Performance Ethnography

Performance ethnography is simultaneously a tool that allows researchers to extend their theoretical knowledge about expressive communicative behavior and action and a tool for the practice of performance theory, critical theory, and interpretive [Page 736]theory, designed to reveal and foster awareness of self, communities, and social worlds. Even though performance ethnography is a recent development in qualitative research methodology, its roots date back to the 1970s writings of Victor Turner and Richard Schechner and perhaps as early as the critical theater of Bertold Brecht. However, it is only in the 1990s and early 21st century that a body of methodological, epistemological, and theoretical literature on performance ethnography has developed, thanks in large part to figures such as Dwight Conquergood and Norman Denzin.

In a not-so-distant past, ethnography was exclusively synonymous with participant observation (or fieldwork). Participant observation was a strategy of data collection, and to a great degree, that is all there was to be said on that account; researchers impartially and impersonally recorded notes—a mountain of notes over time—and then found a way to organize them and write them up. The write-up part of fieldwork was hardly worthy of consideration or reflection. One just had to know how to do it, and concern for style—choices between different modes of representation, writing genres, and distribution media—was simply not an issue.

Today, ethnography has changed, and no forms embody that wind of change more than performance ethnography. Drawing upon the body of methodological, epistemological, and theoretical knowledge largely classifiable under the themes of reflexive ethnography, postmodern ethnography, or critical ethnography, performance ethnography encompasses all the qualities and characteristics of its cognate ethnographic specialties and adds a key focus on the sharing of ethnographically derived knowledge through performative representation. Performative representation is intended as creative and productive knowledge.

Before surveying the various principles of performance ethnography and discussing its scope, it is important to reflect on the performative nature of performance ethnography. To do so, it might be useful to start from the most frequently asked question on this topic: “Is performance ethnography necessarily a staged, theatrical production?” The answer, according to most, is no. Even though performance ethnography is historically built on the principle of sharing knowledge with audiences by way of staged theatrical performances, performance ethnography may take on alternative shapes as long as its mode of representation is performative. Therefore, performative ethnographic writing or performative representation by way of film or documentary production, poetry, monologues, various alternatives to staged theatrical productions, and similar embodied modes of communication may very well be categorized as performance ethnography.