Pnfface

lininedialcly following om general inlroduction in the opening section of

-1-
lho hook is a chaplcr hy K a i m Harlxir. This is closely based on Karin's brilliant
opening addrcss a( lhe confeiencc. h inadc for a wonderful start to the proceedings,
and we are privilcged Io be ahle Io ineludc it in the volume. The book closes
with a linal epiloguc by Clara MalVa, on 'A World Without Anthropology'. Clara
clescrvcs a special menlion here. Nornially bascd at the State University of Rio de Creativity and Cultural Improvisation:
Janeiro, Bra/il, shc was wilh us in Aherdeen as a Visiting Research Fellow for the An Introduction
academie year 2(X)2-3, and played an importam role in the discussions leading up
Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam
Io the proposal for the conference. Wc loycd wilh many alternatives for the title,
bui il was Clara who carne up with the linal onc. It was an inspired idea!
Along the way from the initial conference proposal to the book we have been
cncouraged, helped and cajoled by too many friends and colleagues to list. However, There is no script for social and cultural life. People have to work it out as they go
wc would like to extend particular thanks to the following: Richard Fardon, then along. In a word, they have to improvise. To introduce the themes of this volume,
Chair of the ASA, who took the initiative in encouraging us to submit a proposal we want to make four points about improvisation. First, it is generative, in the
in the first place and whose continuing support and confidence in our capacity to sense that it gives rise to the phenomenal forms of culture as experienced by
delivcr meant a great deal to us; Rohan Jackson, whose supreme organizational those who live by them or in accord with them. Second, it is relational, in that
skills and unflappability made the whole task of running a conference só much it is continually attuned and responsive to the performance of others. Third, it
easier; Trevor Marchand, in his capacity as coordinator for the ASA Monographs is temporal, meaning that it cannot be collapsed into an instant, or even a series
series, for cnthusiastically backing the volume; and Hannah Shakespeare, of Berg of instants, but embodies a certain duration. Finally, improvisation is the way
Publishers, for being patient with our procrastinations and for seeing the volume we work, not only in the ordinary conduct of our everyday lives, but also in our
Ihrough to press. studied reflections on these lives in fields of art, literature and science. In the
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the generous support of the British following paragraphs we expand on each of these points in turn.
Acadcmy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Anthropological Institute Before we begin, however, we have an observation to make. The title of this
and - last but not least - both the City and the University of Aberdeen for their volume, Creativity and Cultural Improvisation, was also that of the conference
generous support, without which neither the conference nor this book would have from which its chapters were drawn. Throughout the conference we heard a great
becn possible. deal about the concept of creativity. Its possible definitions, uses and abuses, and
resonances in the contemporary world were discussed at length. The concept of
Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold improvisation, by contrast, was discussed hardly at ali. Though slipped in every só
Aberdeen, August 2006 often as a relatively unmarked term, it did net capture the attention of conference
participants in the way that the concept of creativity did, nor was it perceived to
be especially problematic or to call for the same degree of unpacking. Whereas
'creativity' appeared to conceal a cornucopia of meaning between its covers,
'improvisation' seemed like an open book.
Though this imbalance surprised us at the time, in retrospect the reasons for
it are fairly obvious. As John Liep explains, introducing an earlier collection of
anthropological papers on the topic, creativity is on everyone's lips these days.
Apparently we cannot have enough of it (Liep 2001: 5)! In a global commodity
market with an insatiable appetite for new things, where every aspect of life
and art is convcrtiblc into an ohjcct of lascination or desire to be appropriated
and consumed, crcalivily hás come Io hc sccn as a major driver of cconomic
prosperily and social well-being. A quick glance Ihrough lhe lisl of recenl hooks
 Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

with 'creativity' in the title, in any library catalogue, will reveal that the majority terms of its results, instead of forwards, in terms of the movements that gave rise
are in the fields of business or organizational management, where creativity is seen to them. This backwards reading, symptomatic of modernity, finds in creativity
as the key to commercial success, and in education, which is supposed to producc a power not só much of adjustment and response to the conditions of a world-in-
the kinds of creative individuais who will go on to succeed in a knowledge-based formation as of liberation from the constraints of a world that is already made. It
economy. is a reading that celebrates the freedom of the human imagination - in fields of
Anthropology, Liep argues, cannot escape the processes in which it is enmeshed, scientific and artistic endeavour - to transcend the determinations of both nature
of cultural commoditization and the consequent aestheticization of everyday and society. In this reading, creativity is on the side not only of innovation against
life. Thus it is no wonder that the preoccupation with creativity affects the life convention, but also of the exceptional individual against the collectivity, of the
and thinking of anthropologists as much as everyone else (ibid.: 4). Indeed Liep present moment against the weight of the past, and of mind or inteiligence against
himself swims with the current, along with his fellow contributors, in associating inert matter.
creativity with the production of novelty as opposed to the 'more conventional By harnessing our understanding of creativity to improvisation rather than
exploration of possibilities within a certain framework of rules' (ibid.: 2; see innovation we propose a forward reading that would recover the productive
also Schade-Poulsen 2001: 106). For the former he uses the term innovation processes that have been neglected in cultural studies due to their almost exclusive
- which he regards as a virtual synonym for creativity - while reserving the term concentration on consumable products (Friedman 2001: 48). The improvisational
improvisation for the latter. Though the improvisation that undoubtedly gocs on creativity of which we speak is that of a world that is crescent rather than created;
every where and ali the time in the course of quotidian life may appear to lend it a that is 'always in the making' (Jackson 1996: 4) rather than ready-made. Because
creative aspect, this, he tells us, is merely a 'conventional creativity', as distinct improvisation is generative, it is not conditional upon judgements of the novelty
from the 'true creativity' that stands out here and there, marking unique moments or otherwise of the forms it yields. Because it is relational, it does not pit the
of radical disjuncture. An anthropological approach to creativity, Liep contcnds, individual against either nature or society. Because it is temporal, it inheres in the
would do well to focus on the latter (ibid.: 12). onward propulsion of life rather than being broken off, as a new present, from a
We disagree. In our view anthropology can best contribute to debates around past that is already over. And because it is the way we work, the creativity of our
creativity by challenging - rather than reproducing - the polarity between novelty imaginative reflections is inseparable from our performative engagements with
and convention, or between the innovative dynamic of the present and the the materiais that surround us. In ali four respects our focus on improvisation
traditionalism of the past, that hás long formed such a powerful undercurrent to challenges the backwards reading of modernity.
the discourses of modernity. In this respect our approach comes closer to that of We consider each below: roughly speaking, they correspond respectively to
Edward Bruner, in his epilogue to a still earlier collection of essays on anthropology the themes of the four parts of this book. Then, in the penultimate section of this
and creativity. As Bruner observes, people everywhere 'construct culture as they introductory chapter, we place alternative forward and backwards readings of
go along and as they respond to life's contingencies' (Bruner 1993: 326). In this creativity in their context in the history of ideas, showing how, following their
process they are compelled to improvise, not because they are operating on the long co-existence, the rise of modernity tipped the balance towards the latter.
inside of an established body of convention, but because no system of codes, Finally and briefly, we map out the overall thematic structure of the volume as a
rules and norms can anticipate every possible circumstance. At best it can provide whole, leaving it to the authors of separate introductions for each part to discuss
general guidelines or rules of thumb whose very power lies in their vagueness or the chapters it includes in more detail.
non-specificity. The gap between these non-specific guidelines and the specific
conditions of a world that is never the same from one moment to the next not only
Improvisation is Generative
opens up a space for improvisation, but also demands it, if people are to respond
to these conditions with judgement and precision. 'Improvisation', as Bruner puts
A famous modern architect designs a building, the like of which the world hás
it, 'is a cultural impcrative' (ibid.: 322).
ncver sccn before. He is celebratcd for his creativity. Yct his dcsign will gct no
The diffcrcnce between improvisation and innovation, thcn, is nol that the one
lurlhcr than lhe drawing hoard or portfolio until the buildcrs stcp in to implcmcnt
works w i t h i n estublished convention while the other breaks w i i h il, bui ihal lhe
il. liuilding is not straighlfoi wanl. li lakes time, during which lhe world will not
foiiiKT characleri/cs creativity by way of its processes, lhe limei by wny ol ils
slop slill: when the work is complele lhe building will stand in an cnvironmcnl
producls. To ivail uvalivily as innovalion is, if you will, Io icntl H l>m kwiinls, in
 Uni In \f< > t'',li;tihí'tl> Haltam Creativity and Cultural Improvisatlon

lluii m n i . i noi IUIM In i n rimsioiifcl when it started. It takes materiais, which evolutionary biologists and the advocates of so-called 'intelligent design' is that if
km- |u.i|>i-iiics ul ili. n nwii aiul are not predisposed to fali into the shapes and there is one thing that both sides take for granted, it is that such design exists, at
roíilij/iiuiiiuns n - i | i i i i f < l ofthcm, let alone to stay in them indefinitely. And it takes the heart of every organism and expressed in its development. The issue at stake
(H-oplc, who hiivc (o make the most of their own skill and experience in order to is merely whether the intelligence of this design is that of Science reflected in
i/ajole lhe materiais into doing what the architect wants. In order to accommodate the mirror of nature, or of Theodicy reflected in the mirror of God. Only a hair's
lhe inflexible design to the realities of a fickle and inconstant world, builders nave breadth separates the two positions. Either way, it is assumed that organic form
to improvise ali the way. There is a kink, as Stewart Brand writes, between the issues directly and unproblematically from the pre-created design. To account for
world and the architect's idea of it: The idea is crystalline, the fact fluid' (Brand the form, ali you have to do is to 'read back' to the design of which it is supposed
1994: 2). Builders inhabit that kink. to be the expression, albeit modulated by environmental circumstances. And just
Why, then, do we not celebrate the creativity of their work, as we do that of as with the building, what this leaves out are the myriad tactical improvisations
the architect? And why, for that matter, do we not celebrate equally the creativity by which actual living organisms co-opt whatever possibilities their environments
of those who subsequently use the building in the course of their own lives? For may afford to make their ways in the tangle of the world. Neither natural selection
the reality is that no building remains - as the architect might wish - forever nor an intelligent designer can build a real organism, any more than the modern
unchanged, but hás to be continually modified and adapted to fit in with manifold architect can build a real house.
and ever-shifting purposes. At the same time it is constantly buffeted by the The belief that in the building of a house or the growth of an organism - or
elements, the forces of wear and tear, and the visitations of birds, rodents, arachnids more generally, in the activities by which living beings of ali kinds, human and
and fungi, ali calling for the equally improvisatory interventions of workmen of non-human, sustain themselves in their environments - nothing is created that
diverse trades - plumbersjoiners, window cleaners, roofing specialists and a host was not designed in advance, pre-existing in virtual form the processes that give
of others - merely in order to shore it up against the tide of destruction. Do they rise to it, is deeply rooted in modern thought. It is this belief that leads us to
not also, along with inhabitants' efforts to do-it-themselves, play their part in the look to innovations in design as the source of ali creation. We are inclined to
huilding's ongoing creation? As the distinguished Portuguese architect Álvaro say that something is created only when it is new, meaning not that it hás been
Si/a admits, he hás never been able to design, let alone build a real house, by newly produced, but that it is the manifest outcome of a newly concocted plan,
which he means 'a complicated machine in which every day something breaks formula, programme or recipe. Everything else is a copy. Notwithstanding the
down'(Siza 1997:47). effort, attention and even problem-solving that goes into reproducing an existing
A rather similar puzzle emerges if we turn from artificially built structures model, the process of copying - by this logic - cannot be creative. It can only
to organically grown ones. Wherever life is going on, solid, liquid and gaseous replicate what is already there. A fundamental opposition is thereby set up
materiais are binding in the formation of stupendously complex, organic tissues. between creativity and imitation. We challenge this opposition, as do many of the
Human beings are as much caught up in this process as creatures of any other kind. contributions to this book.
What can be more creative than the growth of a human infant - 'knit together', Copying or imitation, we argue, is not the simple, mechanical process of
in the wonderfully poetic words of the biblical psalm (cited by Jeanette Edwards, replication that it is often taken to be, of running off duplicates from a template,
Ihis volume), in its mother's womb? Most biologists, however, are remarkably but entails a complex and ongoing alignment of observation of the model with
rcluctant to acknowledge the creativity of organic life. They are understandably action in the world. In this alignment lies the work of improvisation. The formal
ncrvous that any admission of creativity would attract charges of creationism. If resemblance between the copy and the model is an outcome of this process, not
ihcy spcak of creativity at ali, it is with regard to the origin and diversification of given in advance. It is a horizon of attainment, to be judged in retrospect. Indeed
species, that is, to evolutionary phylogeny rather than ontogenetic development. the more strictly standards are observed, the greater are the improvisational
Kvolution, they point out, is a result of natural selection, and the first thing to dcmands placed on performers to 'get it right'. Precision - as Felicia Hughes-
undersland abou! natural selection is that it explains how creativity can occur in a Freeland shows in her study of Javanese dance, and Fuyubi Nakamura in her
world of living ihings, in the absence of a creator. account of Japanese calligraphy - demands a heightened responsiveness which,
But if we pause to inquire whal hás been crcated, the answer luins «ul Io In- for practitioncrs who are truly skillcd, can be truly libcrating. That is why there
nol lhe organism i l s d f h u t a <ie\if>n for the organism, supposi-dly ciirodnl In Mu- is crealivity cvcn and especially in lhe mainlenance «f an cstablished tradilion.
materiaisofheredity, [ndeedoneoftheironiesofthecurrcntiipultv i « > • n i >.n «niian Just as a huilding lha) is not kepl in repa i r soou ilisinlegratcs. só Iradilions havc to
 Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

be worked at to be sustained. The continuity of tradition is due not to its passive with its communicative conventions. Creativity, as Kirsten Hastrup points out
inertia but to its active regeneration - in the tasks of carrying on. in this volume, cannot totally cut loose from the social whole, lest it register as
For this reason the metaphor of transmission hás to be used with great care. madness.
In a loose sense we can of course speak of generations passing on their skills In this imagined tussle between individual and society, the stature of the former
and knowledge to successors. There hás been a tendency, however, to interpret appears proportional to the gravitas of the latter. It takes a giant to move a mountain,
the metaphor much more literally, as though in the performance of tradition and it is generally assumed that since society is a totality of an altogether larger
people do not só much emulate their predecessors by copying their actions, as scale than the individuais that make it up, no ordinary person can shift it. That is
act out, or 'convert into behaviour', prototypical schemas that have already why creative individuais tend to be credited with extraordinary powers, of intellect
been copied into their heads by a prior process of replication (Sperber 1996: or charisma. In his epilogue to Creativity/Anthropology, to which we have already
61). Some anthropologists and psychologists have even taken to calling these referred, Bruner goes some way towards reducing the deadweight of society, and
schemas 'memes', information-bearing nodules that are supposed to inhabit the by the same token, recognising that 'even little people in the routine and everyday'
mind as genes inhabit the body, whence they control the carrier's thought and can change the world (Bruner 1993: 321). The assumption nevertheless remains
behaviour. Creativity, for meme-theorists, lies not in what people do but in the that in the 'mix of tradition and change' (Rosaldo, Lavie and Narayan 1993: 5),
potential for mutation and recombination of its memetic determinants (Aunger creativity is about change, and moreover that its source lies with the agency of
2000). However, just as natural selection can no more build a real organism than the individuais who initiate it, as against the inertia of tradition induced by social
can an architect build a real house, só no amount of meme-juggling, intentional conditioning. It is precisely this assumption that we seek to challenge.
or otherwise, can build a real human being. Real people, as the living organisms Following a tradition, as we have shown, is a matter not of replicating a fixed
they are, continually create themselves and one another, forging their histories pattern of behaviour, but of carrying on from predecessors. Social life is a task,
and traditions as they go along. and for those engaged in it the overriding concern is to keep going, rather than
coming to a dead end or becoming caught in a loop of ever-repeating cycles.
There is no opposition here between continuity and change: rather, change is what
Improvisation is Relational
we observe if we look back over the ground covered, comparing a present state
of affairs with those of select points in the past (Ingold 2000: 147). The forward
We are talking here about the process of social life. By this we mean the life of
movement of keeping life going, however, can involve a good measure of creative
persons in those mutually constitutive relationships through which, as they grow
improvisation, not unlike that required of pedestrians on a busy street who have
older together, they continually participate in each other's coming-into-being. We
continually to negotiate a path through what Michel de Certeau (1984: xviii-
do not mean the life of some hypostatized, superorganic entity - namely 'society'
xix) would call tactical manoeuvrings - that is, through those improvisational
- as it unfolds over and above that of the solitary individual. It is this latter view
adjustments of posture, pace and bearing by which one's own movement is attuned
that, in classical social theory, sets the freedom of the individual on a collision
on the one hand to that of companions with whom one wishes to keep abreast or
course with the externai determinations of society, and it is reproduced every time
in file, and on the other to strangers coming from different directions with whom
lhe exercise of creativity is associated with individual talent and expression.
one does not wish to collide (Lee and Ingold 2006: 79-82). Nor is this attunement
The creative individual, it is commonly supposed, is one who is prepared and
limited to human others, for it must also take account of non-human presences of
able to make a break with socially imposed convention. This can sometimes lead
ali sorts, both mobile and stationary. There is no reason, as Vokes points out in this
Io the paradoxical results that Judith Scheele observes in her study of the political
volume (after Latour 1993), to limit the scope of social life to human actants.
rhetoric of revolution in Algeria. For where collective identity is defined by
Improvisation is relational, then, because it goes on along 'ways of life' that are
revolutionary commitment, the only way to swim against the tide is by adherence
as entangled and mutually responsive as are the paths of pedestrians on the street.
Io tradilion! It can bc unconventional to be conventional, just as it can be traditional
And by the same token, the creativity it manifests is not distributed among ali
Io change. Fíven lhe most creative of individuais, by this account, can never fully
lhe individuais of a society as an agency that each is supposed to possess a priori
c-Ncapc whal Frieclman (2001) hás called the Mron cage' of social conslrainl, sincc
- an internai capacily of mind to come up with intcntions and to act upon them,
llu-ir nonconinrinity - if il is not to be dismissed as mero idiosynciiisy musl
causing cffccts in the vicinity ((ícll 1999: 16-17)- but ralhcr lies in the dynamic
'iiiako si-nsc' w i l h i n a more widcly inhahilcd universo of mcmiiii).' mui
pok-nlial o f a n i-nliix 1 lidil of ivlalionships Io hring íorlh lhe persons siluatcd in il.
 Inn
,nnl l h ,t/'-'//i lliillilin
Creativity and Cultural Improvisation
Wc l i r n l .1 |n. . . ,1. MI 1,11 i l i i . M.- w in lhe writings of the theologian H.N. Wieman.
li i-, i n . i iiary, Wn-m. \\\. lodislinguísh two senses of creativity: 'One is a could claim to be H-creative. This is not a claim, however, to the effect that his
f l u i u . 1. 1 r . i i i dolngof the human person. Theotheris what personality undergoes design took shape within the historical current of social life, or through any such
Inn . . u m . . i do' A (mm. MI being is creative in the first sense 'when he constructs worldly engagements. To the contrary, it is a claim to total independence from
soineilim;' . u n m l i i i g (o a new design which hás already come within reach of any externai influence whatever! Social relations and historical engagements, in
lu.s im.ipii.il u m . . . ' l h e second kind of creativity is what progressively creates Boden's world, have a bearing only on the dissemination and recognition of ideas,
lK'r<iiniii/iiv in coiiiiiiiuiity' (Wieman 1961: 65-6, our emphasis). not on their origination. In coming up with creative ideas it seems that every mind
Now in lhe firsl sense, the meanings of creativity and agency coincide in the is on its own, effectively cut off from the world of persons, objects and relations
in .i n .n ol' ihc 'doing' of the person. However, the creativity of social life, we in which it necessarily subsists. As Boden states, quite categórica!ly, 'the mind's
nmtoul, hás Io be understood in Wieman 's second sense. As one of us hás argued creations must be produced by the mind's resources' (ibid.: 29).
ol.se whcre, 'social life is not something the person does but rather what the person Even architects, however, are human beings. They move in the same circles as
undcrgocs' - a process in which people 'do not make societies but, living socially, those who walk the streets of the cities they have helped to design. And it is surely
make llicmselvcs' (Ingold 1986: 247). Another way of saying that people make in these movements, not in splendid isolation, that their ideas take shape. For
ihemselvcs is to say they not only grow but are also grown, in that they undergo the mind, as Andy Clark hás observed, is a notoriously 'leaky organ' that refuses
histories of development and maturation within fields of relationships established to stay inside the skull, but shamelessly mingles with the body and the world in
through the presence and activities of others (Ingold 2000: 144). Critically, mis the conduct of its operations, turning whatever it finds there into resources for
growth is not just in strength and stature, but also in knowledge, in the work of the solution of its own problems (Clark 1997: 53; see Ingold 2001: 138). Thus,
the imagination and the formation of ideas. The latter is, after ali, as much a full- far from being a strategic planner, aloof from the material world upon which its
bodied knitting together of materiais and experience as the former. designs are inscribed, the mind is in practice a hotbed of tactical and relational
Returning to the analogy with the pedestrian wayfarer, every idea is like a place improvisation. As it mingles with the world, the mind's creativity is inseparable
you visit. You may arrive there along one or several paths, and linger for a while from that of the total matrix of relations in which it is embedded and into which it
before moving on, perhaps to circle around and return some time later. Each time extends, and whose unfolding is constitutive of the process of social life.
you revisit the idea it is a little different, enriched by the memories and experience
of your previous stay. Leading others along the same palhways, you may also
share the idea with them, though again, as each brings along the particularities Improvisation is Temporal
of their own previous experience, it will not be quite the same for one individual
as for anyone else. But there would be no ideas, just as there would be no places, According to what might be called the 'traditional view of tradition', its enactment
were it not for the movements of people towards, around and away from them. is rather like the derivation of a sequence of numbers from the iteration of a basic
Only when we look back, searching for antecedents for new things, do ideas formula. As the formula is passed down from generation to generation as part of
appear as the spontaneous creations of an isolated mind encased in a body, rather a schema or code of conduct, só its recipients are destined to replicate the same
than way stations along the trails of living beings, moving through a world. sequence. Against this background, creative innovations stand out like prime
Perhaps that is how we might have viewed the creativity of the fictitious numbers: they resist decomposition into already existing ideas or entities just as
architect, introduced in the last section, who hás produced a design for a prime numbers cannot be divided by any integers other than themselves. This
revolutionary new building. His design would exemplify what the philosopher parallel is suggested by the art historian George Kubler (1962: 39), in an essay in
and psychologist Margaret Boden, a pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence, which he attempts to link the distinction between the conventional outcomes of
calls a 'creative idea'. There are two senses, she writes, in which ideas can be routine, traditional performance and the novel products of creative design to the
deemed creative. One sense is psyehological, the other historical, and she calls perception of time and history.
(liem P-creativc and H-creative for short. Basically, an idea is P-crcalivc when it
is lundamenlally novel with respect to the mind of the individual who l i . u l il. li Our actual perceplionofli me dependsonregularlyrecurrentevents.unlikc the awareness
is H-crealive when it is novel wilh rcspccl to lhe whole oj IIHIIHIH II/MOIY (Hoden of history, which ilepcnds upon unlorcsceable changc and varicty. Withoul chungc thero
IWO: 32). Thus our arehilecl, having produced a lolally i i i i | > i i < < <l< m> .1 is no hislory; wilhoul regulai ily llioro is no time. Time and hislory aro rolaloil as rulo anil
varialion: limo is ilu- n-pil.u •.rum). l«i tlio vapirios ol' hislory. (ihitl.: 71-2)

v
 Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

i i l n - i c p l u .in. .n- oliradition, endlessly repeated, belong to time; the novelties issuing forth from its advancing tip rather like a root or creeper probes the earth.
.'l mvriiiioii. i-adi ;i onc-off, belong to history. More than any other philosopher, we owe our understanding of this sense of time,
Ti i IK-. i n l his view, is not creative; it brings nothing forth. Rather, what hás once as duration, to Henri Bergson. 'Our duration', Bergson wrote, 'is not merely one
Kvn hrought forth, through a unique historical event of creation, ultimately sinks instant replacing another; if it were, there would never be anything but present
back into time through its subsequent replication. The first house to be built from - no prolonging of the past in the actual... Duration is the continuous progress of
the design of our revolutionary architect, for example, marks a historical moment, the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances' (Bergson
but the hundredth hás already faded into the backdrop of time against which 1911:4-5).
a succession of other inventions make their entrance (Ingold 1986: 340). Thus For Bergson, then, growing older is not the falling back of an already
history is configured as a sequence of creative innovations, cast upon the ground completed, uniquely historical being into time - as the sand falis back into an
of the repetition of their antecedents. Though new things can turn out to be long- upended hourglass (ibid.: 18) - but the advance of time itself as it brings forth
lasting, they are dated to their first appearance, and vanish from history as soon being in an ongoing generative movement that, since it is open-ended and never
as the present-day of this appearance hás fallen back into the past and the novelty complete, is carried on rather than replicated by generations following. Thus the
of their impact hás worn off. They become old: no longer of the present, they past, far from being set off against the present as a repository of finished business,
mark past time. The same can happen to people too, as Cathrine Degnen shows is continually active in the present, pressing against the future. In this pressure
in this volume. 'Old people' are deemed to belong to time and not to history: we lies the work of memory, imagined not as a register or drawer in which records of
celebrate their anniversaries but do not expect them to do anything except repeat past events are filed away, but as the guiding hand of a consciousness that, as it
themselves, even in contexts that demand otherwise. Their moment is past, and goes along, also remembers the way. 'There is no register, no drawer... In reality,
the past is over, finished. the past... follows us at every instant; ali that we have fel t, thought and willed
The notion that once they cease to be 'new', persons and things can no longer from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present that is about to join
be deemed creative or have any bearing on what comes to pass, is a corollary of it, pressing against the portais of consciousness that would fain leave it outside'
the backwards reading that judges creativity by the innovativeness of its results (ibid.: 5).
rather than by the improvisations that went into the processes of producing them. What Bergson is describing here is the duration of a consciousness that is
Why should building the hundredth house be any less creative than buildíng the improvisatory: guided by the past but not determined by it; heading into a future
first, even if the design remains unchanged? To be sure, some procedures may that is essentially unforeseeable. Only when we look back over the ground
have become routine, but as the world will not stand still the challenge remains covered do we account for our actions as the step-by-step realization of plans or
of accommodating a fixed plan to a fluid reality. Or more generally, nothing that prior intentions, as though for every act there was a novel intention that precisely
people (or indeed, other organisms) do ever exactly repeats. No repeating system anticipated its outcome. What this account offers is a retrospective reconstruction
in lhe living world can be perfect, and it is precisely because imperfections in the of conduct that breaks the forward movement of consciousness into a succession
system call for continuai correction that ali repetition involves improvisation. of fragments, each initiated by a wilfully creative (or innovative) act of design
That is why life is rhythmic rather then metronomic, for the essence of rhythm, as followed by its determined execution (Ingold 1986: 210). In this backwards
lhe philosopher Henri Lefebvre hás shown in his essay on Rhythmanalysis, lies in reading, the concrete line that 'goes along' and grows as it advances, is replaced
the 'movements and differences within repetition', rather than in repetition per se by an abstract geometry of linear connections between points that are already
(Lefebvre 2004: 90). given before the journey begins. Such, argued Bergson, is the perspective of the
Whcreas innovation, in the backwards reading of creativity, lies outside of intellect, 'whose eyes are ever turned to the rear' (Bergson 1911: 49).
lime, improvisation, in a forward reading, is inherently temporal. This is a time, Our argument that creativity is a process that living beings undergo as they
howcvcr, that is not marked out by the oscillations of a perfectly repeating system make their ways through the world carries a corollary of capital importance. It
such as a clock or metronome, or by the revolutions of the planeis, but one that is thal this process is going on, ali the time, in the circulations and fluxes of the
is lived and fclt in (hc pulsating rhythms of life itself. Though it is a linear time, materiais that surround us and indeed of which we are made - of the earth we
ils linearity is o f a particular kind. It is not the kind of line (hal gors lioni point sland on, the water lhat allows il (o hcar fruil, lhe air we breathe, and só on. These
Io poinl. connccling up u succession of prcsenl inslanls anayrd diai•liuiiwally as materiais are life-giving, and ilidi movements, mixlures and bindings are creative
localions in space midil he arrayed synchronically. li is lalhoi n Imr Ihnl jjrows. in Ilu-insdves. Tlu- andonls knew Ihis when Ihey derived lhe leim 'malerial'
 Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

I I I I M I mate r, meaning 'mother' (Allen 1998: 177). And they knew, too, that even the quality of the outcome depends at every moment on the exercise of care,
11"' rnieration of ideas involves sweat, blood and tears when they extended the judgement and dexterity. The practitioner hás continually to make fine adjustments
iniMiiiiig of the verb to 'conceive' from the development of an embryo in the womb to keep on course, in response to a sensitive monitoring of the conditions of the
In llnil of ideas in the mind. 1 But by the same token, creativity is not a faculty task as it unfolds. Throughout the work there is an ever-present risk that it will
ol lhe disembodied mind, as it is taken to be in most psychological treatments go awry and that the result will be spoiled. The workmanship of certainty, by
o f lho subject, whose designs are actively imposed upon a world of matter that contrast, proceeds by way of a pre-planned series of operations, each of which is
is cflcctively dead. Indeed the idea that the mind's creations figure against the mechanically constrained to the extent that the result is predetermined and outside
ground of a material world that is lifeless and inert is a product of exactly the same the operative's control. He cannot alter course in mid-flow, but must stop, alter
backwards reading that, as we have seen, sets the innovations of the present over the settings of the apparatus, and start again. The puré form of the workmanship
against the dead weight of the past. of certainty, of course, would be full automation (Pye 1968: 4-5). To exemplify
the contrast, Pye compares handwriting and printing. It is an example worth
Improvisation is the Way we Work following up.
In writing with a pen, nothing guides the tip save the movement of the hand and
We began with the assertion that there is no script for social and cultural life. But fingers with their characteristic penhold. The line rendered on paper is the trace of
there are most certainly scripts within it. In our capacity as ethnographers, we an ongoing gestural improvisation. Though we may have been taught the 'correct'
write, and só - as Robey Callahan and Trevor Stack point out in this volume - do ways to form letters by copying models, a person's handwriting is as distinctive
advertising copywriters and authors of fiction. Though these kinds of writing, and recognizable an aspect of their being, as it issues forth into the world, as is their
with the possible exception of advertisements, do not tell people exactly what voice. 'Writing is more than a means of communication', observes handwriting
they should do, there are plenty of other examples of scripts that do. More or less specialist Rosemary Sassoon, 'it is oneself on paper' (Sassoon 2000: 103). As
explicit instructions abound. They may be variously notated: writing is just one Elizabeth Cory-Pearce points out in this volume, the handwritten text of archival
of many possibilities that also include signs, diagrams and the notational systems documents is a tangible and relatively durable manifestation of the presence of
used for music and dance. Indeed it might be objected that our initial assertion identifiable persons. This personal style is not planned or designed, but emerges
is unjustified: that lives are scripted, at least to some extent, and therefore that through a history of improvisation, above ali in finding ways to connect letters in
people do not have to improvise ali the time. Have we not been led, by a faulty the cursive script in the interests of speed and efficiency. In 'joined-up' writing we
initial premise, to exaggerate the importance of improvisation? fashion the joins, each in our own way, as we go along. Most writers of English,
We believe not. Our claim is not just that life is unscripted, but more funda- for example, when they write the word the, eventually find themselves running the
mentally, that it is unscriptable. Or to put it another way, it cannot be fully codified cross of the t into the following h, despite having been taught that the join should
as the output of any system of rules and representations. This is because life does hc formed from the loop at the bottom of the first letter (Sassoon 2000: 40-50).
not pick its way across the surface of a world where everything is fixed and in There is, in short, no script for script. Even the hand of the traditional scribe,
its proper place, but is a movement through a world that is crescent. To keep on Irained through a more rigorous discipline in the art of beautiful writing, hás to find
going, jt hás to be open and responsive to continually changing environmental its own way. It would indeed be a mistake, as Karin Barber emphasizes in the next
conditions. A system that was strictly bound to the execution of a pre-composed chapter, to suppose that a disciplined performance that strains after the perceived
script would be unable to respond and would be thrown off course by the perfection of its model is any less improvisatory than one that celebrates the
slightest deviation. This, indeed, is the typical predicament of the novice in any leeway of performers to follow any path they choose. Citing from the work of the
craft who hás, of necessity, first to learn by the rules. Fluent response calls for a music psychologist Nicholas Cook (1990: 113), Barber observes that a classical
degrec of prccision in the coordination of perception and action that can only be musician who plays from a score improvises just as much as a jazz musician who
achieved through practice. But it is this, rather than a knowledge of the rules, that does not. The difference lies in their aims. The former is, as it were, centripetal,
distinguishes the skillcd practitioner from the novice. And in this, too, wc find the aiming for the bull's eye; the latter centrífuga), seeking to cast wide. This same
i-sseiK-c of improvisation. variaiion, from lhe centripetal Io the centrífuga), can bc discerncd in many other
Tlk1 ihcorisl of design, David Pye, hás distinguished In-lwivn Iwo kinds of lidils of performance, such as calligraphy, dance and athlelics. One hás only to
workinanship, ivspeclively of 'risk' and 'cerlainly'. In Ilir w u i k n m i i s l i i | i of risk compare aivla-ry wilh shoi-puiiing!
 Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

Bui il is pcrhaps in the art of walking that we find closest parallel to handwriting. innovative that they cannot be explained by their antecedem conditions. We may
l''or although walking can be analysed into discrete steps, as handwriting into indeed be surprised when things do not turn out as predicted, and science - on the
discreto letters, in the actual practice of walking, steps do not follow one another principie of conjecture and refutation - hás even turned its record of predictive
like beads on a string, any more than do the letters of writing. Rather, each is failure into a history of advance. Improvisation, however, augurs no surprise for
simultaneously a following-through of the one before and a preparation for the one the simple reason that it does not endeavour to predict (Ingold 2006b: 18-19).
following. Their order is processional rather than successional (Ingold 2006a: 67). To borrow a formulation by which Pierre Bourdieu (1977: 95) characterized the
But the same is true of any other skilled practice involving rhythmically repeated generative capacity of the habitus, the improvisation of the way we work is 'as
movements. One may learn the practice as a string of beads, as John Gatewood remote from a creation of unpredictable novelty as it is from a simple mechanical
(1985) showed in his classic study of learning the ropes on board a fishing vessel, reproduction of the initial conditionings'. Its aim is not to project future states, but
but proriciency lies in being able to run operations together - to move through to follow the paths along which such projections take shape. Far from attempting
them with the fluency of a dancer instead of executing each in a linear series of to bring closure to the world, or to tie up loose ends, improvisation makes the
point-to-point connections. 'Rather than speaking of ideas, concepts, categories most of the multiple possibilities they afford for keeping life going. For the world
and links', Gatewood suggests, 'we should think of flows, contours, intensities will not be closed, and goes its own way regardless of what we may have to say
and resonances' (Gatewood 1985: 216). Precisely the saine point emerges from about it. The creativity of this world may be a source of perpetuai astonishment,
Hughes-Freeland's study, in this volume, of Javanese dance. Though the dance is and indeed - as we show below - of wonder, but só long as we do not pretend to
explained to novices as a punctuated sequence of prescribed steps, the aesthetic control it or to hold it to account, it occasions no surprise.
aim is to emulate the ceaseless movement of flowing water.
Let us now return to printing, which Pye compared to handwriting as a work-
Histories of Creativity, Creativities in History
manship of certainty rather than risk. In this case, surely, the order of letters is
successional; they follow one another as discrete entities. Moreover both their
Só far we have focused on the ways in which the idea of creativity enters con-
shapes and their sequence are predetermined, the first by the engraving of the
lemporary discussions of making and doing things, of innovation and tradition,
type, the second by the work of the compositor who sets it. Hás the development
and of the generativity of social and cultural processes. Most of the chapters in
of printing, then, reduced the scope of improvisation in the world of letters? Pye's
Ihis book do indeed situate 'creativity' in its present-day settings, reflecting on
answer is that it hás not; it hás simply moved it forward. For there is no doubt
currents of lived time and on lifetimes. However, the idea itself hás a past, and
that engraving and typesetting are instances of the workmanship of risk, both - if
several of our contributing authors also allude to longer-term histories that reveal
anything - requiring even more care, judgement and dexterity than handwriting
lhe ways in which it hás emerged and the transformations it hás undergone. Eric
itself. Once again, this is a point that applies more generally. As the historian
Hirsch and Sharon Macdonald, for example, relate changing connotations of
François Sigaut hás shown, the story of technology is one of constantly renewed
creativity to conceptions of the individual and of identity from the seventeenth
attcmpts to codify skilled practice and to build machines that would embody
century onwards, while James Leach considers the implications of the link
lhese codes in the principies of their operation. Yet these attempts chase an ever-
helween creativity and property that was established in eighteenth-century
rcceding target, for as fast as skills are incorporated by technology into mechanical
European and American political philosophy. Moreover, granted that creativity
dcviccs, new skills develop around the machines themselves (Sigaut 1994: 446).
- as we have already argued - is inherently temporal, its unfolding in time hás
Só univcrsally is this the case that Sigaut feels justified in referring to the Maw of
Io he grounded in deeper histórica! processes. As Wendy James and David Mills
lhe irreducibility of skills'.
explain, introducing a volume resulting from the 2002 ASA conference on Time
Our claim, fully consistem with Sigaut's law, is that the improvisational
and Society, the flow of human action is always part of the 'flow of history'
crealivity of skilled practice is foundational to the way we work. This does not
(James and Mills 2005: 2). This is not to deny that social and cultural change
mcan, howevcr, lhat life is unprcdictable. Predictability, as we have seen, is a
occurs, or that it may be marked by radical breaks with the past. The point, as
liai Imarkof lhe workmanshipofccrtainly. And unpredictability, convcrsely, is oftcn
James and Mills arguc, is that the relationships between ongoing lived time
laki-n Io be of the essence of crcalivity. Bodcn, forcxamplc, links uiiprcdiclahility
anil what comes to bc rcirospcctivcly constitutcd as history are not given. They
i-xplicilly Io whal shc calls lhe 'surprise-valuc' of crealivily (Boilrn l'>')(): 227).
ivquiiv analysis.
Bui Ihis is Io look back on lhe crcative proccss. l i i u l i n ^ ivsiillN rirnsuli-ivil só
 Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

As we have already noted, Western views of creativity are associated with one leg (Sciopodes) or no head (Blemmyes) were thought to gather. Daston and
modernity, allowing Liep (2001), for instance, to link intensified interest in forms Park (2001: 25) quote one source as claiming that 'at the farthest reaches of the
of creativity with economic changes that assign high value to innovation in the world often occur new marvels and wonders, as though Nature plays with greater
production of new commodities. In the context of 'late modernity' Liep defines freedom secretly at the edges of the world'. These wonders were characterized
creativity as a forni of 'cross-fertilization' that occurs with the 'fusion of disparate by their composition, with parts missing or exaggerated, or with parts rearranged
cultural configurations' (ibid.: 12). Creativity and improvisation have also been to produce what were sometimes appreciated and at other times denigrated as
interpreted as modes of response to rapid social and technological change 'monstrous' creatures.
associated with 'modernization' in different contexts (for example, Volkman Novelty as recombination was also found in the hybrid animal-human figures
1994). More specifically, the idea of creativity as a unique faculty that human with which many medieval and early modern writings were illustrated. These
beings 'have', namely a capacity to create, appears to have come into common comprised disparate elements such as a human body and a dog's head. Drawings
usage from the early to mid-twentieth century onwards (Kristeller 1983; Pope of combinatory creatures, such as the fish-man, were often inserted in the margins
2005). Yet these latter-day notions of creativity have not come from nowhere, but of medieval manuscripts (Camille 1992). The 'exotic races' at the edge of the
are rooted in much older ideas about creation and what it means to be creative world, however, were perceived to differ crucially from the individual 'monsters'
(see Pope 2005). that emerged in Europe. The former were supposed to have been generated by
In his Introduction to Part I of this volume, Ingold contrasts two notions of nature; the latter by the intervention of divine will. These monsters, moreover,
creativity that can be discerned in early twentieth-century philosophical works. were interpreted negatively as omens from God of future unwelcome happenings.
It may be understood, on the one hand, as the production of novelty through the Though, in the Judeo-Christian view, God had created the universe, in the twelfth
recombination of already extant elements, or on the other, as a process of growth, century nature was not absolutely tied to divine command, but was rather thought
becoming and change. The former view posits the world as an assemblage of discrete to possess 'an independent internai order located in the chains of causes that
parts; the latter as a continuous movement or flow. Both these formulations of produced particular phenomena' (Daston and Park 2001: 49). Wonders in the form
creativity, however, can be traced historically to earlier understandings of novelty, of rare and novel combinations of parts were created, then, through the agency of
seen in conceptions - not necessarily opposed or mutually exclusive - both of the nature and of God.
assemblage of parts and of more fluid processes of coming-into-being. In what The rearrangement of components present in God's creations and in the
follows we place these formulations in the context of medieval views, before playfulness of nature was also a feature of human works. Camille points out that
turning to early modern as well as more recent conceptions of creativity. Our 'the medieval artist's ability was measured not in terms of invention, as today,
aim is to show that while both forward and backwards readings of creativity, as but in the capacity to combine traditional motifs in new and challenging ways'
growing emergence and produced novelty, have coexisted throughout the history (Camille 1992: 36). The compositions illuminating the borders of manuscripts,
of European ideas, their balance eventually shifted decisively towards the latter. for instance, would newly gloss, undermine or mock written texts with drawings,
We can begin by returning to the notion of wonder. For medieval people, as often taken from pattern-books, of already familiar figures such as monkeys and
Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park have shown in their study of the history snails. Novelty in these manuscripts therefore worked through supplementation as
of this notion from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, wonder was situated well as through the juxtaposition of elements. It also operated through extensions
'between the known and the unknown' (Daston and Park 2001: 13). In this respect and flows wherein the flourishes of letters would merge with creatures and other
it was an apprehension of novelty, of the unexpected, which also arose out of motifs.
an acknowledged 'ignorance of cause' (ibid.: 23). Wonder was associated with A similar appreciation of combinatory and heterogeneous assemblages was
what were perceived to be rare phenomena that were unfamiliar in relation to registered in early modern cabinets of curiositics that displayed wonders in the
custornary or everyday experience. Medieval catalogues of wonders embraced form of naturalia, the products of nature, and artificialia, the products of human
a rich assortment of entities, from magnets to werewolves. In travei writing and contriving. At the turn of the seventeenth century the Aristotelian opposition of
maps novelty and variety were located in what were seen as the margins of the niilurc and art still hcld, and in this construal the things constituted by nature
world. Thus Ihirtcenth-century maps dcpicting Europc, the Medili-rram-an and posscsscd motion oran 'innale impulse to change', whcrcas lhe products of art did
lhe l l o l y l.iind at the cenlre also posilioncd África and Asi;i :il ihr pciiplu-iy. nol (Daston and Park l WS: 2fi4). Furlhermore, whercas God was rcgarded as lhe
and il was IH-H- lhal wonders such as lhe wingcd salainamli-i uixl liiiiniins wilh 'supreme arlisan o f a l l l u i m . i l fornis', h u m a n dcsignon oflcn soughl Io iinilak' or
 1,1 ititil l li.nt'i'lli Ilallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

, . ,,. ,,.,, . i ..q' l'í'>V 178). In the objects of wonder displayed in Iruly creative had to be 'original' rather than 'derivative' or 'copied' (Pope 2005).
. i ihinil i h i l l l i i . « i i i i n i.il wrre hroughl togcther, intricately interwoven To create, thenceforth, was to orchestrate discontinuity rather than to participate
, .1 , , , . in. i . jtiovidcd the impetus for humandesigns, forexample in a constantly emerging process.
i - i i r . l i m g and amplifying the contours of shells that were
, , .1 i j'ul(l scilings to form goblets. Such objects were identifiably
M , I m u i i nsriiihlcs', but they also sometimes erased distinctions between A Volume of Creativity
l n.iiiin- m their appearance rather than in the mode of their formation
i i l m l l K.l). In this respect high value was placed on verisimilitude, and 'creative This book challenges the idea that the capacity for creative improvisation is exer-
l.miasy' was subordinated to the 'technical virtuosity of mimesis' (Daston and cised by individuais against the conventions of culture and society. Improvisation
l'ark 2001: 284). Novelty in the form of recombination was joined by wonders in and creativity, we contend, are intrinsic to the very processes of social and cultural
lhe form of copies. life. The chapters that follow highlight the creative dynamic of cultural processes:
the extent to which cultural forms are produced and reproduced, rather than merely
Medieval and early modern understandings of wonder and novelty, as forms of
recombination and assemblage of disparate elements, were not necessarily distinct replicated and transmitted, through active and experimental engagement over time
and in the generation of persons within their social and material environments.
from those that emphasized emergence through flows and growth. This is attested,
for example, by Bakhtin's (1984 [1965]) analysis of medieval European popular They describe the ways in which creative and improvisational action emerges
in writing, drawing, pattern-making, dreaming, poetry, drama and dance,
culture and folk humour. Central to popular cultural forms, especially carnival,
was the imagery of grotesque realism that rejected the notion of finished forms, politics, photography, narrative, commercial industry, radio and the practice of
be they animal, vegetable or human, and presented these not in a static world, but anthropology. They report on studies carried out in countries and regions as di verse
in terms of their movement, blending and merging. Thus 'the grotesque image as Japan, Papua New Guinea, England, Southern índia, Uganda, Algeria, Java and
reflects a phenomenon in transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis, of New Zealand. Departing from the conventional characterization of creativity as
death and birth, growing and becoming' (ibid.: 24). One of the central grotesque an ability of gifted persons, they show how creativity is not necessarily sought
after or celebrated in contexts where continuities with established cultural forms
images was that of the open human body which was blended with other bodies,
with animais and objects: this was an 'ever unfinished, ever creating body' (ibid.: and models are valued. Emphasizing the collaborative and political dimensions
26). And among the principal sources for this grotesque conception of the body of creative performance, they demonstrate the ways in which the reproduction
was the very tradition of wonders, with its hybrid figures of mixed parts, which we of existing forms leads in practice to variations in their situated enactments. And
have already described. Thus in the medieval popular imagery of the grotesque we with an eye to how the meaning of creativity hás itself changed throughout the
(ind a fusion rather than a division between the combinatorial assembly of hybrid history of ideas, they consider its applicability as a term of cross-cultural analysis,
forms and the processual generation of a world of movement and becoming. as well as the potential of a focus on creative improvisation to support or subvert
The classical aesthetics of the Renaissance, however, brought a shift of emphasis existing paradigms both within and beyond the discipline of anthropology.
The issue of how form is generated from precedent is central to the chapters
in conceptions of the body, away from principies of flux and generativity, towards
by Amar S. Mall and Fuyubi Nakamura, who explore the dynamics of making in
a notion of the completed, clearly bounded body of the individual separated from
the respective fields of pattern-drawing and calligraphic writing in order to trace
the world. As Stallybrass and White (1986) have shown, the cânon of the classical
hody, with stable boundaries, underwrote the formation of individual identity the material engagements entailed in creative practice. Such exploration prompts
qucstions about the relationships between repetition and deviation, and between
ihroughout the seventeenth century. This shift from conceptions of a relational body
replication and variation. That there is creativity in the following of tradition is a
Ihat was opcn, hctcrogeneous and part of generative processes, to an individuated
body with slablc boundaries and fixed form, may, we suggest, be correlated with Ihcmc pursued in chapters throughout this volume, ranging from Felicia Hughes-
changing understandings of what it means to create: from a formulation in which Frccland's discussion of Javanese dance to Jeanette Edwards' demonstration of
Io uva k1 is Io be pari of an ongoing process, to one that 'rcads back' from the how Baptists explore innovative techniques of human conception through ancient
linished producl Io lhe capacily that produced il. And as I h i s capacily becamc Icxts. Thcsc chapters are conccrncd with nuances and complexities, qucstioning
i n i i i i - doscly associaled, in lhe eighleenth century, wilh i i u l i v n l i i n l iifjiMicy aiul lhe black-and-while simplicily of such receivcd oppositions as invcntion versus
I m i l i MI I n i m . i i i lacullics, a furllicr diffcrcnlialion look pliii < .m\' ilrliiu-d as convention, and innovationversus tradition. In this they show hpwethnographically
 Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

informed anthropological research can make a quite distinctive contribution to the should be conveyed. Robey Callahan and Trevor Stack, in their chapter, describe
contemporary understanding of creative processes (see Glaskin 2005). how the struggling ethnographer attempts to reconcile the flux and immersion
Creativity, with its improvisational dynamic, calls for analysis of the social of the field experiencc with the isolation and criticai distance required of the
relations and cultural formations that guide it and in terms of which it hás writer who is under pressure to produce new knowledge. Amanda Ravetz, for
effects. Accordingly, many chapters explore processes of creativity in relation to her part, analyses the tension between the pedagogical principies embedded in
definitions of personhood, sources of agency, patterns of ownership and notions the training of students, respectively, in fine art and social anthropology, through
of authorship. As Karin Barber explains in the next chapter, creativity is shaped the example of a workshop for students in visual anthropology. As both these
by models of social being. Given these entanglements, it is better approached as chapters show, and as Mark Harris points out in his Introduction to Part IV, there
socially embedded and culturally diffuse than as a clearly defined act or bounded are good grounds for opening up the notion of the field to include the labours of
product. These qualities of creativity are described in subsequent chapters in both writing and teaching, and the settings in which they are conducted, since
terms of fluidity and flows. Rather than associating creativity with newness and lhey are as much implicated in the creation of anthropological knowledge as is the
the disjunctures this is often taken to imply, several authors stress continuity and labour of fieldwork, conventionally understood.
connection as ways through which creativity emerges. Treating creativity as a Apart from an opening chapter by Karin Barber and a closing epilogue by
social and cultural process, these authors bring into criticai focus the limitations Clara Mafra, this book is divided into four parts. The first, corresponding to the
entailed in conceptualizing creativity as a form of invention exercised by the generative aspect of improvisation, explores the creativities of life and art, and
autonomous individual. considers the issues involved in the attribution of creative agency, for example in
As a social process in which persons are engaged, creativity is at the same lhe fields of the graphic and performing arts, and of intellectual property law. The
time configured, narrated and reflected upon in discourse. While emergent in second part, corresponding to the relational aspect of improvisation, shows how
ongoing social action, it is also often marked and framed. These reflexive lhe sources of creativity are practically embedded in social, political and religious
dimensions, as Barber shows, can be integral to performances that bring their institutions, and in dispositions of power and authority. Part III is concerned with
own processes of production into focus. Relations of power and authority are improvisation in its temporal aspect, focusing on the relation between creativity
often important in determining what is considered to be creative and what is and the perception and passage of time in history, tradition and the life-course.
not. Judith Scheele's chapter draws attention to the workings of these relations The final part takcs up the improvisational quality of the way we work, looking
alongside the characterization of tradition in local political discourses. James at the creativity of anthropological scholarship itself. How, if at ali, does the
Leach's contribution also underlines the politics implicit in anthropological gcneration of new knowledge in the dialogic contexts of encounters between
interpretations that deploy Western concepts of creativity in places where they do cihnographers and their subjects, or between teachers of anthropology and their
not necessarily belong. He warns that such deployment can amount to a kind of siudcnts, differ from the generativity of those interpersonal encounters in which
'conceptual colonialism'. The cross-cultural dynamics entailed in the construal ali social and cultural life subsists? For some of the answers, and for many more
of creativity are central to the chapter by Elizabeth Cory-Pearce, in which she questions, read on!
questions the stability of the categories 'self and 'other', and asks where creativity
is located in a world of historical interconnections and migrations. Such questions
are pertinent, especially in the light of concerns with how innovation works in
colonial and post-colonial contexts (see Kiichler and Were 2003). Notes
These contexts, of course, include those of anthropological research and
(caching. I f, as John Davis (1999) hás asserted, anthropological description is itself l . Wc are grateful to Margherita Pieraccini for this observation.
a creative practice, thcn our investigations of creativity cannot be confined to the
settings of (ieldwork, as portrayed for example in the chapters by Richard Vokes Relerences
and Clara Mafru, but musl extcnd to the environments of the ethnographer's sludy,
in which he or she sits down Io wrilc, nol to mcntion lhe dassroom <>i k-aching Allcn, N. (1998), The calegory of substancc: a Maussian theme revisited', in
woikshop wlierc profissional anlhropologisls and s l i u l i - n f s lofdlu-i wn-sik- wilh W. James and N..I. Alk-n (c-ds). Mareei Maiixs: A Cenlenary Tribute, New
lhe prohlcins of whal anthropological knowledju' is, how n r. r i r u i r d .m,l how il Yoik: Heighahn Hooks.
 Tim íngold and Elizabeth Hallam Creativity and Cultural Improvisation

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Improvisation and the Art of Making

Things Stick
Karin Barber

The concepts of creativity and cultural improvisation invite us to focus on the

growing points of social life: to ask how new ideas, genres, forms of social being
come into existence. They present a challenge to anthropology to try to trace the
most elusive and fluid aspects of reality. But they also challenge us to understand
lhe fluidity of social processes in relation to the almost universal human effort to
li x things - to nail cultural arrangements down, to produce forms that will endure.
Pcople's ceaseless innovative and re-creative activity is often directed precisely
lowards making a mark that transcends space and time. Improvisation and the art
of making things stick cannot be separated: we find them everywhere fused and
inlertwined.
Two venerable models of the nature, place and scope of social innovation lie
hchind current thinking. One proposes that the normal situation is inertia, stability
and repetition. What needs to be explained is how and why change happens.
H;iscom, for example, suggested that conformity is taken for granted in most
social institutions. A preferred site in which to trace the movements of change
and innovation, therefore, is art forms, where a greater degree of innovation and
creativity may be expected. This, he suggested, may serve to shed light on less
visible processes of social and political change in the wider society. Even só,
lhe problem is to explain how traditional, routine repetition with variations - in
folk music, for example - can sometimes jump to a qualitative transformation
involving genuine originality (Bascom 1959). Só in traditional societies, stability
iiiul continuity are the default situation and are associated with conformity and a
lack of originality; change is exceptional and - when it is not the result of externai
forces - it is associated with individual innovation and creativity.
The other model starts from the opposite assumption - that everything
ilui happens is new, unrepeatable and not wholly predictable from what went
lielbrc. G.H. Mcad, in The Philosophy of the Present, called this the 'emergent'.
The present 'is nol u piccc cut out anywhere from the temporal dimcnsion of
iinilbrmly passing rcalily. lis chiei" ivfcrcnce is Io lhe emergent evenl, tlial is, u>
lho occurrence ol' sonu-lliinj' which is more Ihan lhe processes lhal have led up