Performative Research – Research as Performance

The Performative as an Approach to Urban Studies Across Disciplines

Abstract

As performative approaches to urban studies and urban transformation have continuously gained influence in recent years, this journal issue aims at charting new ways towards methodological pluralism and multidisciplinary research from a perspective of performativity. In this context, research is understood as a performative act creating outcomes and performing knowledge in multiple research media. The performative as a conceptual term also reunites arts-based, artistic, and traditional research approaches, closing the gaps created by an orthodox understanding of scientific methodology solely based on quantitative and qualitative methods. Performative research or research as performance, therefore, holds the potential to provide a comprehensive, transdisciplinary understanding of knowledge creation which can reunite a plethora of methods and disciplines under the concept of performativity as the expression and creation of knowledge as a collective, transformative endeavour. The performative and its power to change existing urban realities and collective worldviews ultimately offers a conceptual tool for bringing researchers form different disciplines together and co-developing solutions for current problems together with affected populations. In the context of urban studies, performativity may guide the way towards a participatory understanding of contemporary urbanity and societal co-evolution based on a collective ownership of urban spaces. The contributions to this issue present a methodological toolbox, indicating what performativity may imply in the field of urban studies and which benefits it entails for researchers, engaged citizens, and urbanites.