Heavenly acts: aspects of performance through an interdisciplinary lens

从20世纪下半叶到21世纪头十年，在一系列学科中，大量的思想和著作都致力于探索人类经验和活动的领域，这些领域可以被定义为绩效导向。这种早期的研究已经发展到一定程度，现在有许多不同但相关的证据线索，代表了不同的学科，不同的环境和一系列的方法方法，这些方法都旨在对待表现及其在人类生活和社会中的突出地位。将所有这些线索联系在一起的一个共同主题是表演和宗教之间的联系。早期人类学的目光往往集中在仪式和仪式上。最近的活动探索表演作为一种人类和社会活动（无论表演是音乐的、语言的、戏剧的、身份导向的还是仪式化的）如何告知宗教经验和活动，并被告知宗教经验和活动。全球化进程的影响极大地推动了这一活动，因为在当今时代，文化、信仰和语言在动态和流动的环境中相互碰撞。这些线索中的每一个都在自己的领域中有一个既定的或正在发展的地位，拟议的网络旨在聚集来自广泛学科的研究人员，所有这些研究人员都在追求广泛定义的“性能”的学术研究。这个新兴的群体包括社会语言学家，民族音乐学家，教育家，人类学家，社会心理学家以及宗教研究和戏剧研究的学者，他们认为表演和表演的各个方面对于他们对宗教信仰实践的描述来说是核心或重要的，这也是非常广泛的定义。现在建立一个比以往更广泛的跨学科方法来研究这个问题是及时和适当的。因此，这个国际网络将首次聚集研究这些不同领域的学者，分享他们在各自领域的见解和专业知识，探索这些学科之间明显存在的创新合作和协作的潜力，寻求以跨学科的方式发展新的理论和方法，并为宗教背景下的表演知识做出重要贡献。此外，随着这些不同的研究人员在不同的信仰传统中开展研究，该网络具有明确的跨信仰和跨信仰维度，这对非学术受益人具有直接和明显的兴趣和重要性，他们将利用该网络来推进他们自己的议程，涉及不同信仰的合作、理解、协作和文化丰富。在这方面对社会凝聚力和文化理解的贡献具有潜在的重大意义。该网络将寻求：分享其具体发现和见解；突出双方共同感兴趣的领域；建立共识和原则；至关重要的是，打破迄今为止阻碍这种共识的学科界限；建立重要的跨学科实践，统一和协调，而不是分离和分裂。我们还希望研究网络具有重要的公众形象，为表演者、观众和从业者提供与学术研究人员互动和联系的手段，并展示他们自己的实践。在实践方面，我们设想拨款为期两年，将支持和促进若干研讨会（包括研讨会）、工作坊、面向公众的展示活动、学术交流（包括出版物），以及建立一个网上资源，以展示该网络及其研究。其目的是使该网络能够更好地申请进一步的资助，以便将来发展实质性的跨学科研究。

In the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty first, a substantial amount of thought and writing in a range of disciplines has been devoted to exploring areas of human experience and activity that can be defined as performance-oriented. This early research has evolved to the extent that there are now a number of distinct but related threads in evidence that represent different disciplines, diverse settings and a range of methodological approaches all purporting to treat performance and its salience in human life and society. A common theme uniting all these threads is the nexus formed by performance and religion. Early anthropological gaze was often on ritual and ceremony. More recent activity explores how performance as a human and social activity (whether that performance is musical, linguistic, theatrical, identity-oriented or ritualised) informs and is informed by religious experience and activity. This activity has been fuelled significantly by the impact of globalising processes as cultures, faiths and languages encounter one another in dynamic and fluid settings in the present age.Each of these threads has either an established or developing position in its own field and the proposed network seeks to gather researchers from a wide range of disciplines all of whom are pursuing lines of academic enquiry that converge around, broadly defined, 'performance'. This emerging group of sociolinguists, ethnomusicologists, educationists, anthropologists, social psychologists and scholars of religious studies and theatre studies understand performance and aspects of performance as central or as important to their accounts of religious devotional practices, again very broadly defined. It is now timely and appropriate that a much wider cross-disciplinary approach to this topic is established than has happened hitherto. This international network will, therefore, for the first time, gather scholars researching in these different areas to share the insights and expertise they have of their own fields, to explore the potential there evidently is for innovative cooperation and collaboration across these disciplines, to seek to develop both new theory and methodology in a trans-disciplinary manner and to make an important contribution to knowledge about performance in religious contexts. Furthermore, with these different researchers carrying out their studies within and across a variety of faith traditions, the network has an explicit inter- and cross-faith dimension that is of immediate and obvious interest and importance to non-academic beneficiaries who will use the network to further their own agendas in respect of inter-faith cooperation, understanding, collaboration and cultural enrichment. The contribution to social cohesion and cultural understanding in this respect is potentially significant.This network will seek to: share its particular findings and insights; highlight mutual areas of interest; establish common understandings and principles; crucially, break down those disciplinary boundaries which have hitherto hampered such common understandings; and forge important trans-disciplinary practices that unify and align rather than separate and divide. We also intend the research network to have a significant public face providing a means for performers, audiences and practitioners to interact and link with academic researchers as well as showcase their own practices. In practical terms, we envisage the funding, which is for two years, will support and facilitate a number of seminars (including a colloquium), workshops, public-facing showcasing events, academic exchanges (including publications) and the creation of an online resource to showcase the network and its research. It is intended that the network will consequently be better placed to apply for further funding to develop substantive trans-disciplinary research in the future.