Performative social science and psychology

"This article presents an overview of 'Performative Social Science,' which is defined as the deployment of different forms of artistic performance in the execution of a scientific project. Such forms may include art, theater, poetry, music, dance, photography, fiction writing, and multi-media applications. Performative research practices are in their developmental stage, with most of the major work appearing in the last two decades. Frequently based on a social constructionist metatheory, supporters reject a realist, or mapping view of representation, and explore varieties of expressive forms for constructing worlds relevant to the social sciences. The performative orientation often relies on a dramaturgical approach that encompasses value-laden, emotionally charged topics and presentations. Social scientists invested in social justice issues and political perspectives have been especially drawn to this approach. Performative social science invites productive collaborations among various disciplinary Fields and between the sciences and arts." (author's abstract

Performative Social Science and Psychology

Este articulo presenta una mirada general a la "Ciencia social performativa", la cual se define como la implementación de diferentes formas de interpretación artística en la ejecución de un proyecto científico. Dichas formas pueden incluir: arte, teatro, poesía, música, danza, fotografía, escritura de ficción y aplicaciones multimedios. Las prácticas de investigación performativa están en su fase de desarrollo, la mayoría del trabajo principal ha aparecido en las últimas dos décadas. Frecuentemente basado en una meta-teoría social construccionista, los partidarios rechazan una visión realista o perspectiva de mapa de la representación, y exploran variedades de formas expresivas para construir mundos relevantes a las ciencias sociales. La orientación performativa frecuentemente se basa en un enfoque dramatúrgico que abarca temas y presentaciones cargados de valor emocional. Los científicos sociales dedicados a temas de justicia social y perspectivas políticas han estado especialmente bosquejando este enfoque. La ciencia social performativa invita a las colaboraciones productivas entre varios campos disciplinarios y entre las ciencias y las artes. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101119Mit diesem Beitrag bieten wir einen Überblick über "performative Sozialwissenschaft", d.h. die Nutzung unterschiedlichster Ausdrucksformen aus Malerei, Dichtung, Theater, Musik, Tanz, Fotografie usw. für wissenschaftliche Projekte. Performative Sozialwissenschaft befindet sich in einem noch frühen Entwicklungsstadium; die wesentlichen Arbeiten sind erst innerhalb der letzten beiden Jahrzehnte erschienen. Ausgehend von einer zumeist sozial-konstruktionistischen Metatheorie wendet sich dieser Ansatz gegen eine realistische Repräsentationsidee und experimentiert stattdessen mit Formen, die für die Konstruktion sozialwissenschaftlich relevanter Welten bedeutungsvoll sein können. Performativer Sozialwissenschaft unterliegt zumeist eine dramaturgische Orientierung, die werthaltige, emotional besetzte Themen und Präsentationen umfasst, ebenso Fragen sozialer Gerechtigkeit und eine dezidiert politische Perspektive. Von besonderem Interesse sind transdisziplinäre Arbeiten und die Zusammenarbeit von Wissenschaft und Kunst. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101119This article presents an overview of "Performative Social Science," which is defined as the deployment of different forms of artistic performance in the execution of a scientific project. Such forms may include art, theater, poetry, music, dance, photography, fiction writing, and multi-media applications. Performative research practices are in their developmental stage, with most of the major work appearing in the last two decades. Frequently based on a social constructionist metatheory, supporters reject a realist, or mapping view of representation, and explore varieties of expressive forms for constructing worlds relevant to the social sciences. The performative orientation often relies on a dramaturgical approach that encompasses value-laden, emotionally charged topics and presentations. Social scientists invested in social justice issues and political perspectives have been especially drawn to this approach. Performative social science invites productive collaborations among various disciplinary fields and between the sciences and arts. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs110111

Japanese Regional Mascots as Representations of Nostalgia

Regional mascots in Japan are utilized in several different ways from place branding, tourism marketing and business to administrative soft power functions. With the Japanese tourism industry relying heavily on domestic travel, regional mascots are parts of campaigns designed to market rural travel locations to domestic audiences. Predating the use of mascots, these campaigns have long marketed rural destinations as imagined homeplaces utilizing the culturally bound nostalgic imagery of hometown, furusato. The concept of homeplace is intimately connected to the locally observable phenomenon of indulgent interdependence in Japan, amae. This study aims to find nostalgic triggers identifiable in the framework of furusato and amae in regional mascots and their campaigns through qualitative representational analysis. Nostalgia is conceptualized as an emotional response containing a mixture of positive and negative feelings for things no longer available. In addition to personal nostalgia, nostalgia can be experienced towards a collectively shared cultural past or a historical time, in which case the nostalgic experience is simulated. In advertising texts, nostalgic triggers provide a means for greater consumer involvement. In the Japanese cultural context, nostalgic experience is often connected to the sense of homelessness and yearning for homeplace. While personal nostalgia for furusato is possible, the majority of nostalgic experience can be categorized as collective or historical. Things like local specialty products, events and activities may serve as nostalgic triggers. Amae ties in with furusato through the collective nature of village life and interdependence, whereas cute culture connects with amae through feelings of comfort and indulgence. Character culture enables affective consumption and escape into simulated worlds. The representation analysis utilized follows the constructionist approach to representation and meaning making, where reality is constituted from meaning making processes. This approach allows the search of denotative and connotative connections between mascot campaign content and furusato imagery. The analysis focuses on four regional mascots and their campaigns. The material introduced includes design, promotional activities, products and content produced for the characters. Content analysed is multimodal including audiovisual material, websites, blogs and social media channels. The representations in the campaigns are found to constitute locations as imagined homeplaces and communities. Similarly, the analysis discovered possibilities for nostalgia through experiences of amae. Nostalgic triggers identified through the analysis evoke either personal, collective or historical nostalgia. Notions of tradition, home, childhood, nature, festival culture, cuisine and local specialties are identified as powerful nostalgic triggers in the Japanese cultural context. As the outcome of nostalgic feeling cannot be guaranteed, further study is recommended for the confirmation of the occurrence of nostalgic reactions to these triggers from a larger sample of material

Critical Multicultural Engagement with Children\u27s Texts: Perspectives, Power, and Positioning

While critical approaches are an accepted teaching philosophy (Aukerman, 2012; Behrman, 2006; Luke et al., 2010), there requires further inquiry of theoretical and pedagogical practices for critical multicultural teaching of culturally diverse literature in the elementary context. The problem is not just about what we read with students, but how we critically and multiculturally read and use children\u27s literature for promoting an understanding of social constructs. The essential question that guides this dissertation is: What does critical multicultural engagement with children\u27s texts offer students as they read and respond to texts? This critical ethnography argues that pedagogy centered on critical multicultural engagement with children’s texts invites and promotes critical multicultural consciousness and agency, offering students the possibility for critical constructions as they negotiate meaning of sociocultural themes. My pedagogical arguments are informed by critical multicultural analysis (Botelho & Rudman, 2009) who suggest teaching critically with multicultural literature includes keeping “power relations of class, race, and gender at the center of…investigations of children\u27s literature…connecting our reading to sociopolitical and economic justice (p. 268). This research adopts feminist poststructuralist theory and includes a critical reflexive process that aids in understanding the workings of our social world (Pillow, 2003, p. 178). Reflexivity provides the examination of perspectives, power, and positioning (Pillow, 2003) as the participants (the teacher-researcher and her third-grade students) engage with texts. Incorporating ethnodrama (Saldaña, 2003), I present the students’ responses as mini scripts illustrating how students’ discourse informs and leads the learning and gives the reader a sense of being there. As the students respond to texts, they produce new texts and through critical creativity they represent their understandings of social constructs such as race and sociocultural identity. Critical discourse analysis (Rex & Schiller, 2009), is used to discuss power relations manifested in the critical multicultural events

Culture for Sale? An Exploratory Study of the Crow Fair

This paper describes an ethnographically-oriented participant-observation study conducted during the annual Crow Fair, held in south central Montana. Data collected included audio-recorded interviews with participants, participant observations, photographic and video recordings. Narrative interviews were transcribed and analyzed using the constant comparison method. Multiple data sources improved the veracity of this study through triangulation, and four themes emerged from the data: commercialization, alcohol abuse, spirituality, and community. The researchers discuss these themes and their conclusions regarding the selling of Native American culture as a form of cultural transmission. Theme analysis revealed the researchers recognized that the principal researcher had changed his view of the Crow Fair as being frivolous to having a deeper purpose and meaning to participants