Overview

Performance and Ethnography: Dance, Drama, Music revisits the territory of the performance orientation, touching on anthropology, dance, folklore, music and theatre to look for present trends in both the ethnography of performance and performance ethnography. One of the main concerns of this volume is with an embodied, affective and sensory ethnography that privileges encounters between ethnographer, participants and practices as key to understanding and knowledge. Another is the extent to which individuals are shaped by their engagement with ethnographic practice in the midst of migration, diffusion, revival, appropriation and commodification of performance. A third is the interface of academic disciplines with the idea of performance, and the way in which academics and practitioners are drawn to ethnography to better understand, negotiate, perform and profess their diverse fields.Individual chapters include a refreshed interface for performance studies and anthropology through new approaches to ritual; a consideration of performance studies through an ethnography of PSi; the emplaced body as a tool for ethnographic research; somatic practice in dance as a mode of ethnography; artisanal musical instrument making as performance; the commodification of traditional performance; and an introductory overview that reflects shifting ethnographic perspectives on traditional performances.

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9781443847612

Table of Contents

Reviews

This anthology offers a range of approaches in the bringing together of performance and ethnography. It goes beyond the normal `case study' approach to consider how the interaction of disciplines and the bringing together of different scholarly genealogies enables the posing of new research questions and the setting of research agenda. It offers a useful meditation on how historically performance ethnography has been stratified across folklore studies, performance studies and the various anthropological approaches to the performing arts (including ethnomusicology) and how these different approaches to understanding performance as social process might be usefully merged or selectively combined. It will be particularly important, I believe, for those new to the field of performance ethnography (including students), who are interested in models for how to study performance as these unfold in the field. Individual chapters also contain much new research that will be of great interest to specialists. I heartily recommend this volume. - Matthew Isaac Cohen, Professor of International Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London This is an interesting collection of seven essays that stem from an international conference on Performance Ethnography at the University of Chester in 2012. They present a fresh and useful contribution to ethnographic theory from a multiplicity of perspectives and will particularly appeal to those working in and across performance studies, anthropology, dance studies, and folklore studies. ... The essays will undoubtedly assist in stimulating discussion at final year and graduate level as well as providing new historiographical perspectives on the development of performance studies outside the United States. At the same time, dialogue is maintained with theoretical perspectives and seminal work in the development of North American Performance Studies. This volume should sit well alongside other collections that examine Performance Ethnography, offering distinctive critical views on its achievements and potential. - Theresa Buckland, Professor of Performing Arts, De Montfort University The collection is short, as is each essay, so Performance and Ethnography cannot be considered comprehensive or discipline-changing. However, it does nicely document some important and positive changes occurring in the discipline, and it adds to our knowledge and appreciation of performance and the arts in anthropology, which are hardly neglected but also are not sufficiently respected. Readers should find some theoretical and methodological ideas that will enhance their own fieldwork and writing. - Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

This anthology offers a range of approaches in the bringing together of performance and ethnography. It goes beyond the normal 'case study' approach to consider how the interaction of disciplines and the bringing together of different scholarly genealogies enables the posing of new research questions and the setting of research agenda. It offers a useful meditation on how historically performance ethnography has been stratified across folklore studies, performance studies and the various anthropological approaches to the performing arts (including ethnomusicology) and how these different approaches to understanding performance as social process might be usefully merged or selectively combined. It will be particularly important, I believe, for those new to the field of performance ethnography (including students), who are interested in models for how to study performance as these unfold in the field. Individual chapters also contain much new research that will be of great interest to specialists. I heartily recommend this volume. - Matthew Isaac Cohen, Professor of International Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London This is an interesting collection of seven essays that stem from an international conference on Performance Ethnography at the University of Chester in 2012. They present a fresh and useful contribution to ethnographic theory from a multiplicity of perspectives and will particularly appeal to those working in and across performance studies, anthropology, dance studies, and folklore studies. ... The essays will undoubtedly assist in stimulating discussion at final year and graduate level as well as providing new historiographical perspectives on the development of performance studies outside the United States. At the same time, dialogue is maintained with theoretical perspectives and seminal work in the development of North American Performance Studies. This volume should sit well alongside other collections that examine Performance Ethnography, offering distinctive critical views on its achievements and potential. - Theresa Buckland, Professor of Performing Arts, De Montfort University The collection is short, as is each essay, so Performance and Ethnography cannot be considered comprehensive or discipline-changing. However, it does nicely document some important and positive changes occurring in the discipline, and it adds to our knowledge and appreciation of performance and the arts in anthropology, which are hardly neglected but also are not sufficiently respected. Readers should find some theoretical and methodological ideas that will enhance their own fieldwork and writing. - Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

This anthology offers a range of approaches in the bringing together of performance and ethnography. It goes beyond the normal 'case study' approach to consider how the interaction of disciplines and the bringing together of different scholarly genealogies enables the posing of new research questions and the setting of research agenda. It offers a useful meditation on how historically performance ethnography has been stratified across folklore studies, performance studies and the various anthropological approaches to the performing arts (including ethnomusicology) and how these different approaches to understanding performance as social process might be usefully merged or selectively combined. It will be particularly important, I believe, for those new to the field of performance ethnography (including students), who are interested in models for how to study performance as these unfold in the field. Individual chapters also contain much new research that will be of great interest to specialists. I heartily recommend this volume. - Matthew Isaac Cohen, Professor of International Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London This is an interesting collection of seven essays that stem from an international conference on Performance Ethnography at the University of Chester in 2012. They present a fresh and useful contribution to ethnographic theory from a multiplicity of perspectives and will particularly appeal to those working in and across performance studies, anthropology, dance studies, and folklore studies. ... The essays will undoubtedly assist in stimulating discussion at final year and graduate level as well as providing new historiographical perspectives on the development of performance studies outside the United States. At the same time, dialogue is maintained with theoretical perspectives and seminal work in the development of North American Performance Studies. This volume should sit well alongside other collections that examine Performance Ethnography, offering distinctive critical views on its achievements and potential. - Theresa Buckland, Professor of Performing Arts, De Montfort University The collection is short, as is each essay, so Performance and Ethnography cannot be considered comprehensive or discipline-changing. However, it does nicely document some important and positive changes occurring in the discipline, and it adds to our knowledge and appreciation of performance and the arts in anthropology, which are hardly neglected but also are not sufficiently respected. Readers should find some theoretical and methodological ideas that will enhance their own fieldwork and writing. - Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

[Performance and Ethnography]...nicely document[s] some important and positive changes occurring in the discipline, and it adds to our knowledge and appreciation of performance and the arts in anthropology...

Author Information

Peter Harrop is Professor of Drama at the University of Chester and currently Pro-Vice Chancellor. He gained his degrees in Drama, Education and Folklore at the University of Leeds (PhD, 1980) and previously taught Theatre Arts at the University of Addis Ababa (1980–1985) and Bretton Hall (1985–1996). He has published in Lore and Language; Folk Life: A Journal of Ethnological Studies; Studies in Theatre and Performance; Performance Research; Popular Entertainment Studies; and Contemporary Theatre Review.Dunja Njaradi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Performing Arts, University of Chester. She holds degrees from Belgrade (BA in Ethnology), Nottingham (MA in Slavonic Studies) and Lancaster (PhD in Theatre Studies) and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Dance, Movement and Spiritualties. As a theatre and dance studies scholar she works within several interdisciplinary affiliations: physical theatre, dance anthropology and contemporary dance.

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