Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:18:32.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 10 - Fieldwork as Method in Theatre and Performance Studies

from Part II - Doing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2024

By
Jonas Tinius
Edited by
Tracy C. Davis  and
Paul Rae
Tracy C. Davis
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
Paul Rae
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Get access

Summary

This contribution addresses fieldwork as an anthropological method. It discusses the surprising lack of a systematic conversation between anthropology and performance as well as theatre research since the ‘performative turn’. Seeking to clarify terminological distinctions between ethnography, fieldwork, and method, Jonas Tinius draws upon his fieldwork with a theatre in the western German Ruhr region to discusses how a complex understanding of the field and the commitments we make to fieldwork may offer possibilities for working across anthropology, performance, and theatre. It concludes with a sketch of three practical ways to think about the mixing of anthropological methods in performance research.

Keywords

fieldworkethnographyanthropologyparticipant-observationmigrant theatremakers
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Guide to Mixed Methods Research for Theatre and Performance Studies , pp. 190 - 212
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, J. C. (2011). The Performance of Politics: Obama’s Victory and the Democratic Struggle for Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Baert, P. (2015). The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Baert, P., & Morgan, M. (2015). Conflict in the Academy: A Study in the Sociology of Intellectuals. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Balme, C., & Szymanski-Düll, B., eds. (2020). Methoden der Theaterwissenschaft. Tübingen, Germany: Narr Francke.Google Scholar
Banu, G. (2005). Les répétitions: de Stanislavski à aujourd’hui. Arles: Actes Sud.Google Scholar
Barber, K. (2000). The Generation of Plays: Yorùbá Popular Life in Theater. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Barber, K. (2007). The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics: Oral and Written Culture in Africa and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumann, R., & Briggs, C. L. (1990). ‘Poetics and Performances as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 59–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, H. S. (1982). Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Beeman, W. O. (1993). ‘The Anthropology of Theatre and Spectacle’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 22, 369–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloch, N., & Heimböckel, D., eds. (2016). Theater und Ethnologie: Beiträge zu einer produktiven Beziehung. Tübingen, Germany: Narr Francke.Google Scholar
Boellstorff, T. (2012). Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Methods. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Born, G. (1995). Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1977 [1972]). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1984 [1979]). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Boyer, D. (2019). ‘Foucault in the Bush: The Social Life of Post-Structuralist Theory in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg’. Ethnos, 66(2), 207–36.Google Scholar
Boyer, D., & Marcus, G. E., eds. (2021). Collaborative Anthropology Today: A Collection of Exceptions. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Breidenstein, G., Hirschauer, S., Kalthoff, H., & Niewsand, B., eds. (2015). Ethnografie: Die Praxis der Feldforschung. 2nd ed. Konstanz, Germany: UTB.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carrithers, M. (2007 [1996]). ‘Fieldwork’. In Barnard, A. & Spencer, J., eds., Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Routledge, p. 262.Google Scholar
Clifford, J. (1986). ‘Introduction: Partial Truths’. In Clifford, J. & Marcus, G. E., eds., Writing Culture: The Politics and Poetics of Ethnography. Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E., eds. (1986). Writing Culture: The Politics and Poetics of Ethnography. Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, C. M. (2001). Ghana’s Concert Party Theatre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, S. G., Durington, M., & Gill, H. (2017). ‘Multimodality: An Invitation’. American Anthropologist, 119(1), 142–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conquergood, D. (1989). ‘Poetics, Play, Process, and Power: The Performative Turn in Anthropology’. Text and Performance Quarterly, 1, 82–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conquergood, D. (1991). ‘Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics’. Communication Monographs, 58(2), 179–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conquergood, D. (2002). ‘Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research’. TDR: The Drama Review, 46(2), 145–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowan, J. (1990). Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Das, V. (2007). Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Davis, T. C. (2020). ‘Setasidedness’. In Davis, T. C. & Marx, P. W., eds., The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance Historiography. London: Routledge, pp. 118–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, T. C., & Marx, P. W. (2021). ‘Introduction: On Critical Media History’. In Davis, T. C. & Marx, P. W., eds., The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance Historiography. London: Routledge, pp. 1–39.Google Scholar
Davis, T. C., & Postlewait, T. (2003). ‘Theatricality: An Introduction’. In Davis, T. C. & Postlewait, T., eds., Theatricality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–39.Google Scholar
Devlieger, C. (2018). ‘Disability’. Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 14 June. http://doi.org/10.29164/18disab.Google Scholar
Donkor, D. (2007). ‘Performance, Ethnography and the Radical Intervention of Dwight Conquergood’. Cultural Studies, 21(6), 821−5.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1976). Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Faubion, J., & Marcus, G. E., eds. (2011). Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be: Learning Anthropology’s Method in a Time of Transition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Fischer-Lichte, E., Risi, C., & Roselt, J., eds. (2004). Kunst der Aufführung. Aufführung der Kunst. Berlin: Theater der Zeit.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1980). Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1983). ‘Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought’. In Geertz, C., Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. London: Basic Books, pp. 19–35.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (2000). Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gell, A. (1996). ‘Vogel’s Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps’. Journal of Material Culture, 1(1), 15–38.Google Scholar
Gell, A. (2006 [1992]). ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’. In A. Gell, The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams, ed. Hirsch, E.. Oxford: Athlone Press, pp. 159–86.Google Scholar
Gennep, A. van. (2004 [1909]). The Rites of Passage. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Harvie, J. & Lavender, A., eds. (2010). Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M. (1998). Portrait of a Greek Imagination: An Ethnographic Biography of Andreas Nenedakis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hinz, M. & Roselt, J. (2011). Chaos und Konzept. Proben und Probieren im Theater. Berlin: Alexander Verlag.Google Scholar
Howell, S. (2018). ‘Ethnography’. Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 18 February. http://doi.org/10.29164/18ethno.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huizinga, J. (1950). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. (2014). ‘That’s Enough about Ethnography!’ HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4(1), 383–95.Google Scholar
Irving, A. (2007). ‘Ethnography, Art, Death’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13(1), 185–208.Google Scholar
Jackson, M. (1996). ‘Introduction: Phenomenology, Radical Empiricism and Anthropological Critique’. In Jackson, M., ed., Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, pp. 1–50.Google Scholar
Kendon, A. (1997). ‘Gesture’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 109–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kershaw, B. & Nicholson, H. (2011). Research Methods in Theatre and Performance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korom, F. J., ed. (2013). The Anthropology of Performance: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kreuder, F. (2016). ‘Schauspieler_innen als Ethnograph_innen’. In Cairo, M., Hannemann, M., Haß, U., & Schäfer, J., eds., Episteme des Theaters: Aktuelle Kontexte von Wissenschaft, Kunst und Öffentlichkeit. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, pp. 539–50.Google Scholar
Kreuder, F., Bachmann, M., Pfahl, J., & Voz, D. (2012). ‘Vorwort’. In Kreuder, F., Bachmann, M., Pfahl, J., & Volz, D., eds., Theater und Subjektkonstitution: Theatrale Praktiken zwischen Affirmation und Subversion. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, pp. 11–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambek, M., ed. (2010). Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language and Action. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2003). ‘A Dialog on Actor Network Theory with a (Somewhat) Socratic Professor’. In Avgerou, C., Ciborra, C., & Land, F., eds., The Social Study of Information and Communications Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 62–76.Google Scholar
Macdonald, S. (2001). ‘Ethnography in the Science Museum, London’. In Gellner, D. & Hirsch, E., eds., Inside Organisations: Anthropologists at Work. Oxford: Berg, pp. 77–96.Google Scholar
Madison, D. S. (2010). Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Malinowski, B. (1989 [1967]). A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Malinowski, B. (2005 [1922]). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge, pp. 1–20.Google Scholar
Matzke, A. (2012a). Arbeit am Theater: Eine Diskursgeschichte der Probe. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript.Google Scholar
Matzke, A. (2012b). ‘Hildesheimer Thesen V: Das Freie Theater gibt es nicht’. Nachtkritik.de, 21 November. Accessed 11 October 2023. https://nachtkritik.de/index.php?view=article&id=7472.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. (1936). ‘Les techniques du corps’. Journal de Psychologie, 32, 3–4.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. (1990 [1923]). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
McAuley, G. (1988). ‘Towards an Ethnography of Rehearsal’. New Theatre Quarterly, 14(53), 75–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAuley, G. (2012). Not Magic but Work: An Ethnographic Account of a Rehearsal Process. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, D. (1997). Capitalism: An Ethnographic Approach. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Morris, R. C. (1995). ‘All Made Up: Performance Theory and the New Anthropology of Sex and Gender’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 567–92.Google Scholar
Muñoz, J. E. (2006). ‘Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race, and the Depressive Position’. New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture, 31(1), 675–88.Google Scholar
Nader, L. (1969). ‘Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up’. In Hymes, D., ed., Reinventing Anthropology. New York: Pantheon Books (Random House), pp. 284–311.Google Scholar
Nader, L. (2011). ‘Ethnography as Theory’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 1(1), 211–19.Google Scholar
Ortner, S. (2016). ‘Dark Anthropology and Its Others: Theory since the Eighties’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6(1), 47−73.Google Scholar
Oswald, M. & Tinius, J., eds. (2022). Awkward Archives: Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum. Berlin/Dakar/Milan: Archive Books.Google Scholar
Rabinow, P. (1977). Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rae, P. (2018). Real Theatre: Essays in Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, S. A. (1998). ‘The Politics and Poetics of Dance’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, 503–32.Google Scholar
Robbins, J. (2013). ‘Beyond the Suffering Subject: Toward an Anthropology of the Good’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19(3), 447−62.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, R. (1986). ‘From the Door of His Tent: The Fieldworker and the Inquisitor’. In Clifford, J. & Marcus, G. E., eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 77–97.Google Scholar
Sanjek, R. (1990). Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sansi, R. (2015). Art, Anthropology and the Gift. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Sansi, R. (2020). ‘Introduction: Anthropology and Curation through the Looking Glass’. In Sansi, R., ed., The Anthropologist as Curator. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 1–16.Google Scholar
Sansi, R., & Strathern, M. (2016). ‘Art and Anthropology after Relations’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6(2), 425–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sax, W. S. (2002). Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pāṇḍav līlāof Garhwal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, R. (1985). Between Anthropology and Theatre. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Spencer, P. (1985). Society and the Dance: The Social Anthropology of Process and Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Spivak, G. C. (1988). ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ In Nelson, C. & Grossberg, L., eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, pp. 271–316.Google Scholar
Sundén, J. (2003). Material Virtualities: Approaching Online Textual Embodiment. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Taussig, M. (2011). I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Thornton, R. (1988). ‘The Rhetoric of Ethnographic Holism: “Postmodernism” and the Social Reproduction of Texts’. Cultural Anthropology, 3(3), 285–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tinius, J. (2015a). ‘Between Professional Precariousness and Creative Self-Organisation: The Free Performing Arts Scene in Germany’. In Dockx, N. & Gielen, P., eds., Mobile Autonomy: Exercises in Artists’ Self-Organisation. Amsterdam: Valiz, pp. 171–93.Google Scholar
Tinius, J. (2015b). ‘Institutional Formation and Artistic Critique in German Ensemble Theatre’. Performance Research, 20(4), 71–7.Google Scholar
Tinius, J. (2016). ‘Rehearsing Detachment: Refugee Theatre and Dialectical Fiction’. Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia, 5(1), 21–38.Google Scholar
Tinius, J. (2017a). ‘Anthropologische Beobachtungen zu künstlerischer Subjektivierung und institutioneller Reflexivität: Das Theaterprojekt Ruhrorter mit Geflüchteten am Theater an der Ruhr’. In Wartstat, M., Evers, F., Flade, K., Lempa, F., & Seuberling, L., eds., Applied Theatre: Rahmen und Positionen. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, pp. 205–35.Google Scholar
Tinius, J. (2017b). ‘Art as Ethical Practice: Anthropological Observations on and beyond Theatre’. World Art, 7(2), 227–51.Google Scholar
Tinius, J. (2018). ‘Capacity for Character: Fiction, Ethics, and the Anthropology of Conduct’. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 26(3), 345–60.Google Scholar
Tinius, J. (2020). ‘Die Ethnografie als Methode der Theaterwissenschaften?’ In Balme, C. & Szymanski-Düll, B., eds., Methoden der Theaterwissenschaften. Tübingen, Germany: Narr Francke, pp. 315–36.Google Scholar
Tinius, J. (2021). ‘The Anthropologist as Sparring Partner: Instigative Public Fieldwork, Curatorial Collaboration, and German Colonial Heritage’. Berliner Blätter, 83, 65–85.Google Scholar
Tinius, J. (2023). State of the Arts: An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tinius, J., & Wewerka, A., eds. (2020). Der fremde Blick. Roberto Ciulli und das Theater an der Ruhr. 2 vols. Berlin: Alexander Verlag.Google Scholar
Turner, V. (1970). The Forest of Symbols: Essays on Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, V. (1986). The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal.Google Scholar
Weber, C. (1967/8). ‘Brecht as Director’. TDR: The Drama Review, 1, 101–7.Google Scholar
Weiner, J. F. (1996). ‘Introduction: Aesthetics Is a Cross-Cultural Category’. In Ingold, T., ed., Key Debates in Anthropology. London: Routledge, pp. 251–4.Google Scholar
Wihstutz, B., & Hoesch, B., eds. (2020). Neue Methoden der Theaterwissenschaft. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×