The Anthropology of Performance is an invaluable guide to this exciting and growing area. This cutting-edge volume on the major advancements in performance studies presents the theories, methods, and practices of performance in cultures around the globe. Leading anthropologists describe the range of human expression through performance and explore its role in constructing identity and community, as well as broader processes such as globalization and transnationalism.
- Introduces new and advanced students to the task of studying and interpreting complex social, cultural, and political events from a performance perspective
- Presents performance as a convergent field of inquiry that bridges the humanities and social sciences, with a distinctive cross-cultural perspective in anthropology
- Demonstrates the range of human expression and meaning through performance in related fields of religious & ritual studies, folkloristics, theatre, language arts, and art & dance
- Explores the role of performance in constructing identity, community, and the broader processes of globalization and transnationalism
- Includes fascinating global case studies on a diverse range of phenomena
- Contributions from leading scholars examine verbal genres, ritual and drama, public spectacle, tourism, and the performances embedded in everyday selves, communities and nations
Author(s): Frank J. Korom
Series: Wiley Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, 16
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Year: 2013
Language: English
Pages: 304
City: Chichester
The Anthropology of Performance
Contents
Acknowledgments to Sources
The Anthropology of Performance: An Introduction
Part I: Performance in Prehistory and Antiquity
1 Singing the Rug: Patterned Textiles and the Origins of Indo-European Metrical Poetry
NOTES
REFERENCES
2 Performance and Written Literature in Classical Greece: Envisaging Performance from Written Literature and Comparative Contexts
Song Culture
Conclusion
NOTES
Part II: Verbal Genres of Performance
3 Playing the Dozens
Dozens’ Replies
NOTES
4 The La Have Island General Store: Sociability and Verbal Art in a Nova Scotia Community
APPENDIX
TEXT A
Text B
NOTES
5 Proverbs and the Ethnography of Speaking Folklore
Introduction
Studying Proverbs as Communication
Some Yoruba Proverbs of Child Training
Discussion
Proverbs and Channel
Conclusion
APPENDIX
NOTE
REFERENCES
6 Gbaya Riddles in Changing Times
NOTES
REFERENCES
7 Shadows of Song: Exploring Research and Performance Strategies in Yolngu Women’s Crying-Songs
Arnhem Land Performance Research
Seeing Musically
Strategies of Formation and Location
Conclusion
NOTES
REFERENCES
Part III: Ritual, Drama, and Public Spectacle
8 Prayer as Person: The Performative Force in Navajo Prayer Acts
An Outline of Navajo Ceremonialism
Holyway Ceremonials
Holyway Prayer
Name mention
Offering/smoke
Imperative to remake
Removal and dispersion
Recovery
Pleasantness regained
The Prayer as a Pragmatic Act
“Doctrine of the Infelicities”
Conclusion
NOTES
9 Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality
Introduction: Meaning-centered Analyses of Ritual
Limitations of the meaningcentered approach
The Kaluli Setting
The Seance Performance
Playing the Urgency of the Social Situation
The seance setting
The Strategy of the Songs
Performance unity and integrity
Performance momentum
The spirits
The “audience”
The Ostensible Work of the Seance
Dialogic modes of constructing reality
Dramaturgical means of constructing reality
Seance Performance and the Construction of Cosmological Context
Implications for the notion of “belief system”
Conclusion
NOTES
REFERENCES
10 “He Should Have Worn a Sari”: A “Failed” Performance of a Central Indian Oral Epic
The Candaini Epic and Its Performance
The Failed Performance
Audience Expectation and Performance Language
Toward New Performance Languages
NOTES
REFERENCES
11 Representing History: Performing the Columbian Exposition
NOTES
12 The Palio of Siena: Performance and Process
Siena
The Contrada
Contrada Structure
Contrada Members
The Individual and Contrada Life
Role Reversals
Space and Time
After the Palio
Discussion
Conclusion
NOTES
REFERENCES
Part IV: Performance and Politics in the Making of Communities
13 Poetry and Politics in a Transylvanian Village
NOTES
REFERENCES
14 The Matter of Talk: Political Performances in Bhatgaon
Bhatgaon: A Fiji Indian Community
Contexts
Textures
Texts
Unconventional Performances
NOTES
REFERENCES
15 Celebrating Cricket: The Symbolic Construction of Caribbean Politics
Blacks in Whites
Food, liquor, clothing, and money
The stock market
Festival and politics
Conclusion
NOTES
REFERENCES
16 Performing the Nation: China’s Children as Little Red Pioneers
Accounting for Nationalism
Performing the Nation
The Little Red Pioneers
Pioneers and the Nation
Fear of Water: Performance, Reiteration, and “Getting It Wrong”
NOTES
REFERENCES
Part V: Tourist Performances and the Global Ecumene
17 The Promise of Sonic Translation: Performing the Festive Sacred in Morocco
The Festive Sacred and the Promise of Sonic Translation
Learning to Listen the Nation
The Festive Sacred: Beyond the Nation
Defining the Sacred
The Fes Festival of Sacred Music In Situ
“The Spirit of Fes” and and the Reification of Place
Attending to Audition
Sufi Nights, Sacred Tourism
“Giving Soul to Globalization”
Conclusion: Sacred Aesthetics and the Festive Sacred
NOTES
REFERENCES
18 Ethnic Tourism in Hokkaidoˆ and the Shaping of Ainu Identity
Introduction
Ethnic Tourism and the Commoditisation of Cultures
Ainu Ethnic Tourism in Hokkaid^
Tourism and the Ainu
Tourism, Ainu Cultural Expressions, and Ainu Ethnic Identities
Towards the Future
NOTES
19 What They Came With: Carnival and the Persistence of African Performance Aesthetics in the Diaspora
Phenomenology and the Theory of Translocation
Semiological Similarities between African Festivals and Diasporic Carnivals
Myth in African and African Diasporic Festival/Carnival Performance
Conclusion: Carnival as an Encyclopedia of Other Literacies
REFERENCES
20 Global Breakdancing and the Intercultural Body
Hip Hop’s Global Proliferation
Urban Movement in Hawai’i
Performing Race: Performativity as Complex Embodiment
Hip Hop’s Two-Pronged Bodily Text
Hip Hop Postmodernity: Dimensions of Late Capitalism and Cultural Studies
Conclusions
NOTES
REFERENCES
Further Readings
Index
