The Anthropology of
Performance
ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES OF
EXPRESSIVE CULTURE
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All types/forms of expressive culture
informal & formal forms
“function" and "meaning“
essential power as objects, activities, images,
performances
• elite cultural forms that have been popularized as well
as popular forms that have been elevated to the
museum tradition
– Aesthetics & society/social relations
• cross-culturally & historically variable
• technologies of communication
Expressive Culture & Society
• relationships between cultural practices and
social processes
– social positioning of artist, patrons, audience etc.
– relationships between systems of thought, social
institutions, and different forms of material and
symbolic power
– systems of domination find expression in all areas of
cultural practices and symbolic exchange
• dispositions - expressive performances of culture
are reflexive instruments, social forms about
society, cultural forms about culture,
communicative forms about communication
PLAY
• differs from animal play in that it is culturally
molded, varies from culture to culture
• play is a frame
• usually a timeless experience
• move to another kind of communication
• meta-communication
• without play no awareness of alternative
realities, sets of rules, social orders
• all expressive performances of culture are in
some way framed as play
Some Common Assumptions:
Expressive Culture in Small Scale
Societies
• embedded in everyday life
• portable
• Artists recognized for their skills but don’t
necessarily have greater status
• Standardization
• people have roughly equal access to it
– More ‘democratic’
Some Common Assumptions:
Expressive Culture in Large Scale
Societies
• More craft specialization, incl. those of artists.
• And standards become more elaborate and
explicit
• more standardization
• Associated with the elite and is often owned and
controlled by the upper classes
• art glorifies and serves the interests of the upper
classes
Functions
• Emotional Gratification for the Individual
• helping people cope more effectively with tensions and
aggressive feelings
• Contributes to Social Integration -- Social Control
• Preserving or Challenging the Status Quo
• articulating and reinforcing relationships between
members of the society.
• passing on the cultural traditions, values, and beliefs
from one generation to the next.
• various methods of communicating with supernatural
forces
• expressing political values and attitudes, showing
allegiance to political leaders, and controlling behavior
Anthro Language of Performance
Studies
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Poetics – aesthetics uses of LANGUAGE
Symbolic
Indexical
Reflexivity
Performativity
Text and context
Hermeneutics
Illocutionary force/effect
Meta-narrative/narration
Phatic ties – revealing or sharing feelings or establishing an
atmosphere; sociability rather than communicating ideas
• Competence
ETHNOGRAPHIES OF SPEAKING
• the descriptive study of the use of language, deeply
embedded in its cultural context (Dell Hymes)
• S – setting and scene
• P – participants
• E – ends: the desired or expected outcome
• A – Act: how form and content are delivered
• K – key: mood or spirit (serious, ironic, etc.)
• I – instrumentalities: the dialect or language variety
• N – norms: speaking conventions
• G – genres: different types of performance (speech,
joke, sermon, etc.)
performative aspects of culture
• "emergent" quality
• despite its fixed character, is still modified by
presentational conditions
• performer" and "audience," all participants are in
fact co-creators of the piece being performed.
• every performance is a unique event
• the analysis of a given performance is of less
interest than the analysis of the social and
communicative processes that engender it