Performing Self in Ethnographic Fieldwork

This provocative book presents a methodological proposal for teaching ethnographic fieldwork, applying interdisciplinary tools inspired from performance theory, acting, experiential anthropology and existential psychotherapy. At the same time, it constitutes a theoretical and methodological trajectory mapping the history of ethnographic fieldwork through highly characteristic moments along with the author's own personal journey in the field in terms of a lifetime project. Starting from the assumption that ethnographic fieldwork constitutes a deeply human experience, the book proposes a step further towards the performative dimension of an ethnographic condition inspired by the Stanislavski method, which in practice complements performance theory issues: it is argued that participant observation offers an intermediate identity for the ethnographer through a conscious management of the social "role" dictated by their research participants; this ethnographic mediation of the Self may also have psychotherapeutic effects, mainly through conscious management of self-diversity and reflexivity in ethnographic writing. Ethnographic fieldwork is thus highlighted as a performative stage and a field of deep transformations for the ethnographer's identity.

1. Instead of an Introduction: The Ethnographer, the Listener, the Performer—Three Roles in One Attribute.- 2. Starting with Experiencing: Towards an Intermediate Identity.- 3. Uninvited Guest.- 4. Familiarity in Progress.- 5. Back to Normality, De-familiarisation Anew.- 6. Beyond the Method, the Method, Again.- 7. Sustaining an Open Debate.- 8. Postface: Embodying Knowledge.

Marilena Papachristophorou is Professor of Social Anthropology and Folklore Studies at the University of Ioannina, Greece, and formerly Researcher at the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre of the Academy of Athens. She studied French and Comparative Literature in Sorbonne (University Paris IV) and obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She has taught at the Hellenic Open University and at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her publications focus on the study of orality, collective representations and identities as expressed through narrative and ritual practices. She publishes in Greek, French and English. She is the author of Sommeils et veilles dans le conte merveilleux grec and Myth, Representation and Identity: an Ethnography of Memory in Lipsi, Greece.