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The following is a report of a qualitative inquiry regarding a team of novices and their journey in developing shared expertise and social creativity in the domain of group facilitation and process consultation. Using the format of public reflection, the participants engaged in an intensive collaborative process of meaning making, along with the university instructor as expert, while being teaching assistants in a course about group dynamics. Using the framework of evolving systems, the methodology employed an instrumental case study approach, with the case defined as the group. Data sets included videotaped debriefing and planning sessions, individual and group interviews, and written reflection diaries, covering the entire lifespan of the team. These sets were transcribed and subjected to an examination of the unfolding cognitive and metacognitive, creative, value, and social processes embedded within the team interactions. The process patterns do demonstrate that under the conditions created within this context, novices can pool together expert thinking skills that can collectively compare favorably to those of an expert. Social creativity also emerged as a property of the system, and these processes seemed to piggyback onto the socially shared expert thinking skills. Values acted as tacit rules governing and shaping the social interactions. Ones that showed a strong association to the development of shared expertise were: supportiveness, care, listening/questioning for clarity, helpfulness, openness to disagreement/feedback, and plurality. Values that showed a strong association to the development of social creativity were: supportiveness, listening/questioning for clarity, helpfulness, and openness to disagreement/feedback. Humor was an ever present element to the system and acted as a lubricant producing social ease. The patterns that emanated from this inquiry were placed into two larger theoretical frameworks, socially shared cogni

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This thesis is the first dedicated sociological attempt to offer a critical response to cultural studies and allied discourses that concern themselves with the relationship between technology and violence. A critical reconstruction is necessary because these cultural theorists have failed to adequately contextualize their arguments in relation to both the globally ascendant neoliberal policy outlook and its associated social Darwinian technoculture: the combined pernicious effects of which could be described as the logic of ???social constructionism as social psychosis???. The most prominent manifestation of this theoretical psychosis has to do with an interest in biotechnology in particular. The problem I identify in the treatment of this theme is how easily it can be used to support a technologically determinist position. One undesirable side effect is that these determinists are able to project from present trends a dystopian exhaustion of all critique through their focus on violence. In the thesis of ???bioglobalism??? this state of affairs is also deployed to take sociologists to task for insufficient recognition of processual ???network??? forms of distributed agency in technological processes. At stake therefore is the recovery of sociological critique. It follows that the core of my thesis is the radical reworking of two related heuristic devices: seriality and contingency. Seriality is taken to refer to social practices as diverse as the possible relationships between the social problem of rationality, case studies of individuals who have run amok, and the functioning of network characteristics. I use contingency to eschew seriality???s deterministic accounting of the social. Here I propose a new conceptual relationship between creativity and action. Emphasis is accordingly placed upon two related normative projects: Raymond Williams???s cultural materialism, and three of the ???problematiques??? Peter Wagner has identified as inescapable for theorizing modernity: the continuity of the acting person, the certainty of knowledge, and the viability of the political order. I conclude with a renewed conception of the role of normative critique as a form of conceptual therapy for bioglobal projections of seriality.

This thesis is the first dedicated sociological attempt to offer a critical response to cultural studies and allied discourses that concern themselves with the relationship between technology and violence. A critical reconstruction is necessary because these cultural theorists have failed to adequately contextualize their arguments in relation to both the globally ascendant neoliberal policy outlook and its associated social Darwinian technoculture: the combined pernicious effects of which could be described as the logic of ???social constructionism as social psychosis???. The most prominent manifestation of this theoretical psychosis has to do with an interest in biotechnology in particular. The problem I identify in the treatment of this theme is how easily it can be used to support a technologically determinist position. One undesirable side effect is that these determinists are able to project from present trends a dystopian exhaustion of all critique through their focus on violence. In the thesis of ???bioglobalism??? this state of affairs is also deployed to take sociologists to task for insufficient recognition of processual ???network??? forms of distributed agency in technological processes. At stake therefore is the recovery of sociological critique. It follows that the core of my thesis is the radical reworking of two related heuristic devices: seriality and contingency. Seriality is taken to refer to social practices as diverse as the possible relationships between the social problem of rationality, case studies of individuals who have run amok, and the functioning of network characteristics. I use contingency to eschew seriality???s deterministic accounting of the social. Here I propose a new conceptual relationship between creativity and action. Emphasis is accordingly placed upon two related normative projects: Raymond Williams???s cultural materialism, and three of the ???problematiques??? Peter Wagner has identified as inescapable for theorizing modernity: the continuity of the acting person, the certainty of knowledge, and the viability of the political order. I conclude with a renewed conception of the role of normative critique as a form of conceptual therapy for bioglobal projections of seriality.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is an exploration of Richard Florida’s Creative Class theory within an African city context. The economic value of the Creative Class is that their work revolves around innovation, a quality seen as essential to ‘new economy’ urban growth. Quality of place (that which makes ‘New York, New York’) is said to attract the Creative Class to certain cities, as lifestyle amenities are valued as much as employment opportunities. Nairobi is an example of an African city currently attracting both Kenyan and expatriate Creative Class workers, particularly in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. The research aimed to understand why this group chose to live in Nairobi and to describe Nairobi’s quality of place, with a particular focus on infrastructure disruption. Overall, the Western city is the reference point for Creative Class literature and quality of place is embedded within a framework of urbanisation through industrialisation - a period known as the first urbanisation wave. The fastest growing cities on the African continent (Nairobi included) are part of the second urbanisation wave, an urbanisation process spurred by a set of vastly different dynamics in which industrialisation is virtually inconsequential. Urbanisation through industrialisation induced concomitant investments into infrastructure and thus it is unsurprising that the Creative Class literature assumes that urban infrastructure is ‘always on’ – available at all times as an inherent attribute of place. The point of the study was not to draw modernist comparisons, but rather to emphasise that notions of quality of place are incomplete given the rise of technological innovation in urban Africa, where cities often suffer from disruption of basic infrastructure. Until more recently, African cities did not feature in the Creative Class literature; the predominantly rural focus of ICT diffusion in the literature is a contributing factor to the lack of information on the Creative Class in African cities. The case study revealed that Nairobi’s quality of place is fundamentally different to normative prescriptions given to urban planners and, in some instances, is highly frustrating and unattractive. Contrary to Florida’s theory, those interviewed were not leaving Nairobi in search of cities with higher quality of place attributes or better infrastructure provision – individuals were rooted to the city because of their work and the professional networks with which they were associated. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie is ‘n verkenning van Richard Florida se teorie van Kreatiewe Klas binne die konteks van ‘n Afrika-stad. Die ekonomiese waarde van die Kreatiewe Klas is dat hul werk rondom innovasie draai, wat as noodsaaklik beskou word vir die stedelike groei van die “nuwe ekonomie”. Plekkwaliteit (dit wat ‘New York, New York’ maak) lok luidens Florida se teorie die Kreatiewe Klas na sekere stede, aangesien hulle leefstylgeriewe net so hoog soos werksgeleenthede op die prys stel. Nairobi is ‘n voorbeeld van ‘n Afrika-stad wat tans beide Keniaanse en buitelandse werkers van die Kreatiewe Klas lok, veral na die plaaslike Informasie- en Kommunikasietegnologiesektor (IKT-sektor). Die navorsing het gepoog om te verstaan waarom hierdie groep gekies het om in Nairobi te woon asook om Nairobi se plekkwaliteit te beskryf, met ‘n spesifieke klem op die onderbreking van infrastruktuur. Oor die algemeen is die Westerse stad die vertrekpunt vir literatuur oor die Kreatiewe Klas. Daarby word plekkwaliteit gewoonlik beskou binne die raamwerk van “verstedeliking deur industrialisering”, wat bekend staan as die eerste verstedelikingsgolf. Die vinnig groeiendste stede op die Afrika-vasteland (insluitend Nairobi) is deel van ‘n tweede verstedelikingsgolf wat deur gans ander dinamika gedryf word, waarvan industrialisering ‘n feitlik weglaatbare faset is. Verstedeliking deur industrialisering het tot gelyktydige beleggings in infrastruktuur aanleiding gegee, dus maak dit sin dat literatuur oor die Kreatiewe Klas aanvaar dat stedelike infrastruktuur “altyd aan” is – dit wil sê, immerbeskikbaar as ‘n onafskeidelike kenmerk van die plek. Die doel van die studie was nie om modernistiese vergelykings te tref nie, maar om te beklemtoon dat begrippe van plekkwaliteit onvolledig is gegewe die opkoms van tegnologiese innovasie in stedelike Afrika, waar stede dikwels ly aan onderbrekings van basiese infrastruktuur. Tot baie onlangs is Afrika-stede nie genoem in literatuur oor die Kreatiewe Klas nie; die oorwegend landelike fokus van die verspreiding van IKT dra ook by tot die gebrek aan inligting aangaande die Kreatiewe Klas in Afrikastede. Die gevallestudie het onthul dat Nairobi se plekkwaliteit in wese anders is as die normatiewe voorskrifte wat aan stadsbeplanners voorgehou word en dat dit selfs, in sommige gevalle, uiters frustrerend en onaantreklik is. In teenstelling met Florida se teorie was diegene met wie onderhoude gevoer is, nie van plan om Nairobi te verlaat op soek na stede met hoër plekkwaliteitkenmerke of beter infrastruktuur nie – dié individue was gevestig in die stad weens hul werk en die professionele netwerke waarmee hul geskakel het.

Thesis (MA (VA)(Visual Arts))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / This thesis considers radical and reactionary political strategies for questioning systems of gender/sexuality categorisation and finds both wanting in terms of the cultural insularity and mainstream assimilation each respectively engenders. An alternative is posited in the form of radical assimilation, a theory borrowing the best elements from both approaches. The remainder of the study is focussed on the search for personal and iconographic strategies to pursue a politic of radical assimilation in my creative production. These strategies are finally exemplified and manifested via discussions of the practical corpus of artworks that aided in the formation of this politic. The discursive framework in which this theorization occurs includes considerations of queer theory and photography (especially domestic photography and portraiture) and subjective contextualization (invoking the domestic uses of images), and all should be seen as constituting a personal discursive framework: an attempt to counter the reductive scope an uncontextualised analysis of my work allows. This study is accordingly an explication of the processes that turn the personal into the political; a critical affirmation of difference; and an attempt to narrow the distances between us.

The study emphasizes two major issues of development: poverty theories and human development. Human development is understood as a process of expanding human freedoms and potential. Focus is put on the perception of Ethiopians on the promotion of creativity as possible means to foster human development and as a result reduce many dimensions of poverty. The study evaluates the perception of people involved in child development in Ethiopia regarding the promotion of ‘creativity as capability’ as a factor contributing to human development. The conclusions of this study can provide Ethiopian development effort with practical insight on how Ethiopian citizens perceive ‘creativity’ within their culture as potential chance and effective addition to promote human development in Ethiopia. The study identifies several existing as well as absent aspects of creativity within Ethiopian society and presents practical starting points to establish ‘creativity as capability’ on micro-level in Ethiopian communities. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)