Contemporary society has seen an unprecedented rise in both the demand and the desire to be creative, to bring something new into the world. Once the reserve of artistic subcultures, creativity has now become a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society.
In this new book, cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz investigates how the ideal of creativity has grown into a major social force, from the art of the avant-garde and postmodernism to the 'creative industries' and the innovation economy, the psychology of creativity and self-growth, the media representation of creative stars, and the urban design of 'creative cities'. Where creativity is often assumed to be a force for good, Reckwitz looks critically at how this imperative has developed from the 1970s to the present day. Though we may well perceive creativity as the realization of some natural and innate potential within us, it has rather to be understood within the structures of a very specific culture of the new in late modern society.

The Invention of Creativity is a bold and refreshing counter to conventional wisdom that shows how our age is defined by radical and restrictive processes of social aestheticization. It will be of great interest to those working in a variety of disciplines, from cultural and social theory to art history and aesthetics.

Andreas Reckwitz is Professor of Cultural Sociology at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).

Contents
Preface to the English edition
Introduction: The Inevitability of Creativity
1. Aestheticisation and the creativity dispositif: The social regime of aesthetic novelty
2. Artistic creation, the genius and the audience: The formation of the modern artistic field
3. Centrifugal art: Dissolving the boundaries of art practices
4. The rise of the aesthetic economy: Permanent innovation, creative industries and the design economy
5. The psychological turn in creativity: From the pathological genius to the normalisation of the self as resource
6. The Genesis of the star system: The mass media construction of expressive individuality
7. Creative cities: Culturalising urban life
8. Society of creativity: Structures, dissonance, alternatives
Notes
Index