt to embrace the new reality of interactive content, emerging media, and production/consumption methods. In this essay, we show how agencies like 22squared and advertisers like CNN are finding new ways to connect with consumers and build their brands. Implications for professionals and educators are provided.

Social Diversity and Democracy in Higher Education in the 21st Century: Towards a Feminist Critique

This paper takes a feminist perspective on the UK literature on mass higher education in the 21st century, building on US critiques about marketization, neo-liberalism and ‘academic capitalism’. Concepts of equality and diversity have been transformed by neo-liberalism and how these changes have constrained democratic contributions to UK higher education policies and practices is the focus. Diversity has replaced more traditional conceptualizations of socioeconomic inequalities, and has shifted from being about ethnicity/race to one of ‘widening participation’ or ‘fair’ access to higher education, including social class, disabilities, gender and age. Debate focuses on individual students on first or undergraduate degrees, whether full or part-time, and how higher education institutions can contribute to graduate employment, individual or social mobility, rather than re-inscribing social stratification. I present an analysis that demonstrates the challenges and dilemmas about equality and diversity in UK mass higher education and conclude that despite expansion of higher education ‘persistent inequalities’ remain. I reveal UK policy shifts around gender as concerning women, as students or academics, to one about lack of educational opportunities in post-compulsory education for young men from poor or disadvantaged family backgrounds as students, ignoring the question of women's opportunities and contributions to new forms of academic practice. I argue that this illustrates how new forms of higher education, despite expansion and increasing participation, remain resistant to some of the feminist and critical yet creative challenges about transformations in academic practice and development.

Alan E. Rowan

Abstract“I chose chemistry as a career because…︁ I like the creative challenge. My favorite subjects at school were mathematics and music…︁!” These facts and more information about Alan E. Rowan can be found on page 1717magnified image

The On-tology of Beckett’s Nohow On

“Not ‘trilogy,’ I beseech you” was Samuel Beckett response when the idea of giving his three post-war novels the title of trilogy was first floated by his editor John Calder (Ackerley and Gontarski, 586). Editorial pressure prevailed, however, and the word trilogy was subsequently accepted by the public, scholars and, albeit grudgingly, by Beckett himself. The publication of Beckett’s late-career narratives, Company, Ill Seen Ill Said and Worstward Ho gave rise to a similar controversy. When John Calder first published the three prose texts in Britain under the single title Nohow On, John Banville from the Irish Times objected that creating in this way a de facto trilogy goes against the spirit in which the texts were produced. Again, the publishers persisted in their designs, leading once more to a general consensus regarding the term “second trilogy,” sometimes appearing as “micro-trilogy.” As insignificant as it appears, the tale of the two trilogies mimics one of the central dilemmas of Beckett’s works, namely the chronic difficulty of identifying a thing with its name. It points, in other words, to the fact of “ill-saying” that gives Beckett’s prose its aesthetic principle while at the same time presenting it with its greatest creative challenge. It is perhaps to the “ill-named” trilogies that Beckett unsuspectingly refers when he writes, in Ill Seen Ill Said: “The mind betrays the treacherous eyes and the treacherous word their treacheries. Haze sole certitude” (78). 1 This paper will follow the French philosopher Alain Badiou’s assertion that Beckett’s “ill-saying” is an ontological problem rather than one that pertains simply to representational technique. In his Beckett: L’increvable desir, translated by Nina Power and Albert Toscano as Tireless Desire, Badiou confesses to having in his youth misread Beckett as an account of man living in despair in a universe without God, and without meaning or love. Spurning the “young cretin” that enthusiastically embraced such a stereotypical humanist and existentialist reading of Beckett, Badiou now returns to Beckett’s work with the intention of sketching its peculiar “methodological ascesis.” For this, he says, is the key to understanding how the Irish writer addresses the eminent philosophical question: “what

Making Sense of Feminist Theology Today

AbstractFeminist theology today denotes a widening field of scholarship that shares historic, pragmatic concerns about gender justice in diverse cultural and racial contexts, but that increasingly differs in approach. In this essay, we discuss internal, creative challenges surfacing in (largely Christian) feminist theologies and review the historical social movements that have shaped them up to the present. Theologians who use race, queer, and postcolonial theory to assert the co‐constituting dynamics of gender with race, class, sexuality, nationality, and religion are muddying the waters of older feminisms that focused exclusively on gender, rendering the future of feminist theologies more ambiguous, broad‐reaching, and fluid.

Development of evaluation indicators in psychosocial projects: balance between a creative challenge and research rigor

Evaluation of psychosocial and community oriented projects includes a series of procedures to determine if project outcomes are achieved by an activity planned to help reach an individual or socially relevant goal. Typically, various stakeholders have an interest in evaluation of psychosocial projects. These may include project stai and manager, donors, authorities, bene¢ciaries and the community. Sometimes their interest in evaluation seems to be in con£ict, but clari¢cation of interests can lead to complementary positions. Evaluation is basically a decision making tool about the future of a project. The basic assumption in evaluation is that it should identify observable or measurable outcomes (consequences, results) that can be used to demonstrate that the project is reaching the goal and objectives. One of the crucial elements in this process are evaluation indicators which need to satisfy several universal criteria, while their speci¢c content and data collection method should re£ect the speci¢cs of the project under evaluation.

Telling the stories of South African Hindu women: Participatory video as a tool for feminist research

abstract This briefing starts with a self-reflexive discussion of the transition between two research efforts: a Masters study completed in 2004, which argued for a postcolonial feminist film practice, and a PhD study currently in progress. Analysing the process of this transition (which involved the production of a short film as a ‘test’ study of the postcolonial feminist film practice that would inform the PhD research), the paper critically details the flaws inherent in the proposed framework and argues for participatory video, a form of self-reflexive filmmaking, as a method of research to potentially address these flaws, specifically in the gathering and creative articulation of the stories of South African Hindu women. The proposal of participatory video, as an ethnographic methodological tool for postcolonial research, is justified and supported by an explanation of the theoretical and creative challenges faced during the production of the ‘test’ film, and an exploration of initiatives that have engaged participatory video as a tool for empowerment and resistance in Third World communities.

Religión y Relaciones Internacionales. Genealogías

Religion’s sudden re-appearance on the scene of international politics has resulted in a creative challenge for the discipline of International Relations. Although the leading tendencies suggest that religion is once again present in international relations, this article will carry out an exercise of introspection within the discipline based on the idea of religious continuity. As a result, questions arise concerning secularization as the foundational myth of modern international relations. This, in turn, will require a genealogical revision of (secular) categories such as international society and the state.

Researching Museum Educators' Perceptions of their Roles, Identity, and Practice

This article presents research relating to how science museum educators perceive their roles, identity, and practice. This qualitative study examines: (1) what brings museum educators to and sustains them in their profession; (2) how museum educators view their roles and work; and (3) what knowledge, skills, and attitudes museum educators identify as critical to their work. Findings show that museum educators have a strong value system that has attracted them to and sustains them in this profession, including a need to “make a difference.” They primarily view themselves as educators and get great satisfaction from sparking the learning process. They enjoy interacting with people, developing relationships, and working collaboratively. They are drawn toward creative opportunities and challenges and have a thirst for learning. They appear to thrive in the changing, non-traditional, and sometimes chaotic environment of museum work. The skills and knowledge they identify as key to museum work include knowledge of teaching and learning, presentation skills, science content knowledge, project management skills, and organizational savvy. They enjoy working in informal learning environments, and convey strong positive feelings about their work as it offers them stimulation, autonomy, social interaction, variety, creative freedom, and flexibility. The work challenges they cite include feeling stressed by workloads, time constraints, a changing work climate, and the pressures of working in non-profits in terms of job insecurity and lack of resources. Overall, the museum educators in this study expressed a strong attachment to their work, believe they are contributing to the greater good, and intend to remain in the profession.

Genomics & proteomics: reduce, rebuild, reveal

Genomics & proteomics: reduce, rebuild, reveal

Applying Dramaturgy to Management Course Design

This article discusses the holistic method of experiential course design called dramaturgy as applied to an undergraduate 3rd-year management course—the Action Learning Management Practicum (ALMP). Dramaturgy, a theater term, involves the student-centered design of the course. The development of themes is characterized by the intertwining of a range of activities designed to enhance the social, physical, creative, and reflective challenge to participants. Choreographed to expand student experiences, increase challenge, and optimize learning through the flow of “dramaturgy waves,” the activities are constantly adapted to respond to specific needs of individual students and the class as a whole. Student comments, 2 weeks and 6 months postcourse, highlight key learning and suggest that there is merit in using dramaturgy as a method of design for management courses. Its emphasis on a holistic approach provides a means for developing the whole person in management education as advocated in the literature.

Acting Versus Drifting: On Creating a Life Course

Acting Versus Drifting: On Creating a Life Course

The creativity challenge.

The creativity challenge.

The challenge of creativity and culture: a framework for analysis with application to Arabian Gulf firms

As the governments in the Arabian Gulf region privatize and liberalize their economies, the firms in their countries are challenged to develop managerial expertise and to improve competitiveness. Like other firms around the world, these firms must be more creative and innovative if they are to succeed in today’s increasingly knowledge-based economy. Based on a review of the literature, this paper includes a conceptual framework that explains how the process of knowledge creation in firms might be moderated by cultural variables. The framework is then applied within the specific context of the culture of the Arabian Gulf, and a number of propositions (Propositions 1–6) are developed. The paper concludes with recommendations for researchers and managers.

Design Guidelines: The Law of Aesthetic Controls

Abstract The regulation of design, both in architecture and city planning, is not a new phenomenon. Although design guidelines have gained popularity in the US. over the last several decades, there are numerous examples of direct or indirect design regulation throughout the history of Western civilization. Current development patterns that are design-based have encouraged communities to adopt more detailed regulations than ever before. This article will examine the evolving legal foundation of design guidelines, look at common and creative challenges to aesthetic regulations, and explore the process of drafting guidelines that comply with the requirements of the law and good design.

Understanding the Challenge of Creativity among African Americans

The relationship between creativity and intelligence, the recognition of creativity in students (a process that can be empirically documented), and the basic construct of creativity are the basis for much discussion. In adding a special population to the discussion, such as African Americans, who, as a group, have a special approach to creativity or method of exhibiting creativity, raises the level of discourse. As Banks (1988) has indicated, cultural behaviors can be distinct within an ethnic group, yet have an overlay from other cultures from the environment in which they exist. Many creative behaviors shown by African Americans overlap those of other cultures. The basic premise of creativity and its underlying principles exists in all populations, but the representation, manifestation, or melding of these principles varies within and among groups. What Are We Saying About Creativity? Clark (1988) outlined an integrated concept of creativity that includes: thinking (can be developed and measured); sensing (creation of new products or talent in a particular area); feeling (emotional energy from the creator); and intuition (high consciousness or high awareness of elements in the environment). Torrance, on the other hand, titled his book The Search for Satori & Creativity. The Japanese meaning of satori translates into what Americans might call an a-ha experience. Torrance (1979) explained satori as the highest point attainable, a sudden flash of enlightenment. Satori evolves when there has been intensive, long-term, one-to-one relationship to a 'sensei' (teacher). Above all, satori requires persistence, hard work, self-discipline, diligence, energy, effort, competence, expertness (p. ix). This fits into what Clark called the thinking part of creativity. Historical reports of the last decades are revealing more and more about the creative endeavors of African Americans. Unique problem-solving skills helped members of this population. survive in the face of many inequities. Little attention, however, has been paid to the relationship of these skills to creativity and, thus, to intelligence. Hughes (1969), Kurtzman (1967), Stein (1962, as referenced in Clark, 1988) subscribed to several traits for the rationally thinking creative individual. Although the traits listed could apply to all populations, there are several that can be found most often among African American students. * often anti-authoritarian; These are: * zany sense of humor; * more adventurous; * little tolerance for boredom; and * high divergent thinking ability. Clark's (1988) explanation of sensing, feeling, and intuition draws attention to similar characteristics or traits that also coincide with those found among African American children. These include: * a special kind of perception; * more spontaneous and expressive; * openness to experience, and new ideas; * skilled performance of the traditional arts; and * when confronted with novelty of design, music, or ideas, gets excited and involved (less creative people get suspicious and hostile; Clark, 1988). Baldwin (1985) has listed some common characteristics and indicators that reflect creative traits. Her list coincides with those given above and reflects the integrated concept suggested by Clark (1988). Baldwin's list includes: * language rich in imagery; humor, symbolism, and persuasion; * logical reasoning, planning ability, and pragmatic problem-solving ability; * sensitivity and alertness to movement; and * resiliency to hardships encountered in the environment. These traits are often exhibited in unusual and unacceptable classroom behaviors. Consequently, many teachers do not capitalize on these qualities to develop appropriate classroom activities that can develop new ideas through many media, become a catalyst for enhancing academic weaknesses, be a means for developing leadership skills, and promote a positive self-concept (Baldwin, 1985). …