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.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
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.
Austin, John. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.
Becker, Howard, Michal McCall and Lori Morris. 1989. Theatres and Communities: Three Scenes. Social Problems 36 (2): 93–116.
Berger, Harris. 1999. Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.
Bhabha, Homi. 2004. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
Bial, Henry, ed. 2007. The Performance Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.
Birringer, Johannes. 1993. Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2013 [1977]. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 1993a. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 1993b. Critically Queer. GLQ. A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1): 17–32.
Burke, Kenneth. 1968. Dramatism. International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan.
Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Places of Performance. the Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
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.
Cole, Catherine. 2010. Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission. Stages of Transition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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.
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.
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.
Conquergood, Dwight. 1992. Ethnography, Rhetoric, and Performance. Quarterly Journal of Speech Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1): 80–97.
Conquergood, Dwight. 2002a. Lethal Theatre: Performance, Punishment, and the Death Penalty. Theatre Journal 54 (3): 339–367.
Conquergood, Dwight. 2002b. Performance Studies. Interventions and Radical Research 1. The Drama Review 46 (2): 145–156.
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.
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.
Denzin, Norman K. 1995. The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur’s Gaze. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Denzin, Norman K. 2000. Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Denzin, Norman K. 2002. Reading Race: Hollywood and the Cinema of Racial Violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Denzin, Norman K. 2003. Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture. Thousand Oaks. CA: Sage.
Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Signature, Event, Context. In Limited Inc., ed. Gerald Graff, 1–23. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Diamond, Elin. 1996. Performance and Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge.
Dolan, Jill. 2001. Performance, Utopia, and the “Utopian Performative”. Theatre Journal 53 (3): 455–479.
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.
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor.
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.
Hamera, Judith. 2006a. Disruption, Continuity, and the Social Lives of Things: Navajo Folk Art and/as Performance. The Drama Review 46 (6): 146–160.
Hamera, Judith. 2006b. Opening Acts Performance in/as Communication and Cultural Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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.
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.
Hartman, Saidiya. 2008. Venus in Two Acts. In Small Axe 26: 1–14.
Herrmann, Max. 1914. Forschungen Zur Deutschen Theatergeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance. Vol. 2. Berlin: Weidmann.
Humphries, Laud. 1970. Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Chicago: Aldine.
Hurston, Zora Neale. 1935. Mules and Men. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.
Johnson, E. Patrick. 2016. No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 2009. Destination Culture. Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Langellier, Kristin. 1999. Personal Narrative, Performance, Performativity. Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (2): 125–144.
Lee, Jooyoung. 2016. Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lefebvre, Henri. 2005. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life. New York: Continuum.
Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Madison, D. Soyini. 1999. Performing Theory/Embodied Writing. Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (2): 107–124.
Madison, D. Soyini. 2005. Critical Ethnography. Method, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Madison, D. Soyini. 2006. Water Rites. Multi-Media Performance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.
Madison, D. Soyini. 2011. Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Madison, D. Soyini and Judith Hamera, eds. 2013. The SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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.
McCall, Michal, Howard Becker and Paul Meshejian. 1990. “Performance Science.” Social Problems 37 (1): 117–132.
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.
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.
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.
Münz, Rudolf and Gerda Baumbach. 1998. Theatralität und Theater. Zur Historiograpie von Theatralitätsgefügen. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf.
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.
Paget, Marianne. 1990. Performing the Text. Journal of Contemporary Research 19 (1): 136–155.
Pelias, Ronald. 1999. Writing Performance: Poeticizing the Researcher’s Body. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Phelan, Peggy and Jill Lane, eds. 1998. The Ends of Performance. New York: New York University Press.
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.
Pollock, Della. 1990. Telling the Told: Performing Like a Family. Oral History Review 18 (2): 1–36.
Richardson, Laurel. 1997. Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Rivera-Servera, Ramón. 2013. Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Roach, Joseph. 1996. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schechner, Richard. 1973. Drama, Script, Theatre, and Performance. The Drama Review 17 (3): 5–36.
Schechner, Richard. 2006. Performance Studies. An Introduction. Second ed. London: Routledge.
Schechner, Richard. 2011. Between Theater & Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Searle, John R. 2012. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Siegel, Taggart, Dwight Conquergood, Siegel Productions and Collective Eye. 1985. Between Two Worlds. The Hmong Shaman in America. Portland: Collective Eye.
Siegel, Taggart, Dwight Conquergood, Siegel Productions and Collective Eye. 1990. The Heart Broken in Half. Portland: Collective Eye.
Singer, Milton. 1972. When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Modern Civilization. New York: Praeger.
Smith, Anna Deavere. 1993. Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities. New York: Anchor.
Smith, Anna Deavere. 1994. Twilight. Los Angeles 1992 on the Road: A Search for American Character. New York: Anchor.
Taylor, Diana. 2007. The Archive and the Repertoire. Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press.
Theidon, Kimberly. 2014. Intimate Enemies. Violence and Reconciliation in Peru. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1887. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag (R. Reisland).
Turner, Victor. 1986. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.
wa Thiong’o, N. 1999. Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: An Interview by Charles Cantalupo. Left Curve 23.
Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. New York: Oxford University Press.
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.
Worthen, W. B. 1995. Disciplines of Text/Sites of Performance. The Drama Review 39 (1): 13–28.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature
About this chapter
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)