Creolization and creativity

Abstract ‘A bit of this and a bit of that; that is how newness enters the world’, according to Salman Rushdie. In Ulf Hannerz's varied and voluminous work on cultural creolization, creativity and cultural ‘newness’ are often described. Examining this view of creativity, the essay contrasts processual and hybrid aspects of culture with its stable and structural aspects, showing how each implies a particular view of creativity. The contrast is developed through three very different kinds of examples: postcolonial literature, information technology and minority youth in Western Europe.     

Arrow's Theorem with a fixed feasible alternative

Arrow's Theorem, in its social choice function formulation, assumes that all nonempty finite subsets of the universal set of alternatives is potentially a feasible set. We demonstrate that the axioms in Arrow's Theorem, with weak Pareto strengthened to strong Pareto, are consistent if it is assumed that there is a prespecified alternative which is in every feasible set. We further show that if the collection of feasible sets consists of all subsets of alternatives containing a prespecified list of alternatives and if there are at least three additional alternatives not on this list, replacing nondictatorship by anonymity results in an impossibility theorem.Most of the research for this article was completed while we were participants in the Public Choice Institute held at Dalhousie University during the summer of 1984. We wish to record here our thanks to the Institute Director, E.F. McClennen, and its sponsors, the Council for Philosophical Studies, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We are grateful to our referees for their comments and the Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science at Northwestern University, where Weymark was a visitor during 1985–86, for secretarial assistance.