emergence of a self-conscious empiricist science. However, the all-important rhetorical devices had grown into discredit, now regarded as ‘bells and whistles’ as opposed to carrying real objective substance. Science, it was said, was engaged in the pursuit of literal as opposed to rhetorical truth. This was indeed the received view within the burgeoning social sciences of the 20th century. The hope of many scholars was that the study of social life would constitute a science with a status approximating the natural sciences. Such research might provide the scientific basis for generating effective institutions of education, commerce, and governance; they might lead the way in eradicating poverty, mental illness and other social problems. The effort to create and sustain this dream of the social sciences as kin to the natural sciences remains dominant in psychology, sociology, and economics, especially.
Cultural Transformation: Protest and Pluralism
As widely documented, a major shift in the political landscape took place in the second half of the 20th century in both the United States and across Europe. Where there had been widespread trust in the existing political institutions, a steadily expanding chorus of protest emerged. In the United States the first major wave of protest was embodied in the civil rights movement in the 1950s. This was followed by the equal rights movement, and most vociferously in the anti-war movement in the 1960s. One might say that, anti-establishment protest virtually became a way of life, with gay and lesbian activists, anti-psychiatry advocates, environmental activists, and pro-life/pro/choice combatants soon participating.
One important outcome of these movements was the questioning of all established forms of authority – not only governmental, but scientific and religious as well. All groups, great or small, voiced the right to speak out, to claim a legitimacy equal to others. While conflict was pervasive, there was also an emerging understanding and appreciation of the potentials of a pluralist society in which new ways of life could emerge, forms of life that favored inclusion, accommodation, and collaboration.
Widely recognized for their liberal political leanings, social scientists were often in the vanguard in nurturing such pluralism. And in the same spirit of critique and protest, traditional definitions of scientific knowledge and method came under attack. Ideological and political critique was already under way in Europe, but was soon joined by a powerful wave of feminist scholarship. Soon joining in were scholars concerned with the homophobic, individualist, capitalist, and Eurocentric biases of the social sciences. As common within the culture at large, there was an accompanying urgency to act. The possibility of combining scholarly work with social activism became increasingly plausible (Conquergood, 1982, 2002). The impact of this confluence remains robust in performative social science today (Keifer-Boyd, 2011).
Yet, the possibilities of conjoining the arts and sciences for such purposes must be traced to what was taking place within the artistic communities themselves. Many such communities thrive on challenging tradition. Indeed this has been the leitmotif of what we call modern art. However, during this period of broad political unrest, many artists from across the spectrum sought ways of using their various media for purposes of social and political change. Thus making their way into the scene were movements in performance art, pop art, disposable art, political art, street art, and more. In the groundbreaking films of Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, Ballet, In Jackson Heights), and Jennie Livingston's award-winning Paris is Burning the lines separating ethnography, politics, and entertainment were erased.
The Constructionist Turn
It is during this same historical period –sometimes heralded as postmodern – that dialogues on the social construction of knowledge also erupted. One central idea within these dialogues was that our understandings of what we call reality emerge from relationships among people, especially through language and other meaningful activities (see Chapter 1). It is through relational processes – situated within particular historical cultural and physical contexts – that our understandings are created and stabilized (or not), and through which we come to trust one another (or not) as knowable entities acting in what we see as reasonable ways (Gergen, 1994).
From this point of view, there is no group of people that can make claims to transcendent truth, that is truth beyond what anyone might think or wish. There may be multiple and competing claims to what is the case, each legitimate within a socio-historical context. Importantly, this applies as well to the sciences. Scientific descriptions are constructed within sub-cultures of scientists, and serve their particular purposes and values. This is not to say that all descriptions are equal, but rather, to ask what purposes and values are served by their work. Thus, if one agrees with the assumptions and values of Western medicine, one can legitimately compare the outcomes with various indigenous forms of medicine. Yet there are also reasons to question the assumptions and values. The question thus emerges, what are the aims and purposes of the social sciences? What do they value, and how are these values fulfilled by their forms of research and their languages of description and explanation? Often it is said that the aims of the sciences are ‘prediction and control.’ However, many researchers are alienated by this conclusion, and prefer to cast their work, for example, in the service of various liberal and humanitarian goals. We are then invited to ask: what methods, what forms of inquiry, and what forms of description and explanation may best suit such ends.
From these constructionist dialogues emerged three significant conclusions linking the social sciences with the arts. First, by removing the mantle of authority from traditional empirical science, social sciences were liberated to consider alternative methods of inquiry. One may trace the mushrooming of qualitative research practices – including the performative – to this line of argument. Second, because all accounts of the world- including the scientific – carry the values of those who espouse them, then social science researchers can make no claims to value neutrality. The door now opens to carrying out science not as neutral bystanders, but for the very purposes of realizing social and political ends. Finally, from a constructionist perspective, there is no privileged form of language for describing and explaining the world. Thus, in terms of truth posits, the various languages of the arts are equivalent to the languages (and statistics) of the sciences.
While the enormous range of performative and arts-based inquiry that subsequently emerged within the social sciences cannot be traced directly to these ideas, the indirect effects cannot be overestimated. Until such ideas began to ripple through the social sciences, there was no way to legitimate such inquiry. One could look back at many experiments created by social psychologists in the late 1960s and early 1970s as performative in character. For example, Stanley Milgram's (1974) famous studies on obedience, along with the well-known ‘Stanford prison study’ (Haney et al., 1973) were highly theatrical. However, the performativity was inadvertent, as the primary intention was to create empirically grounded generalizations.
More directly related, in my experience were a series of highly popular symposia presented at the American Psychological Association meetings from 1995 to 1999. Presentations included plays, poetry, film, painting, dance, mime, and multi-media presentations. Similarly important were the annual meetings of the International Conference on Qualitative Inquiry, hosted by Norman Denzin at the University of Illinois. Since 2005 they provided an inviting platform for performative work. Attracting over a thousand international researchers a year in the qualitative field, they highlighted the work of many well-known performance scholars, including Tami Spry (2001, 2011), Laurel Richardson (1997), Ron Pelias (1999, 2014, 2018) and Johnny Saldaña (2011).Also noteworthy in the direct linkages with constructionist ideas was the compilation by Kip Jones et al. (2008) in an edited issue of Forum: Qualitative Social Research (vol. 9), This special issue included 42 entries from authors in 13 countries, and featured 100 photographs, 50 illustrations, 36 videos, and two audio-recordings. Jones also was the organizer of a series of five exploratory conferences in 2006–07. These efforts allowed social scientists to identify areas of possible connections with each other as well as with practitioners from the arts (Gergen and Jones, 2008). Jones continues to advance performative social science through his blog Kipworld
