Bethany Whiteside Phd Thesis
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE HIDDEN DANCERS: A GOFFMANIAN ANALYSIS OF PARTICIPATORY DANCE ACTIVITY AND PRACTICE IN GLASGOW, SCOTLAND Bethany Whiteside A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland & University of St Andrews 2017 Full metadata for this item is available in Research@StAndrews:FullText at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11017 This item is protected by original copyright This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence The Hidden Dancers: A Goffmanian Analysis of Participatory Dance Activity and Practice in Glasgow, Scotland Bethany Whiteside PhD in Dance Wednesday 8th March 2017 © Bethany Whiteside Declarations I, Bethany Whiteside, hereby confirm that I am solely responsible for the production of this submission which consists of: A thesis of 79’569 words Appendices and bibliography of 24’728 words and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. Date………….……… Signature of candidate…………………………………. I was admitted as a research student in October 2011 and as a candidate for the degree of PhD in Dance in 2012; the higher study for which this is the outcome was carried out at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland between 2012 and 2016. Date………….……… Signature of candidate…………………………………. I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of PhD in Dance at the University of St Andrews and any additional requirements for the regulations of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland as approved by the University and that the candidate is qualified to make this submission in application for that degree. Date………….……… Signature of supervisor…………………………………. In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and the abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that my thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use unless exempt by award of an embargo as requested below, and that the library has the right to migrate my thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to the thesis. I have obtained any third-party copyright permissions that may be required in order to allow such access and migration, or have requested the appropriate embargo below. The following is an agreed request by candidate and supervisor regarding the electronic publication of this thesis: Access to printed copy and electronic publication of thesis through the University of St Andrews. Date………….……… Signature of candidate…………………………………. Date………….……… Signature of supervisor…………………………………. 1 Acknowledgements My grateful thanks to the Economic and Social Research Council for the CASE Studentship, sponsored by Creative Scotland, and awarded through the Institute for Capitalising on Creativity (ICC) at the University of St Andrews. Being fully-funded from 2011-2014 played a large part in giving me the confidence, opportunity and stability to go forth and have such a range of exciting and rewarding experiences, many of which were facilitated by the ESRC through being invited to present and publish at national conferences and events. In addition, during March-April 2014, I was funded by the ESRC to undertake an Overseas Institutional Visit and fulfil the role of Visiting Dance Scholar with the dance department of Temple University, Philadelphia. Particular thanks to my key contacts, Professor Barbara Townley, Director of the ICC, Mindy Grewar, Executive Administrator, and Anita Clark, Head of Dance at Creative Scotland, who were all incredibly supportive throughout. My supervisors, Professor Stephen Broad and Dr John Kelly, have supported me at every turn and I am inherently thankful that they took a doctoral dance student on board. The knowledge they shared was not limited to the academy; I now appreciate the work of Chambré Hardman and understand that there is no purple card in football. Both Stephen and John encouraged me to embrace numerous opportunities as part of the doctoral journey, while answering my endless questions and queries, and helping me realise that the most important part of a PhD is actually finishing it. Thank you also to Dr Sherril Dodds and all at the dance department of Temple University for welcoming me during the spring of 2014 and providing me with a much-valued international perspective of dance studies and the academy at large. Thank you to Ruth Finnegan, author of The Hidden Musicians: Music- Making in an English Town, for providing the inspiration for the current project’s title and approach taken to introduce the study! I also made some wonderful friends among the two cohorts of PhD students that I was part of: ESRC-funded students based at the ICC and my PhD colleagues at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. One of my proudest achievements was instigating and co- founding the Scottish Journal of Performance together with my Co-Editor, Ben Fletcher- Watson and Journal Manager/Web Editor, Tom Butler. Thank you for this experience. Thank you to my lovely friends outside the academy who were always on hand to frogmarch me to the beach or pub when necessary, and to my family for always having faith in me when my own waivered, and for understanding when the question ‘when do you think you will be finished?’ could no longer be asked. Especial thanks are due to Grant. I promise to utter my previously eternal refrain – ‘I just need to finish this bit’ – a little less now. Most of all, thank you to all the institutions, organisations and venues who welcomed me into their activities and classes and to the individuals who spoke with me and danced with me, as I briefly joined their worlds. 2 ‘Sociology is something you do, not something you read about’. (Erving Goffman) ‘The dark, empty theatre; the brown Holland over the seats; the shrouded chandeliers – all could not take away the tense atmosphere of a real performance. The fascination was complete; and in a way, undisrupted by costumes and surroundings, one’s vision retained the beauty of line better than in the full blaze of an evening spectacle’. (Tamara Kasarvina) ‘An honest, sincere performance is less firmly connected with the solid world than one might first assume… All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not so easy to specify’. (Erving Goffman) ‘Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun’. (Clifford Geertz) 3 Abstract Sociology of dance is an evolving discipline that takes as a central focus the social makeup of dance – the societal structures and individual agency that are inherent within dance activity and practice. Relevant ethnographic literature that adopts particular sociological concepts and models is generally narrow in focus, with attention centred on the frameworks of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault and the conformation of vocational and professional ballet and contemporary dancer minds and bodies, to particular practice-specific behaviours and beliefs. Through drawing on Erving Goffman’s (1959/1990) model of dramaturgy, this interdisciplinary thesis uncovers and interrogates the two-way relationship between sociological micro relations (social interactions), and various types of dance activity and practice. Six case studies undertaken encompass a wide range of dance and social settings; the professional ballet class, inclusive creative dance class, line dancing class, salsa club, Highland dancing class, and dance in primary education. Data was collected through undertaking participant observation (primary method) and qualitative interviews (secondary method): each specific combination was influenced by the reflexive approach followed, the nature and setting of each case study and as researcher, my own dance ability. The transcripts and field notes were analysed and situated within Goffman’s (1959/1990) framework to interrogate the social and dance ‘performances’ given. The research aims to firstly, uncover and present the nature of the ‘realities’ (Goffman, 1959/1990) within each setting and secondly, to interrogate and demonstrate the applicability of the dramaturgical model to dance scholarship. The findings reflect the sociological binary of individual agency and societal structures as realities were shaped by the ‘place’ of each dance activity and practice in the field of dance, and challenged, maintained or supported existing dominant perceptions. 4 Table of Contents ABSTRACT 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 1. INTRODUCTION 9 1. A Brief History of Dance Studies 10 2. Dance Studies: A Challenging Climate 11 3. Interdisciplinarity and Intradisciplinarity within Dance Studies 13 4. Synopsis of Thesis 17 2. ESTABLISHING SOCIOLOGY OF DANCE 21 1. Introduction 21 2. Relationship with Dance Anthropology 22 3. Significance of Sociology of Dance Study 24 4. Sociology of Dance Studies 27 4.1. The early works 27 4.2. Utilising sociological frameworks 30 4.2.1. Michel Foucault’s notion of power and knowledge 31 4.2.2. Foucauldian ethnographic dance studies 33 4.2.3. Critique of Foucauldian dance studies 35 4.2.4. Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual model of social practice 37 4.2.5. Bourdieusian ethnographic dance studies 40 4.2.6. Critique of Bourdieusian dance studies 43 4.2.7. Summary of Foucauldian and Bourdieusian dance studies 46 5. The Microsociology of Erving Goffman 48 6. Erving Goffman’s Model of Dramaturgy 50 6.1. ‘Setting’ 52 6.2. ‘Personal front’ 53 6.3. ‘Front’ 55 7. Critiquing Goffmanian Tradition 58 7.1. Macrocosm versus microcosm 59 7.2. System versus anti-system 60 7.3.