Bøger af R. Keith Sawyer

In all groups, creativity and collaboration are essential. And perhaps the most creative collaborating groups are music and theatre ensembles. This title draws on studies of performing ensembles to provide insights into all group creativity.

Can we understand important social issues by studying individual personalities and decisions? Or are societies somehow more than the people in them? Sociologists have long believed that psychology can't explain what happens when people work together in complex modern societies. In contrast, most psychologists and economists believe that if we have an accurate theory of how individuals make choices and act on them, we can explain pretty much everything about social life. Social Emergence takes a new approach to these longstanding questions. Sawyer argues that societies are complex dynamical systems, and that the best way to resolve these debates is by developing the concept of emergence, focusing on multiple levels of analysis - individuals, interactions, and groups - and with a dynamic focus on how social group phenomena emerge from communication processes among individual members. This book makes a unique contribution not only to complex systems research but also to social theory.

Examines preschoolers' pretend play in the context of a theory of improvisational performance genres. The text argues that the social skills gained from improvisation are linked to the child's developing ability to improvise with other creative performers.