Oral Presentation Session
Reviewed by: Society for Cultural Anthropology
Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students, Those Involved in Mentoring Activities
Primary Theme: Identity and Equity
Secondary Theme: Indigeneity
The anthropology of performance is often divided into two broad categories, cultural
performance and performing culture. Cultural performance refers to the formal,
embellished cultural productions of music, theater, and dance while performing culture
refers to the way that people interact and engage with the world around them through
their everyday activities (cf. Schechner 2011 and Turner 1987). Cultural performances
contribute to heritage preservation, constructions of identity, and in some cases national
discourses, by drawing on social norms and traditions to create representations of culture.
The concept of performing culture, on the other hand, emerged with the distinctions that
Goffman (1959) proposed between presentation of self in front spaces and back spaces,
and with Turner’s (1980) concept of social dramas—everyday theatrical events that occur
in moments of tension during breakdowns in communication. These everyday
performances are tied to the negotiation of hegemony and agency in daily life and are
intertwined with the performance of various forms of identity—Butler’s (1988) gender
performativity, for example.
In contemporary times, cultural performance and performing culture are also shaped by
the interplay of globalized forces that determine the investments that pour into cultural
arts productions, while transitions in political economy reconfigure the philosophies and
methods in which everyday people perform social actions to navigate the changing times
(Greenberg 2014). Southeast Asia is a critical site to examine the changing configurations
of performance due to the region’s unique position of intense global investment in
conjunction with precarious systems of governance (Allison 2008). With its great
regional diversity, Southeast Asia provides comprehensive data that furthers the
conversation of what constitutes cultural performance and performing culture.
This panel uses specific case studies from Southeast Asia to begin to break down the
misleading cultural performance/performing culture binary. Looking, in some cases, at
what would be considered cultural performances, it examines how the everyday lives of
performance practitioners are defined through the adaptation of their art forms to new
cultural contexts. Conversely, the panel also explores cases in which performing culture
in the everyday is related to the constructions of identity and ideological discourses
commonly connected to cultural performance. Some of these cases consider the role of
performance activities in strengthening indigenous practices. Others examine the
translation of arts practices from ritual to commercial or the transmission of practices
across international boundaries. These cases explore the potential forms of violence and
forms of opportunity that these cultural changes can entail. All of the papers examine
how performance can give local groups and individual artists agency to engage with and
develop their own sense of cultural identity, and simultaneously be used as a vehicle for
hegemonic ideologies that stem from discourses of national identity construction.
Phuoc Duong
Lecturer
California State University, Fullerton
Phuoc Duong
Lecturer
California State University, Fullerton
Phuoc Duong
Lecturer
California State University, Fullerton
Celia Tuchman-Rosta
Adjunct Assistant Professor
CUNY York College
Celia Tuchman-Rosta
Adjunct Assistant Professor
CUNY York College
Celia Tuchman-Rosta
Adjunct Assistant Professor
CUNY York College
Eva Rapoport
Mahidol University
Tiffany Pollock
Postdoctoral Fellow
York University
Rica Daya Aquino
researcher/writer
University of the Philippines, U.P Center for Ethnomusicology