“There are at least three ways in which anthropology engages
improvisation as a collaborative phenomenon: a) as an element of
the idea of habitus; b) as a set of practices studied as social text or
process; and c) as an aspect of experimental research modalities.
As to the first, Pierre Bourdieu, in his critique of structuralism,
suggested that social life is ordered improvisation. … In the second instance, we find anthropologists inquiring into tradition, politics, and identity through the lens of intentional, performative improvisation. … Third, improvisation in anthropology has taken the form of performative and collaborative research.”
“Participants were explicitly taught the central dynamic of improvisational performance: always accepting offers from one’s collaborator with “yes, and” to keep communication and action flowing.”
“As he inscribes answers and prompts his interlocutors to tell him more, he may very well have asked: ‘Yes, and?’ In his commitment to understanding Trobriand society as a total system, Malinowski would have taken what he observed on its own terms. It’s not a stretch to imagine that he would have accepted rather than refuted the responses he received—a ‘yes’ rather than a ‘no, that can’t be true.’ More than that, he might have tacked on “and” in his willingness to think in tandem with his interlocutors. Although the conditions of fieldwork are certainly different now, I posit that, like Malinowski, contemporary ethnographers often operate in the spirit of ‘yes, and.’”
“could anthropologists improvise with one another and not only with their interlocutors?”
“Historically, we do fieldwork alone rather than in teams, and although we are in conversation through publications and peer review, these forms of engagement are, temporally speaking, not improvisational. When we gather at campus talks and annual conferences and listen to one another’s papers, we often participate in Q&A sessions following the presentations. The Q&A is spontaneous and responsive—is this a kind of peer-to-peer, collaborative improvisation? According to the ‘yes, and’ principle, no. We use the Q&A to constitute our own authority (for instance, in the too-common monologic style of questioning). We don’t typically agree (“yes!”) and jump aboard the analytic train of our colleagues (“and”), spontaneously entering into dialogue in a spirit of collaborative analysis.”
“Agreeing to agree in collaborative analysis could mirror what we do in the field, with the aim not of supplanting debate and critique but rather advancing a lateral analytic process.”
