Performatieve etnografie

Samenvatting

Performative Ethnography. A review essay on a book by Johannes Fabian, Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom in Shaba, Zaire (Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin Press, 1990). Fabian's work lies within the recent literature on anthropological ethnography and offers an overview of key developments since the 1970s. This book departs to some extent from Fabian's earlier scholarship in terms of both its epistemology of fieldwork and its notion of what ethnography represents. A new meaning and emphasis are accorded to the notion of performance. The richness and variety of his text (which he refers to as "an experiment in ethnographic writing") are noteworthy in his reports on the Jamaa religious movement in Zaire. Nonethless, issue is taken with three points: (1) the range of the concept of performance; (2) ethical evaluations of the power component of performative ethnography; and (3) the ontologization of the West. The book is praised for its passionate plea for ethnographic detail as a cornerstone of analysis. 10 References. M. Meeks