Constraining and enabling creativity: the theoretical ideas surrounding creativity, agency and structure

Sternberg and Kaufman have written that ‘constraints do not necessarily harm creative potential – indeed they are built into the construct of creativity itself’ (2010, p. 481). This paper will take this assertion and apply it to what Anthony Giddens (1976) has labelled one of the central problems in social theory, that is, the relationship between agency, an individual’s ability to make choice, and structure, those things seen to determine behaviour. This relationship has been explored extensively by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990, 1993 and 1996) in regard to cultural production. It is implicitly carried in the systems model of creativity developed within psychology (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, 1990, 1997, 1999), as the author has argued in other papers (McIntyre 2008, 2008a, 2009, 2009a). This paper will explore this issue in relation to the notion of freedom, as depicted by the philosopher David Hume (1952), how this notion relates to the conditions of creativity as conventionally seen in Romantic accounts and how this construct is typified in other more rationally focused views of creativity. In doing this the paper will analyse, critique, and synthesize existing literature on creativity and cultural production, specifically that concerned with the theoretical ideas surrounding creativity, agency and structure.