Skip to main content

Performance Studies, Sociology, and Ethnography

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Handbuch Soziologische Ethnographie
  • 4862 Accesses

Abstract

The disciplines of Sociology and Theater and Performance Studies have a long and intertwined history. The common interest in the behavior of social beings in the artistic, representational realm as well as in everyday life has prompted both disciplines to use participant observation as a research method. This article is co-authored by a performance scholar and a sociologist and combines insights from both disciplines to make the possibilities of ethnographic research on social groups critical and nuanced. This article will introduce sociologists to various performance studies concepts and methodologies useful for the ethnographic inquiry, and provide models of ethnography and performance that demonstrate the intersection between the two in art and research practice.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Alexander, Bryant. 2005. Performance Ethnography. The Reenacting and Inciting of Culture. In Handbook of Qualitative Research. 3rd ed., eds. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, 411–442. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Austin, John. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Becker, Howard, Michal McCall and Lori Morris. 1989. Theatres and Communities: Three Scenes. Social Problems 36 (2): 93–116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berger, Harris. 1999. Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhabha, Homi. 2004. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bial, Henry, ed. 2007. The Performance Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Birringer, Johannes. 1993. Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 2013 [1977]. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 2014. Structures and the Habitus. In Anthropology in Theory. Issues in Epistemology, eds. Henrietta Moore and Todd Sanders, 332–341. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 1993a. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 1993b. Critically Queer. GLQ. A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1): 17–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burke, Kenneth. 1968. Dramatism. International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Places of Performance. the Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambers-Letson, Joshua. 2016. Performance’s Mode of Reproduction I: Searching for Danh Võ’s Mother. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 26 (2–3): 122–145.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, Catherine. 2010. Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission. Stages of Transition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conquergood, Dwight. 1985. Performing as a Moral Act. Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography of Performance. Literature in Performance Literature in Performance 5 (2): 1–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conquergood, Dwight. 1986. Performance and Dialogical Understanding: In quest of the other. In Communication as Performance, ed. Janet Larsen-Palmer, 30–37. Tempe: Arizona State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conquergood, Dwight. 1991. Life in Big Red: Struggles and Accommodations in a Chicago Polyethnic Tenement. Evanston: Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conquergood, Dwight. 1992. Ethnography, Rhetoric, and Performance. Quarterly Journal of Speech Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1): 80–97.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conquergood, Dwight. 2002a. Lethal Theatre: Performance, Punishment, and the Death Penalty. Theatre Journal 54 (3): 339–367.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conquergood, Dwight. 2002b. Performance Studies. Interventions and Radical Research 1. The Drama Review 46 (2): 145–156.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conquergood, Dwight. 2013. Health Theatre in a Hmong Refugee Camp: Performance, Communication, and Culture. In Cultural Struggles. Performance, Ethnography, Praxis, ed. E. Patrick Johnson, 127–169. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conquergood, Dwight and E. Patrick Johnson. 2013. Beyond the Text. Toward a Performative Cultural Politics. In Cultural Struggles. Performance, Ethnography, Praxis, ed. E. Patrick Johnson, 47–63. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Denzin, Norman K. 1995. The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur’s Gaze. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Denzin, Norman K. 2000. Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Denzin, Norman K. 2002. Reading Race: Hollywood and the Cinema of Racial Violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Denzin, Norman K. 2003. Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture. Thousand Oaks. CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Signature, Event, Context. In Limited Inc., ed. Gerald Graff, 1–23. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diamond, Elin. 1996. Performance and Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dolan, Jill. 2001. Performance, Utopia, and the “Utopian Performative”. Theatre Journal 53 (3): 455–479.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duden online. 2018. Stichwort: Performance, die. https://www.duden.de/node/109751/revision/109787. Accessed: 28 February, 2020.

  • Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, James Leloudis, Robert Korstad, Mary Murphy, Lu Ann Jones and Christopher Daly. 1987. Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamera, Judith. 2006a. Disruption, Continuity, and the Social Lives of Things: Navajo Folk Art and/as Performance. The Drama Review 46 (6): 146–160.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamera, Judith. 2006b. Opening Acts Performance in/as Communication and Cultural Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hamera, Judith. 2006c. Performance, Performativity, and Cultural Poiesis in Practices of Everyday Life. In Handbook of Performance Studies, eds. D. Soyini Madison and Judith Hamera, 46–64. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamera, Judith. 2018. Performance Ethnography. In Handbook of Qualitative Research. 5th ed., eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 631–661. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hartman, Saidiya. 2008. Venus in Two Acts. In Small Axe 26: 1–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herrmann, Max. 1914. Forschungen Zur Deutschen Theatergeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance. Vol. 2. Berlin: Weidmann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Humphries, Laud. 1970. Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Chicago: Aldine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurston, Zora Neale. 1935. Mules and Men. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, E. Patrick. 2016. No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 2009. Destination Culture. Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langellier, Kristin. 1999. Personal Narrative, Performance, Performativity. Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (2): 125–144.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Jooyoung. 2016. Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 2005. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life. New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madison, D. Soyini. 1999. Performing Theory/Embodied Writing. Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (2): 107–124.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madison, D. Soyini. 2005. Critical Ethnography. Method, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madison, D. Soyini. 2006. Water Rites. Multi-Media Performance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madison, D. Soyini. 2011. Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madison, D. Soyini and Judith Hamera, eds. 2013. The SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCall, Michal. 2000. Performance Ethnography. A Brief History and Some Advice. In Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed., eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 421–433. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCall, Michal, Howard Becker and Paul Meshejian. 1990. “Performance Science.” Social Problems 37 (1): 117–132.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKenzie, Jon. 1998. Genre Trouble: (The) Butler Did It. In The Ends of Performance, eds. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, 217–235. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mienczakowski, Jim. 2001. Ethnodrama. Performed Research—Limitations and Potential. In Handbook of Ethnography, eds. Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland and Lyn Lofland, 468–476. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muñoz, José Esteban. 2013. Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performative. In The SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies, eds. D. Soyini. Madison and Judith Hamera, 9–20. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Münz, Rudolf and Gerda Baumbach. 1998. Theatralität und Theater. Zur Historiograpie von Theatralitätsgefügen. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oxford English Dictionary online. Keyword: performance. 2019. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/140783. Accessed: 28 February, 2020.

  • Pachirat, Timothy. 2018. Among Wolves: Ethnography and the Immersive Study of Power. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paget, Marianne. 1990. Performing the Text. Journal of Contemporary Research 19 (1): 136–155.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pelias, Ronald. 1999. Writing Performance: Poeticizing the Researcher’s Body. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phelan, Peggy and Jill Lane, eds. 1998. The Ends of Performance. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plessner, Helmuth. 1948. Zur Anthropologie des Schauspielers. In Feestbundel aangeboden door vrienden en Ieerlingen aan Prof. Dr. H.J. Pos, ter gelegenheid can het bereiken van de 50 jarige leeftyd op 11 Juli 1948, 208–223.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollock, Della. 1990. Telling the Told: Performing Like a Family. Oral History Review 18 (2): 1–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richardson, Laurel. 1997. Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rivera-Servera, Ramón. 2013. Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roach, Joseph. 1996. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schechner, Richard. 1973. Drama, Script, Theatre, and Performance. The Drama Review 17 (3): 5–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schechner, Richard. 2006. Performance Studies. An Introduction. Second ed. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schechner, Richard. 2011. Between Theater & Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, John R. 2012. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Siegel, Taggart, Dwight Conquergood, Siegel Productions and Collective Eye. 1985. Between Two Worlds. The Hmong Shaman in America. Portland: Collective Eye.

    Google Scholar 

  • Siegel, Taggart, Dwight Conquergood, Siegel Productions and Collective Eye. 1990. The Heart Broken in Half. Portland: Collective Eye.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singer, Milton. 1972. When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Modern Civilization. New York: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Anna Deavere. 1993. Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities. New York: Anchor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Anna Deavere. 1994. Twilight. Los Angeles 1992 on the Road: A Search for American Character. New York: Anchor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Diana. 2007. The Archive and the Repertoire. Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Theidon, Kimberly. 2014. Intimate Enemies. Violence and Reconciliation in Peru. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1887. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag (R. Reisland).

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Victor. 1986. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • wa Thiong’o, N. 1999. Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: An Interview by Charles Cantalupo. Left Curve 23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wellin, Christopher. 1996. Life at Lake Home: An Ethnographic Performance in Six Voices; an Essay on Method, in Two. Qualitative Sociology 19 (4): 497–516.

    Google Scholar 

  • Worthen, W. B. 1995. Disciplines of Text/Sites of Performance. The Drama Review 39 (1): 13–28.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elena Weber .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Weber, E., Fine, G.A. (2022). Performance Studies, Sociology, and Ethnography. In: Poferl, A., Schröer, N. (eds) Handbuch Soziologische Ethnographie. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-26405-5_28

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-26405-5_28

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-658-26404-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-658-26405-5

  • eBook Packages: Social Science and Law (German Language)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics