Staging Strife: Lessons from Performing Ethnography with Polish Roma Women - Softcover

Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0773545565 ISBN 13: 9780773545564

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Concerned with traditional power imbalances between researchers and participants, contemporary social science has begun using collaborative research as an empowering methodology that involves participants in key decisions. Collaborative research is a potentially revolutionary method for studying people and their cultures, but does it work in practice? Staging Strife looks at the limits of this methodology by examining a politically charged theatre performance undertaken with a group of Roma women in Poland. Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston describes a production she co-wrote and co-directed using collaborative methods. She had hoped this would result in more equitable research and raise community awareness about the violence and racism Roma women face. Instead, she found herself embroiled in ethically questionable power games in order to salvage the production. Staging Strife is the result of a painful re-examination of the experience, her motives as a researcher, and a long-overdue critique of collaborative research. Disarmingly honest, this exploration of innovative theatre techniques and social science methodologies will lead anthropologists to rethink the ways in which they work.

About this title

About the Author:

Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston is assistant professor in the Department of Theatre at York University.

Review:

"Staging Strife is a serious advance in state-of-the-art ethnography. Much is made these days about reflexivity, but few authors actually go out and do it - at least they do not do it so honestly and self critically with real life examples. This text is a magnificent exception. I cannot commend the author highly enough for trying all of this and skilfully writing about her experience." Peter Stephenson, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria

"Although perfomative approaches have played an important role in anthropology for a long time, I consider the approach of Staging Strife novel because it starts with collaboration - and not just as lip-service - and because a theatre production was the ultimate goal of the author’s project. The ultimate ‘failure’ of the production presents an interesting case study, since we usually do not hear much about the limits of collaboration. I particularly appreciate Kazubowski-Houston’s honest assessment in the end." Petra Rethmann, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University

About this edition

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0773545565
• ISBN 13: 9780773545564
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 284