Creativity Culture Contact and Diversity

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Creativity, Culture Contact, and Diversity
Alfonso Montuoria; Hillary Stephensona

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CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

ALFONSO MONTUORI
Downloaded By: [2007-2008 Nanyang Technological University] At: 13:23 7 July 2010
HILLARY STEPHENSON
Recent trends in the understanding of culture contact, with concepts such as
hybridization, cosmopolitanism, and cultural innovation, open up the possibility
of a new understanding of human interaction. While the social imaginary is rich
with images of conflict resulting from culture contact, images of creativity are
far rarer. We propose the creation of an extensive research project to document
cultural creativity, starting with obvious examples in the arts, and expanding into
all areas of life in order to counteract the present conflictual images and develop
a social imaginary with positive attractor images that can guide to greater
creativity.
KEYWORDS: Attractor image, complexity, creativity, culture, domination, essentialism,
hybridization, identity, interaction, social imaginary.
The great difficulty is thus considering the unity of the many and the multiplicity
of the unity. Those who see the diversity of cultures tend to overlook the unity
of mankind; those who see the unity of mankind tend to dismiss the diversity of
cultures. Edgar Morin
The scope of the discourse of cultural diversity spans the globe and encompasses
much of the twentieth century. Adding additional perspectives requires the examination of some of the existing dominant frameworks related to cultural diversity. It
also necessitates addressing the way the underlying assumptions and the contexts
out of which these frameworks arose, and how they have shaped the focus and
parameters of cultural diversity theory and research.
THE MELTING POT
In the years following the American Revolution, the image of the United States
as a great melting pot offered a romantic vision of a country where the multiple
cultural identities and practices of the thousands of immigrants that flooded the
Address correspondence to Alfonso Montuori, California Institute of Integral Studies,

San Francisco, CA, USA. E-mail: alphonsomontuori@earthlink.net
266
267
United States would melt together to form a new distinct, homogenized, and
unified American identity and culture. The term itself was popularized by the
famous 1908 play by Israel Zangwill (18641926) entitled The Melting Pot,
in which Zangwill, a British-born Jew, portrayed America as Gods crucible,
the great melting pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!
(Wortham 2001, 5). Despite its idyllic image, the melting pot concept was rooted in
a strong fear and distrust of cultural pluralism, a belief in the supremacy of white,
Anglo-Saxon, Protestant American culture, and an investment in the attainment of
cultural homogeneity through processes of coerced assimilation. Although it has
been widely critiqued and discredited in more recent times, it remains part of the
popular American consciousness and vocabulary, and has significantly influenced
the attitudes, assumptions, and practices related to cultural diversity in the United
States.
While in theory the melting pot refers to the blending or fusion of different
cultural groups, in practice it manifested as an effort to promote assimilation and
conformity to White, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon American values, ideals, and culture
through a process called Americanization. As Anne Wortham (2005) explains:
When it became apparent during the decades before World War I that immigrants
were not giving up the ways of their origins as the price of assimilation and
were not mixing together in the great crucible to form the new American, the
melting-pot idea as a natural laissez-faire process was abandoned. At the turn
of the twentieth century, the policy of coerced assimilation, known as Americanization, was inaugurated. Public schools, patriotic societies, chambers of
commerce, womens clubs, public libraries, social settlements, and even industrial plants were enlisted to divest the immigrant of his foreign heritage, suppress
his native language, teach him English, make him a naturalized citizen, and inject
into him a loyalty to American institutions. (7)
The Americanization movement manifested most strongly in the public education

system between 1900 and 1930 and was shaped through the discourse of social
science and educational theorists such as Frances Kellor and E.P. Chubberley, both
of whom advocated for the controlled, intentional indoctrination and assimilation
of immigrants into adopting a distinctly American culture and identity (Kraver
1999). Cultural homogeneity was the goal. The establishment of White, Protestant,
American identity as a cultural norm also meant that successful assimilation to
American culture, and therefore a degree of upward mobility, was open to White
European immigrants in a way it never would be to people of non-European
descent.
The question of the viability of the melting pot concept has been located in a debate between cultural assimilation versus cultural pluralism. The Americanization
campaign taught us that cultural diversity is something to be feared, managed,
and controlled, and efforts to put the concept of the melting pot into practice
have left a residue of assumptions about cultural diversity as a source of conflict
and contention that continue to permeate popular U.S. attitudes about cultural
difference.
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ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON
POSTCOLONIALISM
As European immigrants to the United States were facing institutionalized Americanization, peoples of the newly independent third world were grappling with
the legacies of European colonial rule and struggling for independence. Out of
this context arose postcolonial theory or postcolonial studies, in which issues
of culture are examined in a context of resistance and opposition to European
cultural imperialism and the dynamics of dominance and marginalization that
emerged during colonial rule and persisted post-independence. It can be difficult
to define the boundaries of postcolonial studies in that it is rooted in the independence struggles of colonized nations of South Asia and Africa, and yet has
been institutionalized within the U.S. academy. Postcolonial studies cross multiple
disciplines and have been at times intertwined with multiculturalism and ethnic
studies in the United States, although the fields are not synonymous (Loomba
et al. 2005). Some of the primary concerns of postcolonial scholars have been to
examine the impact of imperialism and colonization on the culture and identity
of the colonized, to assert the voices (or at least issues) of the formerly colonized
into the dominant discourses on culture and politics, and in general to challenge
the dominant epistemologies of European colonial powers as they were forced on
the colonized.
Edward Saids seminal work Orientalism (Said 1978) has been credited with
launching colonial discourse, and therefore the postcolonial theories that followed
(Williams and Chrisman 1994). Said examines the representation and misrepresentation of the peoples and cultures of the colonized East by Western forces
of imperialism and colonization. Said not only challenged the entrenched and
deprecatory construct of the Orient in Western consciousness, but invited further
exploration into the relationship between culture and imperialism (Williams and
Chrisman 1994).
Indeed, much of what has arisen out of postcolonial discourse in relation
to culture and cultural difference focuses on the process by which colonized
or oppressed peoples re-claim and re-define their cultural or racial identity as
a form of resistance to that oppression. In his widely read Black Skin, White
Masks, Franz Fanon (1967) examines the construction of the colonized Other.
Speaking of Black people and alluding to Fanons insight, Hall writes: Not only,
in Saids Orientalist sense, were we constructed as different and other within
the categories of knowledge of the West by those regimes. They had the power
to make us see and experience ourselves as Other (1990, 394, emphasis in the
original). The process by which colonized or formerly colonized people may come
to consciousness of their internalization of an identity as the Other is one of the
markers of postcolonial discourse.
The focus on the very construction of a cultural identity, and the re-defining of
this identity as an act of resistance to imperialism and oppression, is one aspect
that defines postcolonialisms treatment of issues of cultural diversity. Postcolonial
discourse emphasizes cultural identity as a positioning, an aspect of ourselves that
has been constructed in part through forces of imperialism and colonization and
that therefore marks our position in relation to those forces (Hall 1990). The focus
269
is not so much on issues of cultural pluralism or an acceptance of diversity, but

rather what options or strategies might be available to the colonized in their efforts
to engage with and navigate the dominant or imperial culture (Ashcroft 2001).
MULTICULTURALISM AND IDENTITY POLITICS

Just as postcolonial thought arose out of the liberation struggles of colonized
peoples, multiculturalism arose in conjunction with the politics of the 1960s Civil
Rights era in the United States and was strengthened by the shift toward cultural pluralism, or the embracing and valuing of the co-existence of distinct and
eclectic cultural identities and groups. As marginalized racial and ethnic groups,
women, and gay and lesbian communities gained greater access to and visibility in
educational and workplace institutions, multiculturalism emerged as a proactive
effort to increase inclusivity and equity in the public sphere. In this way, the term
diversity took on a distinct connotation of that which works against discrimination based on ones racial, ethnic, cultural, class, gender, or sexual identity.
Multiculturalism also developed as an academic discourse through the creation of
womens and ethnic studies departments such as Chicano Studies, Black Studies, and Asian-American Studies that sought to bring the social movements of the
1960s and 1970s into the university classroom.
While not separate from academic discourse, the multiculturalism that arose as
a practice outside the academy is often criticized for being too essentialist in its
treatment of cultural identities, shallow in its tendency to conflate ethnicity, race,
and culture, and passive in its avoidance of the issues of power, privilege, and
oppression that shape relationships between racial and ethnic groups. As author
Alicia Rodriguez writes:
There is a stark contrast between the traditional multicultural education scholarship based on identity politics that has been translated into elementary and
secondary educational practices in relatively innocuous ways and the more contentious translations of multiculturalism that have been developing in higher
education institutions in the wake of a sort of second wave of identity politics
in the late 1980s and 1990s. The former has perpetuated relatively mainstream,
heavily essentialistic constructions of cultural identity in the project to further
diversity, equity, unity, and self-esteem in school settings while the latter theories
of identity have remained at the academy and have not trickled down, so to speak,
to pre-university settings. (2)
These efforts to further diversity, equity, and unity have come in the form of
diversity initiatives in educational and other professional settings. Cultural competence training has emerged and been championed as a necessary aspect of
preparing professionals, in fields ranging from health and human services to education to multinational corporations, to not only tolerate growing diversity in
the workplace, but actively engage in organizational diversity efforts (Kulik and
Roberson 2008).
In their review of corporate diversity training initiatives from 1964 to the
present, Anand and Winters (2008) examine the different phases through which
270
corporate diversity initiatives have passed. Early efforts that focused on compliance
with non-discrimination laws and the assimilation of women and minority groups
(meaning people of color) gave way to trainings focusing on building knowledge
of and sensitivity toward women and different racial groups, as well as developing
skills in responding to increased diversity. This shift was due in part to the work
of Roosevelt Thomas, considered to be a pioneer in the diversity training field.
Thomass concept of diversity management emphasized the connection between
business success and the developing of concrete skills and practices to address
diversity issues in the workplace (Thomas in Johnson 2008, 409). Corporate
diversity training during the late 1980s through the late 1990s ranged in style and
content from more intense, confrontational trainings with a social justice focus, to
more watered-down versions (Anand and Winters 2008).
The more contentious multicultural academic discourse referenced by Rodriguez as a second wave of identity politics shifts the primary focus of diversity
discourse and practice to the examination of current and historical experiences
of oppression, discrimination, cultural appropriation, and the systemic power relationships between groups. Under this more critical framework of diversity, the
social, economic, and political context of ones ethnic, racial, cultural, and other
social identities is emphasized and theorized. This form of multiculturalism has
revealed itself prominently in feminist discourse and critical race theory (CRT),
primarily through the voices of women of color feminist writers and activists who
emphasized the importance of recognizing what critical race theorist Kimberle
Crenshaw calls the difference that difference makes (as cited in Chen 2007, 1),
or the way the intersection of racial, ethnic, and cultural identities in a context of
White supremacy and patriarchy shape the ways women can engage and respond
to diversity with and among each other (Chen 2007; Rodriguez 2000). Authors
such as Trinh T. Minh-ha, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, and
Gloria Anzaldua have asserted the marginalized voices and experiences of women
of color, but also shed light on the construct of outsider (Hill Collins 1986) and
mestiza (Anzaldua 1987) identities and experiences, marking one of the points
at which postcolonialism and multiculturalism intersect.
If the era of Americanization stressed cultural sameness, the multiculturalism
and identity politics that have emerged since the latter half of the twentieth century in the United States have located issues of diversity in the deconstruction
of difference. This focus on the role of systemic structures of dominance and
marginalization, as well as the sometimes less contentious embracing of cultural
pluralism through cultural competence and diversity training, continue to largely
define the scope of research and discourse on cultural diversity.
COSMOPOLITANISM
Although cosmopolitanism as a concept is not new, the recent focus on contemporary forces of globalization has brought fresh perspectives to this discourse.
Cosmopolitanism as a term itself has multiple meanings. Waldron (in Benhabib
2006) sketches out three distinct aspects of the term:
271
For some, [cosmopolitanism] is about the love of mankind, or about duties

owed to every person in the world, without national or ethnic differentiation. For
others, the word . . . connotes the fluidity and evanescence of culture; it celebrates
the compromising or evaporation of the boundaries between cultures . . . and
it anticipates a world of fractured and mingled identities. For still others . . .
cosmopolitanism is about order and norms, not just culture and moral sentiment.
(83)
Emphasizing this love of mankind, Appiahs cosmopolitanism offers us the

chance to become citizens of the cosmos (2006, xiv), bound by a sense of
shared humanity, mutual obligation to one another, and appreciation of human
difference. Cosmopolitanism in this sense invites us, without rejecting connections rooted in cultural identity and practice or grasping at universalism, to find
connection through, within, and beyond cultural diversity. Appiah makes arguments for embracing the cross-cultural contamination (2006, 111) of beliefs,
ideas, and practices, and asserts the capacity of human beings to find common
ground amid the multiple truths of vastly different cultural practices and ideas.
Theories of cultural hybridization further explore the cultural fluidity emphasized in some cosmopolitan discourse. Chan describes hybridization as the process
of adaptation, fusion, and transformation that occurs when different cultural groups
interact. Rather than a linear focus on the degree to which, for example, an immigrant group either takes on the cultural norms of the dominant culture or gives
up some of their own, hybridization is the assertion that when different cultures
interact, both cultures, to varying degrees depending on factors of number and
dominance, experience what Chan calls a collision or mutual entanglement of
the self and other (2002, 194) that results in a cultural change in both groups. Chan
discusses hybridization as a process of potential innovation in cultural identity and
expression with opportunity for integration and harmony amid the sometimes difficult or troubling process inherent in cross-cultural interaction. He does so while
acknowledging that the power relationship inherent in minoritymajority relationships between groups may create an outsider identity for those in the minority in
which this group risks denigration, rejection, or discrimination, thus marking the
negative aspects of hybridization. Still, Chans assertion that cultural difference or
pluralism need not be abandoned in order to make way for a cosmopolitan world
offers a decidedly optimistic view of cultural diversity.
There are some, however, who caution against the celebration of cosmopolitanism as a vision for a more unified, global community without thoroughly taking
into account the political and economic forces of globalization. Cheah (2006) questions the degree to which cosmopolitanism as an institutionally grounded global
political consciousness is possible given the uneven character of global capitalism (491). In other words, to be a citizen of the cosmos, as described by Appiah,
suggests a kind of global solidarity can arise as a result of an increasingly globalized world. However, Cheah cautions: The world is undoubtedly interconnected
and transnational mobility is clearly on the rise. But this does not inevitably generate meaningful cosmopolitanisms in the robust sense of pluralized world political
communities (492). The different lifestyles and motivations of the globetrotting
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businessman and the transnational migrant worker may prove to be barriers to the
creation of a global political consciousness or the development of a shared sense
of global humanity.
Further challenging the relative optimism set forth by theories of cosmopolitanism and cultural hybridization, Huntington argues that our age of globalization
will result in conflict, and that the primary source of this conflict in the twenty-first
century will be cultural. Culture, he argues, exists beyond just individual or group
identity but as part of a broader category of group membershipcivilizationand
that the locus of future conflict will be between boundaries of different civilizations (Huntington 1993). Huntington asserts that regardless of different claims to
heterogeneous individual, regional, or even nation-state membership, civilizations,
which encompass more than these sub-groups, are defined based on shared values
that have developed over centuries. As the world becomes smaller, he argues, the
cultural differences embodied in civilizations will inevitably clash.
Regardless of how optimistic one is about the possibilities of cosmopolitanism,
in relation to issues of cultural diversity it is apparent that the discourse circles
around some of the same issues of conflict or tension. The very need of some
scholars of cosmopolitanism to assert that increases in cross-cultural contact will
bring positive opportunities for global solidarity or the development of a global
consciousness, points to the legacies of contention and conflict that have marked
the lived experience and discourse of cultural diversity for many years.
BEYOND CONFLICT
Reviewing the literature, it is clear that cultural diversity is heavily situated in
contexts of contention and conflict. The focus on such questions as whether
cultural assimilation is necessary or harmful, or the debate over what will be
gained or lost as diverse groups interact point to the heavy focus on diversity in
the context of international contexts of colonization, domination, and oppression.
Without denying these histories or their importance in conversations on cultural
diversity, we can wonder if all the cases of interaction across difference in the social
imagination are those of conflict, assimilation, and oppression, whether it may be
hard for people to imagine cultural diversity as something other than contentious.
It also may be easy then to overlook the way diversity functions in other contexts
beyond just identity politics or the battle lines of clashing civilizations. Even
those theorists who suggest a more positive or optimistic possibility in cultural
diversity are often situating their arguments in response to dominant assumptions
of conflict. What other lessons about human interaction across difference can
be learned? Perhaps important discoveries about the nature and experience of
cultural diversity await in the unexamined, growing edges of human interaction in
the context of creativity.
The great difficulty is thus considering the unity of the many and the multiplicity
of the unity. Those who see the diversity of cultures tend to overlook the unity
of mankind; those who see the unity of mankind tend to dismiss the diversity of
cultures. Edgar Morin
273
CREATIVITY AND DIVERSITY

The worlds history is not simply the story of one continuous battle between
different cultures, even though our history books have historically done their best
to make it appear that way. In fact, in the age of globalization, of planetary culture
(Thompson 1986, 1987, 1989; Morin and Kern 1999), there is a movement that
does not see culture contact and diversity only in light of wars, appropriation,
and oppression, and under the broader umbrella of domination, but recognizes the
exchanges, hybridizations, and indeed the creativity of culture contact and human
diversity (Hobson 2004; Niederveen Pieterse 2004; Laplantine, de Villanova, and
Verm`es 2003; Laplantine and Nous 2001).
Our fundamental premise in this article is that the discourse of diversity
and culture contact would benefit from focusing on the creativity and the innovations that have emerged as different groups have interacted. If the only
way culture contact and diversity are framed is in terms of domination, and in
terms of the identity of individual cultures, then its surely very unlikely that
we will have models of creative interaction to draw on in order to conceptualize the possibility of interactions that do not involve either domination or submission. We therefore begin by sketching out the role of three key dimensions
underpinning the present discourse and point toward the need for conceptual
changes and the creation of a social imaginary (in media as disparate as history
books and movies) that provides attractor images of creative interaction among
cultures.
By attractor images we mean images (in the broad sense of the word, not
restricted to the visual sense) that orient a cultures thinking and feeling about a
topic. When asked about what comes to mind with the word creativity, in the
United States the responses have historically been individual geniusesPicasso,
Einstein, and so on. These attractor images of creativity largely define the
discourse with its focus on the lone genius, the characteristics of the individual
genius, and so on (Montuori and Purser 1995). Until recently, the concept of group
creativity was considered an oxymoron in the United States (Montuori and Purser
1999). Part of the problem was that, despite their existence in the culture, in the
form of musical and theater groups, R&D labs, citizens groups, and so on, there
were no images of group creativity. The individualist focus of the United States,
and the media in particular, promoted the notion of the lone creative individual. An
increasing awareness of the activities of creative groups, with stories about creative
collaborations, software teams, and so on, is now making inroads in the culture so
that the notion of creative groups is not so foreign (Sawyer 2006; Amabile 1996,
1998; Alter 2003).
In this article we have argued that the emphasis on conflict and identity in the
discourse on diversity acts as such an attractor image. When asked about diversity,
the response is predominantly (although not exclusively, of course) to focus on
the history conflict, the importance of avoiding conflict, and of recognizing and
respecting individual groups. But the images of creative interactions between
groups are few and far between. They simply do not exist with anything like the
depth and pervasiveness of images of conflict.
274
In the same way that images are now emerging of creative groups, couples,
collaborations, and so on, through industry and the arts, we are proposing enriching the social imaginary with a plurality of ways of conceiving of diversity,
also a source of incredible creativity, and the historical evidence to draw on is
considerable. The history of exchanges, contaminations, explorations, influences,
and so on is remarkable. A few examples below, in no particular order, will give
an idea of the range and richness of the stories.
In the popular mind we associate the potato with Ireland and Germany, and
classic dishes such as pizza and spaghetti with tomato sauce with Italy, but we
have to remember the journey of the potato and the tomato to Northern Europe
and the Mediterranean after 1492, and the remarkable role of global trade in the
development of cuisines by providing them with the vegetables and other essentials
that we now think of as central to their identity. Chili peppers were not introduced
to Chinese cuisine until the sixteenth century, and Indian cuisine was also chilifree until that time. After Columbus there was a veritable transformation in the
worlds cuisines, and these exchanges alone are enormously complex, intricate,
and fascinating (Sokolov 1993).
In the history of music, the birth of jazz alone offers an immensely rich opportunity, with its hybridization of European and African instruments and traditions.
The harmonic complexity of European music and the rhythmic complexity of
African music, on American soil, led to the development of a new and unique
musical tradition that, among other things, restored the value of improvisation to
music in the West after it had been eliminated around 1800 with the emergence of
the genius composer and copyright (Goehr 1992). The ongoing hybridizations
in world music provide an endless resource of examples.
Political theories have traveled the globe and both capitalism and communism,
which originated in Europe, have undergone transformations in Asia, where they
have been adapted to local cultures to a greater or lesser extent. The same remarkable transformations and hybridizations can be traced in Buddhism, for instance,
as it traveled from India to Tibet, China, South-East Asia and Japan, and eventually to California. In each of these regions new interpretations, approaches, and
traditions were formed.
In the United States and Europe, the popularity of complementary forms of
medicine, and in particular Chinese Medicine, is growing rapidly. Integrated healing approaches are becoming increasingly popular, echoing Deng Xiao-Pings
famous dictum that it does not matter what color a cat is as long as it catches mice.
Another extremely rich resource is the story of multicultural cities and regions
that have been the source of creativity where widely diverse groups have co-existed
peacefully and creatively, such as Andalusia before the expulsion of the Arabs
from Spain and the Mediterranean as a whole, which owes its cultural fertility to
the extensive exchanges between diverse peoples on three continents. All these
enormously important and creative exchanges require much greater attention and
emphasis.
Polak (1973) has argued that without an image of the future, a culture is adrift.
At this point, we do not have images of the future that depict a desirable future
where cultures interact creatively. If anything, the attractor images presented
275
by Huntington and others point exactly the other way. The creation of attractor
images through documentaries, movies, novels, and scholarly research that revisit
our past, framed now as a history of conflicts, as a history that also recognizes the
ability of the human spirit to create together with others, often in the most dire
circumstances, and thereby to create a new future of creative collaboration, lies at
the heart of our proposal.
CHANS TYPES OF CULTURE CONTACT

Chan discusses five possible processes in culture contact: essentializing, alternating, converting, hybridizing, and innovating (Chan 2002, 2005). This categorization provides an interesting and useful entry point to differentiate different
understandings of, and approaches to, culture contact and diversity, and articulate
their underlying assumptions.
Essentializing assumes cultures are fundamentally closed systems (Wilden
1980; Morin 2008). The closed systems contain essences that define the nature
of any culture, nation, or ethnicity. Essentialism is a core underlying assumption
of the first three forms of culture contact Chan outlines.
Alternating occurs when there is shifting between identities. For instance, an
immigrant passing in a dominant culture context assumes one identity, and then
reverts to the identity of origin at home.
Conversion means assimilation into a dominant culture (e.g., into the melting
pot) and giving up ones original identity.
Hybridizing is the first process that goes beyond the closed system, essentialist
model. Chan calls it a mutual entanglement and it suggests that both systems are
open systems. This is popularly seen in fusion cuisine, fashion, world music,
and so forth. The relationship goes beyond either/or. At a very basic level, this
might involve adapting the cuisine of the homeland to the conditions of the new
culture: different produce, different possibilities, and the evolution of different
tastes. Italian-American food, while retaining some of the same ingredients and
dishes from Italy, has changed considerably over the years, and is now based on an
aesthetic that is arguably very different from what one might find in Italy today, in
the same way that the values and political and religious views of Italian Americans
have been shown to be different from those of Italians in Italy (Barron and Young
1970).
As Chan points out, on an existential level hybridizing is common in the
everyday practices of immigrants. Chan movingly addresses the issues confronting
migrant persons and the complexity of their lives and identities (Chan 2002, 2005).
He points out the emergent ethnicity of many migrants today in the context of
hybridization, and the existential stress it can involve. Central to that stress are
fundamental issues of identity: personal identity and national identity, issues of
belonging, of betrayal, change, history, and geography. It is not uncommon for
some migrants, particularly first-generation migrants, to feel like they are neither
fish nor fowl, having left their culture of origin behind, but never fully accepted
in their new culture. One key factor here is that in the traditional essentialist view,
what is valorized is unity, not diversity. In other words, one is either fully A or
276
fully B. Being both A and Bboth American and Chinesedoes not amount to
more in this view, but less. One is diminished by interaction.
While essentialist views seem to have dominated the discourse, it is becoming
increasingly clear that human beings are all, in the words U.S. President Obama
used to describe himself, mutts. Claims of ethnic or racial purity are deeply
problematic, with no factual basis. The same applies to claims of owning or belonging to a land. They are ultimately based on the use of an arbitrary cut-off point
in time and space beyond which one cannot look (Bocchi and Ceruti 1997, 2002).
Beyond that point (and likely before it, although not in the nationalistic histories)
there are inevitable migrations, interactions, contaminations, hybridizations. And
while we respect the importance of individual cultures and attachment to land,
what is more problematic are claims of purity, and the claims to homogeneity,
with their all-too-frequent concomitant ethnic cleansing. If we view identity not
as given but as created in a historical process, then any culture can trace its roots
further and further back, and its origins to the birth of humanity in Africa.
Chan also raises the potential of a fifth possibility, Innovating. At this point,
Chan suggests that Innovating is the most speculative form of cultural contact.
Innovating involves, among other things, hybridity, cosmopolitanism, metissage,
and creativity. Chan addresses the difficulties and complexities of such a perspective. Innovating is, in our view, most compatible with a focus on the centrality
of creativity and interaction. We explore some of the specific areas where further research might assist in the development of this innovation, and steps toward
educating for this view of culture contact.
Humanitys history is full of cultural contacts that have led to cultural innovations (Appiah 2006; Bateson 1994; Berry and Epstein 1999; Chambers 1994;
Collins 1998; Florida 2002; Hobson 2004; Thompson 1986). Examples range from
the Renaissance to the birth of jazz to the development of new hybrid forms of
spiritual and religious practices such as those found in new religious movements.
The story of Buddhism is an example in its journey from India to China to Japan
and then California. As Edward Said (1993) has written,
the history of all cultures is the history of cultural borrowings. Cultures are
not impermeable. Culture is never just a matter of ownership, of borrowing and
lending with absolute debtors and creditors, but rather of appropriations, common
experiences, and interdependencies of all kinds. (261)
The history of the world is in this view already a history of cultural creativity.
But the dominant view of cultures is precisely, as Said suggests, that they are
these impermeable essences. This closed system essentialist view blinds us to the
creative role of interactions, because in an essentialist view the interactions either
threaten the essence or appear as opportunities to expand the essential features
of a culture. This has led to a focus on the achievements of individual cultures,
and the appropriation of what were in most cases relational achievements that
emerged out of interactions between cultures by individual cultures in the name
of one single culture.
277
Developing a broader understanding of cultural interaction requires a minimum

of three shifts in our fundamental assumptions: going beyond a view of human
interaction based exclusively on domination; acknowledging the fundamental role
of creativity in life; learning to think in a non-essentialist way that accounts for
human complexity.
CHALLENGING THE FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS OF

ESSENTIALISM, INTERACTION, AND DOMINATION
We need a kind of thinking that relinks that which is disjointed and compartmentalized, that respects diversity as it recognizes unity, and that tries to discern
interdependencies. We need a radical thinking (which gets to the root of problems),
a multidimensional thinking, and an organizational or systemic thinking (Morin
and Kern 1999).
Essentialism is closed system thinking (Wilden 1980). The essence is a
characteristic of a thing independent of interactions and context (Morin 2008).
Thinking that views individuals and cultures as open systems recognizes the constitutive role of interactions and context. Closed systems are fundamentally static
and equilibrium oriented. Open systems, because of the perturbations caused by the
interactions, experience disequilibrium, and ongoing processes of re-organization.
With an essentialist, closed system perspective it is simply not possible to
conceive of transformative change and innovation. In the essentialist view, identity is static and given. A closed system has no significant interaction with its
environment. Relationships and interactions are not constitutive and constructive
in a closed system view. Interaction can only be viewed from the perspective of
domination. In the twenty-first century, these assumptions may appear somewhat
shocking. but we must not forget their strong historical roots, as demonstrated in
the following passage:
The Laws of God operate not through a few thousand years, but through eternity,
and we cannot always perceive the why or wherefore of what passes in our
brief day. Nations and races, like individuals, have each a special destiny: some
are born to rule, and others to be ruled. And such has ever been the history of
mankind. No two distinctly-marked races can dwell together on equal terms.
(Nott and Gliddon 1855)
In this classic of scientific racism we see a basic set of assumptions that is in

the work of scholars like Huntington. Creativity and innovation are not in the
realm of imagination because any deviation from the pre-established identity can
only be in the form of pollution. Not innovation, but dominationexpanding the
right essenceis the only possible outcome, as Nott and Gliddon made so clear
in their articulation of their position. Along with domination, racist rhetoric is
full of the language of degeneration, pollution, and so on. Likewise, Aristotelian
essentialism precluded any form of evolution, because forms where fixed and
given. In an Aristotelian/Aquinian perspective, one could similarly speak of a fall,
but not of evolution (Bocchi and Ceruti 2002).
278
A new way of thinking is needed, a way of thinking that recognizes the inherent complexity of life seen as an ongoing, relational, creative process. From a
complexity perspective, identity, whether individual or cultural, is not one homogeneous whole but a unitas multiplex, a unity in diversity (Morin 2008). We are
not one thing, but a plurality of complex interactions. These interactions occur
within any given system, and between the system and its environment. Morin has
articulated the need for complex thought in an effort to counteract the prevalence
of reductive and disjunctive thought that cannot account for relational, processual,
interactive complexity.
Reduction and disjunction, two characteristics of Morins simple thought, in
the context of identity means reduction to a clear and distinct identity, free of all
other influencesthe myth of purity (Bocchi and Ceruti 1997)and one that
can be separated from the other through a logic of either/or. In moments of
crisis this becomes the logic of us against them, you are either for us or against us
(Montuori 2005).
It is not until we get to Hybridizing and particularly Innovating in Chans
categorization that we move from the essentialism of cultural and personal identity
as closed systems that are static and unchanging to an open systems view that is
more processual and relational. In this view, any identity, and any culture, involves
a process of construction and creation (Wagner 1981). Creativity and innovation
are not occasional events, in this view, but the very nature of life itself (Bocchi and
Ceruti 2002; Ceruti 2008). Innovating might then involve a more conscious process
of identity construction, a creative dialogue between tradition and change. This
process can be found most explicitly in the arts, where creativity is the essential
frame of the activity, but it is also increasingly being found in the emergence of
tribes, groups with shared interests that gather either physically or in cyberspace
and craft their own identities through common interests and rituals, ranging from
tattooing to video games to social justice or events such as Burning Man (Godin
2009).
FROM DOMINATION TO CREATIVITY

We have seen how the discourse of diversity and culture contact in the United
States has focused largely on conflict, because of the exclusionary nature of the
essentialist, closed system view. The assumption that interactions are inevitably
conflictual is based on a dynamic of domination (Eisler 1987). A majority group
might seek to create a homogeneous melting pot, and eliminate differences. This
is the process Chan identifies as converting, which negates one dominant culture
in favor of another (Chan 2002, 2005). When the differences are visible because
of such characteristics as skin color (racial differences) it might seek to keep
the minority group at a safe distance (segregation, apartheid). The critique of
the dominant majority, of the colonial heritage and its history of oppression, and the
diversity trainings that, as Anand and Winters (2008) point out, can occasionally
degenerate into attacks on the majority, mostly operate with the assumption of the
inevitability of the paradigm of domination. Whether in the attempt to dominate
279
or the effort to remove the domination of a dominant group, domination is still the
central paradigm.
Central to the domination paradigm is the view that interaction, whether in
the form of culture contact or diversity, will inevitably lead to one culture to
dominating the other. The interaction of different cultural groups inevitably leads
to insurmountable differences, which can escalate to violent conflict. This is a
combination of beliefs about the nature of human nature, of identity, and of
human interaction (Montuori 1989; Bernstein 2005; Eisler 1987). Underlying the
focus on conflict and contentiousness there are assumptions of static identity, and
essentialist purity. Once the boundaries are so tightly drawn between self and other,
Chan shows this essentializing leads to exaggerations, stereotypes, and prejudice
(Chan 2002, 2005). It can also lead to a clash of cultures view, in which the
coexistence of cultures is rejected in favor of an ongoing conflictual clash that
will, or should, lead to the ultimate domination of one culture (Bocchi and Ceruti
1997; Huntington 1998).
In a hybridized planetary culture, identity is not a given. It is not an essence
that is intrinsic to our nature. It is acquired during a historical process of interaction,
contingencies, encounters, interpretations, rejections, conflicts, and constructions
(Appiah 2006). Identity is the result of an ongoing creative process that occurs
within certain constraints (Bocchi and Ceruti 2002; Ceruti 2008).
The challenges facing the outsiders, the marginals, the migrants, those
individuals who do not belong to the majority culture are then transformed into
challenges of creativity rather than being viewed as ultimately arising out of a
deficit, a lack that arises precisely because they are a minority. And indeed
as Chan points out, outsiders and marginals are often associated with greater
creativity (Stonequist 1961; Benet-Martnez and Haritatos 2005; Benet-Martnez,
Lee, and Leu 2006). They stand outside the often homogenized conformity of the
majority, and bring a plurality of perspectives to bear on their life. What is given
in one country is not given or just the way things are in another country. The
outsider, the migrant, therefore sees her or his world from at least two perspectives
(Montuori and Fahim 2004). As Chan suggests, this can lead to alternating, an
oscillation between two ways of being. Alternating can involve compartmentalizing ones identity, being one person in culture A and another in (sub-)culture
B. But alternation also offers the possibility for bisociation, identified as a central
component of creativity. Bisociation involves seeing a situation from two mutually exclusive perspectives, and bringing them together to form something new
(Koestler 1990). This is the creativity of hybridization. The outsider can develop
the creativity to bring together aspects of both cultures and create something new.
Viewing creativity as central to the nature of life itself is parallel to taking
what might be called a planetary view. This view extends time and space. As
Ceruti points out, in the West the discoveries of deep space and deep time (in
cosmology and paleontology and evolutionary theory) led to a challenge against
essentialism in science, and the preformationist view that held all living creatures
had been designed by God, and history, interaction, and contingency played no
constructive role. Science has increasingly begun to outline the creative role of
time through ongoing interactions, and that this web of interactions covers the
280
entire planet (Ceruti 2008). Ultimately there is one place we can truly say we
all belong to, what Edgar Morin calls Homeland Earth (Morin and Kern 1999).
In his work on education, Morin has also started that it is imperative that in this
planetary era we situate everything in a planetary context (Morin 2001). Indeed at
this critical moment in humanitys history our education must valorize creativity
and diversity. And yet, what we have seen is that neither creativity nor diversity
are valorizedon the contrary, most educational institutions suppress creativity,
and are still mired in a conflictual view of culture contact and diversity (Aronowitz
2001; Abbs 2003; Montuori 2006).
EXPANDING THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY
In the mid-1980s, the research literature on creativity in the United States included
hardly any research on creative groups. Likewise, the notion of a creative group
was difficult to find in the social imaginary. People found it difficult to think of
a creative group. A band like the Beatles was typically thought of as the result
of one individuals songwriting, not the interaction of four, and very plausibly
five, individuals (including producer/arranger George Martin). Group creativity
was considered an oxymoron, because creativity was known to be something that
happens exclusively inside one persons head (Montuori and Purser 1999).
Twenty-five years later, popular business magazines extol the virtues of hot
groups, and there is a burgeoning research literature on creative groups (Sawyer
2006) as well as an increased emphasis on teams, whether in business or sports or
entertainment. Now it is obvious that 25 years ago there were in fact also creative
groups. The main difference is that the creative groups were not part of the social
imaginary. Creative groups were not on peoples radar screen, as we might say
colloquially. This meant most people did not see groups as a locus for creativity,
and there was no research on the subject.
In the same way that more relational forms of creativity were once not in the
social imaginary, the U.S. social imaginary is struggling to see the creativity that
is generated by diversity and culture contact. As we saw in the review of diversity
in the United States, it is clear that although there are movements in the direction
of highlighting the positive potential of diversity, an explicit link with creativity is
still tenuous in the research literature, let alone in the social imaginary. It is much
easier at this stage in history for any individual to enumerate the often horrific
clashes, ethnic cleansings, holocausts, and everyday examples of racism rather
than examples of cultural creativity and collaboration simply because the latter,
while central to humanitys history, have not received the same amount of attention.
We can find endless volumes on racism and prejudice and the holocaust, but we
are hard pressed to find scholarly research that celebrates the creativity of culture
contact and diversity. Examples can be found in discussions of world music, for
instance, but even then, the lens through which they are seen often privileges issues
of appropriation and exploitation rather than exploring the dynamics of creativity.
If the social imaginary provides us only with conflictual images of cultural
diversity, then we will be hard pressed to conceive of alternatives to conflict.
Diversity training, and more broadly, education for a pluralistic, diverse society,
281
will focus on conflict avoidance and resolution, or the celebration of individual

groups, such as Black History Month (Anand and Winters 2008). A clarification is
in order before we proceed. We are not suggesting prejudice, racism, stereotyping,
and so on should not be addressed, and the focus of education should only be on
creative or positive, generative interactions. That would be equally detrimental,
and lead to little more than happy talk. We also do not mean to downplay or
reject the importance of highlighting histories of oppression, appropriation, and
exploitation. We do want to point out that this is not the whole picture, and that
without examples of creative interaction it will be much harder to envision what
we could move toward rather than away from. The futurist Polak has made an
important case for guiding images of the future, and it is in part to this strain of
research that we refer (Polak 1973).
We are also not proposing that individual cultures and minorities should not
celebrate their histories and achievements. Our proposal would be complementary
to existing approaches. It would focus on the development of images that show
creative alternatives to racism and prejudice, and on the nature of interactions
between different cultural groups, celebrating interaction and creativity. One way
of doing this would be to collect the enormous and rich variety of what we might
call positive attractor images of creative diversity and culture contact. This
research can then inform the lives of citizens by showing them that they can draw
on their own creativity, and on collaborative creativity to overcome problems,
create new solutions, and create a world worthy of our aspirations. It is only
when there is a constant exposure to examples of creative diversity, rather than
an exclusive focus on prejudice, stereotyping, racism, and so on, that creative
diversity will become more accepted.
The historical complexity of personal and cultural identity can be shown to be
a history of interactions, encounters, contaminations, exchanges, conflict, and also
creativity. Images of essence, of purity can be challenged by historical accounts that
focus on interaction rather than essence, that view cultural encounters, interactions,
and exchanges and changes not as a deficit or weakness away from an essential
ideal but as a positive, as an ongoing creative process.
Images of creative culture contact and diversity abound in the arts, but also
religion and spirituality, philosophy, science, and history. The time has come
to explore the dynamics of planetary creativity. Where are the collections of
examples of cultural creativity and diversity? What are the conditions that allow
for this creativity to emerge? How can we illuminate this creativity to propose
alternatives to conflictual images of domination, and open up possibilities for new
ways of relating? How can we make individuals and communities aware of the
potential for creativity in their own lives? A whole world of research opens up as
we look at our predicament through the lens of creativity.
CONCLUSION
In this article we have reviewed the discourse of culture contact and diversity
and found it underpinned by a frame of domination. Starting with Chans five
types of culture contact we explored a variety of positions and perspectives on
282
diversity. We critiqued essentialist perspectives that saw culture contact as an

event involving two fundamentally closed systems for whom interaction can only
involve a choice of domination or submission, and offered a perspective that is
more relational, complex, and that focuses on the creative nature of interactions in
culture contact. We proposed the importance of valorizing creative exchanges and
interactions, outlined key conceptual obstacles to understanding the possibility of
creative interaction, focusing in particular on essentialism and domination, and
stressed the importance of seeding the social imaginary with images and stories of
humanitys history of creative interactions, and an articulation of possible creative
futures.
We saw that Polak argued for the importance of images of the future. Morin
(Morin and Kern 1999) has argued that we are experiencing a crisis of the
future, lacking, in other words, compelling images of a desirable future. Morins
central argument is that in a world becoming increasingly complexwith complex
understood broadly here as more interconnected, interdependent, diverse, and
adaptivea kind of thinking is needed that accounts for this complexity. We
saw that in the United States images of creativity have tended to be reductive
and disjunctive, focusing on eccentric lone geniuses and an either youve got it
or you havent approach, at the expense of more complex, nuanced, relational
frames, such as the ones emerging now (Montuori and Purser 1999; Barron 1995;
Bateson 2001). The emergence in the social imaginary of group and specifically
relational creativity has helped shift the understanding of creativity, and is now
being addressed in such popular books as Malcolm Gladwells Outliers (2009),
Godins Tribes (2009), and Surowieckis The Wisdom of Tribes (2005), among
others. The incredible boom in social networking has also perhaps inevitably led
to a greater appreciation of interconnectedness, and again popular works such as
Barabasis Linked (2003), and Capras The Web of Life (1996), present theoretical
foundations for this shift in works of scientific popularization.
The development of more complex ways of representing the worlds diversity,
interrelations, and interdependence is a powerful artistic, theoretical, and practical
challenge. Movies such as Babel and Crash have attempted to capture this complexity, and it is clear that these are just emerging efforts. An enormous creative
task lies ahead of those who choose to view the world in a more complex way,
valorizing creativity, collaboration, and complexity. It is a challenge that is truly
transdisciplinary, drawing on the arts, the sciences, the social sciences, and the
humanities, and must begin with a process of collection, documentation, and popularization of the innumerable examples of hybridity and cultural creativity that
have made such a remarkable contribution to the human journey, and our emerging
planetary culture.
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Creativity, Culture Contact, and Diversity

Alfonso Montuoria; Hillary Stephensona

Futures, 66: 3, 266 285

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World Futures, 66: 266285, 2010

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California, USA

Address correspondence to Alfonso Montuori, California Institute of Integral Studies,

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

The Americanization movement manifested most strongly in the public education

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

is not so much on issues of cultural pluralism or an acceptance of diversity, but

MULTICULTURALISM AND IDENTITY POLITICS

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

For some, [cosmopolitanism] is about the love of mankind, or about duties

Emphasizing this love of mankind, Appiahs cosmopolitanism offers us the

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

CREATIVITY AND DIVERSITY

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

CHANS TYPES OF CULTURE CONTACT

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

Developing a broader understanding of cultural interaction requires a minimum

CHALLENGING THE FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS OF

In this classic of scientific racism we see a basic set of assumptions that is in

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

FROM DOMINATION TO CREATIVITY

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

will focus on conflict avoidance and resolution, or the celebration of individual

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

diversity. We critiqued essentialist perspectives that saw culture contact as an

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

. 1998. How to kill creativity. Harvard Business Review (Sept.Oct.): 179189.

ALFONSO MONTUORI AND HILLARY STEPHENSON

CREATIVITY, CULTURE CONTACT, AND DIVERSITY

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