Performative Social Science

By thinking "performatively", we are able to consider the interview in Denzin's terms: 'not as a method of gathering information, but as a vehicle for producing performance texts and performance ethnographies about self and society' (Denzin 2001: 24) where 'text and audience come together and inform one another (2001: 26) in a relational way. In Law and Urry's (2004) thinking, research methods in the social sciences do not simply describe the world as it is, but also enact it (2004: 391). They are performative; they have effects; they make differences; they enact realities; and they can help to bring into being what they also discover (2004: 392-93). Indeed, 'to the extent social science conceals its performativity from itself it is pretending to an innocence that it cannot have' (2004: 404). This leads us to a consideration of a "performative" social science.

    Dr Kip Jones, The Continuing Development of a Performative Social Science at Bournemouth's Centre for Qualitative Research 

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Note: Read about The Performative Turn at Wikipedia