Performance & the politics of representation

2. • STRUCTURE: Institutions, such as
religion, the state, and the economy,
and factors such as sex, gender, age,
class, nationality, ethnicity, etc., which
influence the opportunities that
individuals have.
• AGENCY: The capacity of individuals
to act independently and make free
choices.
• THE ISSUE: Are we free to choose
how to think, believe, act, and behave,
or do structural forces dominate us?
STRUCTURE and AGENCY

3. • Individuals are not entirely
free to make choices, and their
knowledge is limited.
• However, human agency
impacts social structure in
ways that lead to change.
• Structure provides common
frames of meaning that enable
agency.
• Agency and structure cannot
be analyze separately as the
causality of change runs from
both directions.
ANTHONY GIDDENS’
STRUCTURATION THEORY

4. • Structure and agency are not monolithic or dichotomous,
but they engage in ever evolving and transformative
dialectical processes.
– An agent is embedded in a social field in which social,
cultural, and economic capital impact ever changing
sets of roles, relationships, and expectations.
– Habitus--a habitual way of being and becoming--forms
over time as the agent negotiates their field, and
internalizes roles, relationships, and expectations.
– Structure is internalized as habitus, while--at the same
time--the agent externalizes actions that impact roles,
relations, and expectation in the social field.
PIERRE BOURDIEU’S
THEORY OF PRACTICE

5.  Meeting social expectations by managing the impression you
have on others.
 This involves “performing” identities that will have
favorable outcomes for you in the context of the social
interaction you are in. This process involves combinations
of concealment, exaggeration, fabrications, etc.
▪ Acting strong and reliant to be perceived as a leader.
▪ Acting weak and needy to get assistance from others.
▪ Emphasizing your honesty through body language while
taking a test.
▪ Making decisions about what clothes, accessories,
hairstyles, etc., to wear in given social situations.

6. • Interpretive/symbolic interactionists analyze individuals
and social interactions as involving a series of theatrical
performances.
– AUDIENCE: The observers.
– ROLES: The actors.
– SCRIPT: Communication.
– PROPS: Objects that convey actors’ identities and
relations of power.
• Social environments have FRONT STAGES where
actors maintain their impressions, and BACK STAGES,
where they have some freedom from maintaining
impression management – can be more casual and “let
their hair down.”
DRAMATURGY

7. ilm operates as a model “for”
as well as a model “of” reality
in a process that naturalizes
film sound and images.
n other words, social, and
cultural worlds articulate media.
ndividuals are embedded in and
impact these articulatory
processes.

8. ARTICULATIONS:
AN ACTOR PLAYING, FOR EXAMPLE,
A TEACHER STUDIES TEACHERS AT
SCHOOL TO RESEARCH THEIR ROLE.
TEACHERS, IN
TURN, VIEW THE
FILM ABOUT
TEACHERS AND
MODEL THEIR
PROFESSION
ON SOME ASPECTS
OF ACTOR’S
PERFORMANCE.
ANTHROPOLOGISTS CAN HONE THEIR SKILLS OF
OBSERVATION BY ANALYZING ARTICULATED
PERFORMANCES IN THE MEDIA AND IN “REAL” LIFE.

9. • Based in neo Marxism, Hall is one
of the founders of the British
School of Cultural Studies.
• Power consistently strives to fix
meaning to support its agenda.
• Individuals receive meaning, but
remake it minute by minute.
• Meaning is constantly changing.
• Meaning cannot be fixed.
• It is imperative to critically
interrogate the meanings of media
representations.
STUART HALL’S THEORY OF THE
POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION

10. • Based in neo Marxism, Hall is one
of the founders of the British
School of Cultural Studies.
• Power consistently strives to fix
meaning to support its agenda.
• Individuals receive meaning, but
remake it minute by minute.
• Meaning is constantly changing.
• Meaning cannot be fixed.
• It is imperative to critically
interrogate the meanings of media
representations.
STUART HALL’S THEORY OF THE
POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION