Dramaturgies of the Real. At the Intersection of Art and the Humanities and Social Sciences

An increasing number of researchers in the humanities, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers and archaeologists are resorting to “artistic” schemes to carry out their fieldwork: film, theatre, opera, concert, sonography, performance, historical reenactment, etc. What is the heuristic consideration underpinning the mobilization of such “artistic” schemes to account for a social situation? Why engage in these new forms of exploration? What issues prompt researchers to venture off the beaten track?

To understand the reasons accounting for these particularly original approaches, we have invited the contributors to this issue to view their fieldwork from a methodological perspective, by explaining, as closely as possible to their own experience, how their research has gradually taken shape.

In an effort to better comprehend social facts, and without succumbing to the illusion of creating “art” or denying the heuristic properties of social sciences, the contributors introduce us to their critical and reflective explorations. They endeavour to explain the reasons that led them to conduct research in radical divergence from that suggested by anthropology textbooks.