The Sociology of Creativity: A Sociological Systems Framework to Identify and Explain Social Mechanisms of Creativity and Innovative Developments

Tom R. Burns. Nora Machado. [Autores]
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ISSN: 1647-0893
CIES/IUL
Portugal - Lisboa
Febrero de 2014

Creativity is a universal activity, essential in an evolutionary perspective, to adaptation and sustainability. This manuscript on the sociology of creativity has three purposes: (1) to develop the argument that key factors in creative activity are socially based and developed; hence, sociology can contribute significantly to understanding and explaining human creativity; (2) to present a systems approach which enables us to link in a systematic and coherent way the disparate social factors and mechanisms that are involved in creative activity and to describe and explain creativity; (3) to illustrate a sociological systems theory’s (Actor-Systems-Dynamics) conceptualization of multiple interrelated institutional, cultural, and interaction factors and mechanisms and their role in creativity and innovative development with respect to diverse empirical bases.