Doing Performative Social Science: Creativity in Doing Research and Reaching Communities

Doing Performative Social Science: Creativity in Doing Research and Reaching Communities focuses, as the title suggests, on the actual act of doing research and creating research outputs through a number of creative and arts-led approaches. Performative Social Science (PSS) embraces the use of tools from the arts (e.g., photography, dance, drama, filmmaking, poetry, fiction, etc.) by expanding--even replacing--more traditional methods of research and diffusion of academic efforts. Ideally, it can include forming collaborations with artists themselves and creating a professional research, learning and/or dissemination experience. These efforts then include the wider community that has a meaningful investment in their projects and their outputs and outcomes.
In this insightful volume, Kip Jones brings together a wide range of examples of how contributing authors from diverse disciplines have used the arts-led principles of PSS and its philosophy based in relational aesthetics in real-world projects. The chapters outline the methods and theory bases underlying creative approaches; show the aesthetic and relational constructs of research through these approaches; and show the real and meaningful community engagement that can result from projects such as these.
This book will be of interest to all scholars of qualitative and arts-led research in the social sciences, communication and performance studies, as well as artist-scholars and those engaging in community-based research.

Kip Jones is a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Media & Communication, Bournemouth University. Now retired, he was Director of their Centre for Qualitative Research. Reports on Jones’ work: BBC Radio 4, BBC TV news, Times Higher Education, LSE Impact Blog, Sunday New York Times, International Herald-Tribune and The Independent.