Description: Michael Hanchett Hanson weaves together the history of the development of the psychological concepts of creativity with social constructivist views of power dynamics and pragmatic insights. He provides an engaging, thought-provoking analysis to interest anyone involved with creativity, from psychologists and educators to artists and philosophers.
Review Quotes:
'To understand the psychology of creativity one needs to understand first the history and social contexts in which the study of creativity originated. Michael Hanchett Hanson's book offers us an invaluable, scholarly reading of creativity as a powerful ideology. As masterfully shown here, this ideology is both intelligible by yesterday's ways of worldmaking and calls for a deep reflection on the role and function of creativity for tomorrow's world-in-the-making.' - Vlad Petre Gl?veanu, Associate Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark, Editor, Europe's Journal of Psychology, author of Thinking Through Culture and Creativity: An Integrative Model
'Though creativity poses as a natural phenomenon, it has a history. In this incisive genealogy spanning psychology and education, philosophy and cultural studies Michael Hanchett Hanson reconstructs the shifting functions of this central concept. What emerges is not only the story of a concept and a discipline, but a history of ourselves.' - Chris Higgins, Associate Professor and Program Coordinator, Philosophy of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Editor, Educational Theory, author of The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice
'Michael Hanchett Hanson's engaging and critical history of theories of creativity will be useful for practitioners and scholars. His focus on the ways we use theories of creativity to construct ourselves and our worlds is itself innovative, as well as pragmatic and thought-provoking.' - Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Composing a Life