Affect Ethnography: Exploring Performance and Narrative in the Creation of Unstories

Playing with the relation between truth and representation in the stories we tell as ethnographers and theater makers, this book contributes to the current debates around experimental research methodologies and ethnographically grounded theatrical forms. It departs from other studies by proposing a unique and accessible methodology that brings together theatrical devising practices and anthropology.


Through its theoretical exploration and performative script, the book bridges the relation between ethnographic writing and performativity, and simultaneously troubles conventional narrative practices in theater and anthropology. The practice described in the book, Affect Theater, also emphasizes embodied and affective approaches to empirical research and defines a process for rendering this type of material into imaginative academic writing, collaborative performance, and other inventive forms, applicable across a range of academic disciplines.

Cristiana Giordano is Associate Professor of anthropology at University of California, Davis, USA.

Greg Pierotti is Assistant Professor of dramaturgy and collaborative playmaking at the University of Arizona, USA.