Introduction

In this chapter, I chart my journey of creativity spanning the entire length of my doctoral programme. It details how my insistence on being creative resulted in the generation of a discursive model (D/ doxa) and a substantive theory (ENGURD) by introducing some changes to the grounded theory method (GTM), my research method. I made a total of four changes to the original model: three creative and one practical.

‘Creativity’ was (and still is) not a word often used in my academic department – located in a university in the capital of Pakistan. We generally use the word ‘new’. A typical question during a dissertation proposal defence is ‘What is new?’ or ‘What new elements are you adding to the existing body of knowledge?’ These types of questions are quite easy to answer as every new rendering is ‘new’ in some way – mostly it is new data within an old and tested theoretical framework. The word ‘creative’ is generally reserved for creative artists. ‘Adaptation’ is, however, a word used more frequently, but usually when two theoretical frameworks are drawn together in one study – in the sense of a practical rather than creative adaptation. In the case of adaptation as we use it, candidates are expected to spell out which aspects from their selected frameworks they will use, which they will discard, and the reasons for doing so. Predictably, when I announced my intention to be creative, alarm bells rang and an effort was made to discourage me with comments like ‘PhD dissertations are not supposed to be creative because creative endeavours can fail’ and ‘one can experiment (another word for being creative) after one has achieved the doctorate’. When I insisted and argued that the GTM allowed creativity, I was told in no uncertain terms that it would be ‘guided’ and ‘limited’ creativity, and that I should not insist on ‘forcing’ creativity if there was not any need to do so.

As I planned to write this chapter, I went through some respected theorists of creativity (Lubart, 1998; Kara, 2020; Tow, 2022) to test my ideas – a Global South scholar exploring the work of Global North scholars.