From Ethnography to Drama: Methodological Paths of A Collaborative Performance- Research with Seedbeds/as de yerba mate in Misiones (Argentina)

Abstract

This article delves into the contributions of the methodologies known as collaborative performance-research in the drama production from and for the rural life in Latin America. To do so, I outline herein those paths that took me from a socio-anthropo- logical research to the ethnographic drama. These contributions were used under the framework of my doctorate degree work that dealt with the subjectivities of a rural seedbed that enabled me to experience a hybrid way of making and communicating the social sciences knowledge. In this experience the scientific writings combined with an ethnographic drama titled Carne oscura y triste. ¿Qué hay en ti? [Dark and sad Flesh: What is there inside you?]. The play was performed by an ethnograph- ic-dramatic research group to the audience of the communities where the research was conducted. Based on this case, I make some questions about the ways to do cross-cultural research among agricultural communities from the arts and science, which triggers a spiral starting from the socio-anthropological inquiry in the social praxis to then continue with the performative and scientific artistic-conceptual in- quiry and, finally, returning to a new aesthetic and social praxis that would allow transformative micro-policies in the context of social stigmatization. Therefore, this work provides a collaborative performance-research where the ethnographic drama served as a materialized form of the research process that stresses the logic of both the Western knowledge and the Western art. This ethnographic drama not only com- municates the outcomes from the science but also serve as a way of conveying an embodied sociocultural knowledge.