Collective Creativity

Art and Society in the South Pacific

Collective Creativity offers an analysis of the explosion of artistic creativity currently taking place on the South Pacific island of Rarotonga. By exploring the construction of this art-world through the ways in which creativity and innovation are linked to social structures and social networks, this book investigates the social aspects of making fine art in order to present a ’collective’ theory of creativity. With a close examination of tourism, galleries and, of course, the artists themselves, Katherine Giuffre presents a detailed picture of a complex and multi-faceted community through the words of the art-world participants themselves. Theoretically sophisticated, yet grounded with rich empirical data, this book will appeal not only to anthropologists with an interest in the South Pacific, but also to scholars concerned with questions of ethnicity, creativity, globalization and network analysis.