On Imagination and Creation: An Afterword

Abstract

Considering how newness enters the cultural world, this Afterword is organised around the central concepts of imagination, innovation, and artefacts/creations as these relate to anthropology. Imagination's implication of freedom and individuality has had a problematic relationship with anthropology's focus on social patterns and cultural constraints. Innovation has fared better, but has also taken a back seat to tradition as an object of study and analysis. Artefacts and other creations are embodiments of both tradition and innovation, and as such are vital for the endurance and transmission of new and old patterns. By moving from the imagination through its dialogue with tradition (in the form of innovation), and finally on to its embodiment in artefacts, this collection opens up a vista on all of social life and its rhythms of stability and change. The articles in this collection make recurrent reference to death. When the imagination is charged with bringing back as images people who will never come back in quite the form they formerly took, it must recall them in innovative ways. It is thus in reckoning with death that imagination as recollection and as creation come together.

Keywords:

• Imagination
• Innovation
• Artefacts
• Creations