Evanthia Patsiaoura | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (original) (raw)

Papers by Evanthia Patsiaoura

Ethnography, 2024

This article proposes a systematization of the within, between and beyond sites through which eth... more This article proposes a systematization of the within, between and beyond sites through which ethnographic field-making takes shape. It draws on fieldwork in Brazil, Greece, Nigeria, the UK and the social media among congregations affiliated with postcolonial Nigeria’s denominations of Pentecostal orientation. The main argument builds upon the conceptual continuum local–translocal–postlocal. Whereas the local exists through familiarity, the translocal emerges at the overlapping of familiarities, and the postlocal as a gesture of familiarity’s reconfiguration. This systematization advances epistemological and ethical extents of multi-sited ethnography, as it is premised upon the revision of designations identifying the research subject(s) as a ‘Nigerian Pentecostal diaspora’. While introducing a knowing of locals, translocals and postlocals over nationally, denominationally and diasporically bounded individuals, the continuum re-theorizes multi-sited-ness under local, translocal and postlocal affordances. In questioning identity designations, the paper foregrounds nuanced positionalities of ‘field’ constitutors to destabilize subtle conventions of totalization and the alterity-ipseity divide.

Social Analysis, 2023

This article is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license as part of Berghahn Open Anthro, ... more This article is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license as part of Berghahn Open Anthro, a subscribe-to-open model for APC-free open access made possible by the journal's subscribers.

European Journal of Musicology, 2021

onique Ingalls’s Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Commu... more onique Ingalls’s Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community is a landmark publication, inviting vitally diverse readings. Fusing distinct disciplinary traditions and settings of field research, the book offers much more than a fresh understanding of popular religious music. With ethnomusicology and congregational music studies at the foreground, Ingalls’s undertaking spans popular music and media studies, sociology, theology, among other fields, to propose an analytical model for congregation and worship. The book evokes a novel understanding of the reasons and ways in which contemporary worship music constitutes congregation; an understanding that, even though primarily addressing the North American evangelical context, concerns broadly the shaping of worship within and between certain denominational families across the globe today. The model comprises five distinct ways in which congregations are formed through music-making. These musical ...

Mana, 2020

Mexico. Sua monografia seminal Sound and Sentiment [Som e sentimento], de 1982, realizada a parti... more Mexico. Sua monografia seminal Sound and Sentiment [Som e sentimento], de 1982, realizada a partir de anos de pesquisa na floresta Bosavi, na Papua Nova Guiné, é um marco etnográfico para a antropologia do som, da música e dos sentidos. Em 2012, lançou o livro Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra [O cosmopolitismo do jazz em Acra], juntamente com produções em CD e DVD de seu próprio selo, VoxLox, voltado para produções colaborativas. Seu distanciamento de abordagens c l á s s i c a s e m e t n o m u s i c o l o g i a aprofundou-se com pesquisas sobre jazz em Acra e a relação entre sinos,

Resumos do..., 2019

Resumo Este projeto tem como objetivos interpretar, transcrever em partitura, utilizando a notaçã... more Resumo Este projeto tem como objetivos interpretar, transcrever em partitura, utilizando a notação prescritiva, documentos musicais gregos antigos, fazer uma performance das peças interpretadas e reconstruídas e as gravar. Também pretendemos promover o entendimento do funcionamento dessas músicas, sua notação, atuação e valor na vida dos gregos antigos, visando facilitar o fornecimento de informações sobre o assunto para pesquisadores da área, amantes de música e de história antiga, no geral.

Popular Music and Society, Apr 15, 2019

This article explores the understudied thematic of Nigerian Pentecostal musicianship, by focusing... more This article explores the understudied thematic of Nigerian Pentecostal musicianship, by focusing on overlapping practices, perceptions, and experiences of musicians performing across religious and secular settings in Greece. The implementation of Nigerian Pentecostal music-making principles in secular performance contexts generates transcendent experience and fulfils politics of venue-popularity, similarly to congregational contexts. Largely informed by ethnomusicology and the anthropology of music, I employ a threefold analytic tool to show how music-making blurs the boundaries between popular religious and secular culture, and why this blurring broadly shapes and reflects popular cultural practice.

Mana, 2020

Entrevista realizada com Steven Feld e publicada na revista Mana. Interview with Steven Feld publ... more Entrevista realizada com Steven Feld e publicada na revista Mana.
Interview with Steven Feld published in the journal Mana.

Μουσικές Κοινότητες στην Ελλάδα του 21ου Αιώνα: Εθνογραφικές Ματιές και Ακροάσεις , 2020

Η εισήγηση αυτή εστιάζει σε τάσεις μουσικής πρακτικής, θεώρησης και εμπειρίας που αφορούν κοινότη... more Η εισήγηση αυτή εστιάζει σε τάσεις μουσικής πρακτικής, θεώρησης και εμπειρίας που αφορούν κοινότητες της Αθήνας του 21ου αιώνα οι οποίες συνδέονται με νιγηριανικές πεντηκοστιανικές εκκλησίες. Αντλώντας από πολυετή εθνογραφική έρευνα σε τέτοιες κοινότητες όχι μόνο στην Ελλάδα, αλλά και στο Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο, τη Βραζιλία, τη Νιγηρία και τα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης, τοποθετώ τον λόγο για την γκόσπελ μουσική της Αθήνας σε ένα διατοπικό πλαίσιο ανάλυσης, το οποίο απορρέει από μια συνθετική κατανόηση διαφορετικών τόπων νιγηριανικού πεντηκοστιανισμού. Η συγκεκριμένη προσέγγιση θέτει υπό αμφισβήτηση στερεοτυπικές αντιλήψεις κυρίαρχης και μειονοτικής κουλτούρας στον ελληνικό γεωπολιτικό χώρο και ευρύτερα, υπαγορεύοντας τη σημαντικότητα εστίασης στο αναμεταξύ διακριτών τόπων, στους οποίους μορφώματα παγκόσμιου χριστιανισμού και δημοφιλούς (μουσικής) κουλτούρας λαμβάνουν χώρα.

Sage Research Methods Foundations, 2019

Ethnomusicology has been defined as the cultural study of music. It is an inherently interdiscipl... more Ethnomusicology has been defined as the cultural study of music. It is an inherently interdisciplinary field, which is evident in the range of research methods employed in ethnomusicological research since its inception in the late 19th century. This entry looks at how research methods have developed in ethnomusicology from the 19th century onward. It begins by looking at how an interest in music and musical activities has mobilized thinkers across the centuries in many parts of the world, before turning to the foundations of the contemporary discipline. Trends addressed include the scientific methods of comparative musicology and its developments, the shift to a fieldwork-based discipline, the developments in orientations to the field, and fieldwork over the course of the 20th century. The final section looks at research methods used by ethnomusicologists in the collection of data in the field and in the preparation of the data for analysis.

Popular Music and Society, 2019

This article explores the understudied thematic of Nigerian Pentecostal musicianship, by focusing... more This article explores the understudied thematic of Nigerian Pentecostal musicianship, by focusing on overlapping practices, perceptions, and experiences of musicians performing across religious and secular settings in Greece. The implementation of Nigerian Pentecostal music-making principles in secular performance contexts generates transcendent experience and fulfills politics of venue-popularity, similarly to congregational contexts. Largely informed by ethnomusicology and the anthropology of music, I employ a threefold analytic tool to show how music-making blurs the boundaries between popular religious and secular culture, and why this blurring broadly shapes and reflects popular cultural practice.

Book Chapter in The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking, edited by Suzel A. Reily and Katherine Brucher, 2018

This chapter discusses the relation between religious musicking and locality by looking at the wa... more This chapter discusses the relation between religious musicking and locality by looking at the ways in which music is made and perceived among members of a Nigerian Pentecostal parish in Greece. Central to Nigerian Pentecostal worship, music making is seen as a powerful means of spiritual engagement. Appointed music ministers carry special responsibility for directing the musical parts of services and for conveying musico-spiritual skills to the congregation. However, the ethos of musicking in these services is deeply participatory, inviting the entirety of congregants to take an active part in musically articulated worship, praise, and thanksgiving. While proposing that musicality and spirituality are inseparable and interchangeable skills of experience in the ethnographic context in question, I argue that participatory musicking in religious services can bring about a shared musico-spiritual experience. This shared experience creates a transcendent place, a locality not defined by mapped territories, but rather by worshippers connecting with one another while reaching the divine.

Book Chapter in Taking Part in Music: Case Studies in Ethnomusicology, edited by Ian Russell and Catherine Ingram. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, in association with the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology., 2013

Book Reviews by Evanthia Patsiaoura

European Journal of Musicology, 2021

Book Review Publication in Allegra Lab, 2018

Book review in the Irish Journal of Anthropology, 2013

Conference Reviews by Evanthia Patsiaoura

Outreach publications by Evanthia Patsiaoura

Academic Contributor to Visual-Art Exhibition, entitled ‘Suicide Blonde’, hosted by the French Institute of Greece, Athens (4-10 May 2017). , 2017

The rhetoric against the dyed blonde in late 20th - early 21st century Greece is a product of cul... more The rhetoric against the dyed blonde in late 20th - early 21st century Greece is a product of culturally-specific perceptions ranging from ‘sexy’ to ‘second-class’, in either case conveying an exoticisation of the ‘foreign’ blond/e, in contrast to the ‘indigenous’ wheatish complexion of the Mediterranean peoples. This rhetoric corresponds to an informal code of communication, often practised/perceived by social (frequently also class- and politically-charged) groups distinguishing between ‘high quality’ and ‘low quality’ [the terms used in the context in question literally translate as ‘quality’ (ποιοτικό) and ‘cheap’ (φτηνό)]. The perceived ‘fakeness’ of the dyed blonde is just a cultural interpretation of hair bleaching, which is actually a chemical process similar to that of hair darkening. This interpretation has evolved into a collective perception of the so-called phenomenon of the dyed blonde. The great cultural analyst Stuart Hall argues that phenomena do not have any meaning before they are represented and that the process of representation itself involves interpretation. Interpretation here connotes information, ideological stance, taste, critique. In this sense, the phenomenon of the dyed blonde takes shape through the representation which particular social ‘senders’ and ‘receivers’ perform themselves. In other words, both the phenomenon itself, and the rhetoric about ‘real’ and ‘fake’ that goes with it, are culturally-specific, rather than universal social constructs.

Ethnography, 2024

This article proposes a systematization of the within, between and beyond sites through which eth... more This article proposes a systematization of the within, between and beyond sites through which ethnographic field-making takes shape. It draws on fieldwork in Brazil, Greece, Nigeria, the UK and the social media among congregations affiliated with postcolonial Nigeria’s denominations of Pentecostal orientation. The main argument builds upon the conceptual continuum local–translocal–postlocal. Whereas the local exists through familiarity, the translocal emerges at the overlapping of familiarities, and the postlocal as a gesture of familiarity’s reconfiguration. This systematization advances epistemological and ethical extents of multi-sited ethnography, as it is premised upon the revision of designations identifying the research subject(s) as a ‘Nigerian Pentecostal diaspora’. While introducing a knowing of locals, translocals and postlocals over nationally, denominationally and diasporically bounded individuals, the continuum re-theorizes multi-sited-ness under local, translocal and postlocal affordances. In questioning identity designations, the paper foregrounds nuanced positionalities of ‘field’ constitutors to destabilize subtle conventions of totalization and the alterity-ipseity divide.

Social Analysis, 2023

This article is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license as part of Berghahn Open Anthro, ... more This article is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license as part of Berghahn Open Anthro, a subscribe-to-open model for APC-free open access made possible by the journal's subscribers.

European Journal of Musicology, 2021

onique Ingalls’s Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Commu... more onique Ingalls’s Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community is a landmark publication, inviting vitally diverse readings. Fusing distinct disciplinary traditions and settings of field research, the book offers much more than a fresh understanding of popular religious music. With ethnomusicology and congregational music studies at the foreground, Ingalls’s undertaking spans popular music and media studies, sociology, theology, among other fields, to propose an analytical model for congregation and worship. The book evokes a novel understanding of the reasons and ways in which contemporary worship music constitutes congregation; an understanding that, even though primarily addressing the North American evangelical context, concerns broadly the shaping of worship within and between certain denominational families across the globe today. The model comprises five distinct ways in which congregations are formed through music-making. These musical ...

Mana, 2020

Mexico. Sua monografia seminal Sound and Sentiment [Som e sentimento], de 1982, realizada a parti... more Mexico. Sua monografia seminal Sound and Sentiment [Som e sentimento], de 1982, realizada a partir de anos de pesquisa na floresta Bosavi, na Papua Nova Guiné, é um marco etnográfico para a antropologia do som, da música e dos sentidos. Em 2012, lançou o livro Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra [O cosmopolitismo do jazz em Acra], juntamente com produções em CD e DVD de seu próprio selo, VoxLox, voltado para produções colaborativas. Seu distanciamento de abordagens c l á s s i c a s e m e t n o m u s i c o l o g i a aprofundou-se com pesquisas sobre jazz em Acra e a relação entre sinos,

Resumos do..., 2019

Resumo Este projeto tem como objetivos interpretar, transcrever em partitura, utilizando a notaçã... more Resumo Este projeto tem como objetivos interpretar, transcrever em partitura, utilizando a notação prescritiva, documentos musicais gregos antigos, fazer uma performance das peças interpretadas e reconstruídas e as gravar. Também pretendemos promover o entendimento do funcionamento dessas músicas, sua notação, atuação e valor na vida dos gregos antigos, visando facilitar o fornecimento de informações sobre o assunto para pesquisadores da área, amantes de música e de história antiga, no geral.

Popular Music and Society, Apr 15, 2019

This article explores the understudied thematic of Nigerian Pentecostal musicianship, by focusing... more This article explores the understudied thematic of Nigerian Pentecostal musicianship, by focusing on overlapping practices, perceptions, and experiences of musicians performing across religious and secular settings in Greece. The implementation of Nigerian Pentecostal music-making principles in secular performance contexts generates transcendent experience and fulfils politics of venue-popularity, similarly to congregational contexts. Largely informed by ethnomusicology and the anthropology of music, I employ a threefold analytic tool to show how music-making blurs the boundaries between popular religious and secular culture, and why this blurring broadly shapes and reflects popular cultural practice.

Mana, 2020

Entrevista realizada com Steven Feld e publicada na revista Mana. Interview with Steven Feld publ... more Entrevista realizada com Steven Feld e publicada na revista Mana.
Interview with Steven Feld published in the journal Mana.

Μουσικές Κοινότητες στην Ελλάδα του 21ου Αιώνα: Εθνογραφικές Ματιές και Ακροάσεις , 2020

Η εισήγηση αυτή εστιάζει σε τάσεις μουσικής πρακτικής, θεώρησης και εμπειρίας που αφορούν κοινότη... more Η εισήγηση αυτή εστιάζει σε τάσεις μουσικής πρακτικής, θεώρησης και εμπειρίας που αφορούν κοινότητες της Αθήνας του 21ου αιώνα οι οποίες συνδέονται με νιγηριανικές πεντηκοστιανικές εκκλησίες. Αντλώντας από πολυετή εθνογραφική έρευνα σε τέτοιες κοινότητες όχι μόνο στην Ελλάδα, αλλά και στο Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο, τη Βραζιλία, τη Νιγηρία και τα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης, τοποθετώ τον λόγο για την γκόσπελ μουσική της Αθήνας σε ένα διατοπικό πλαίσιο ανάλυσης, το οποίο απορρέει από μια συνθετική κατανόηση διαφορετικών τόπων νιγηριανικού πεντηκοστιανισμού. Η συγκεκριμένη προσέγγιση θέτει υπό αμφισβήτηση στερεοτυπικές αντιλήψεις κυρίαρχης και μειονοτικής κουλτούρας στον ελληνικό γεωπολιτικό χώρο και ευρύτερα, υπαγορεύοντας τη σημαντικότητα εστίασης στο αναμεταξύ διακριτών τόπων, στους οποίους μορφώματα παγκόσμιου χριστιανισμού και δημοφιλούς (μουσικής) κουλτούρας λαμβάνουν χώρα.

Sage Research Methods Foundations, 2019

Ethnomusicology has been defined as the cultural study of music. It is an inherently interdiscipl... more Ethnomusicology has been defined as the cultural study of music. It is an inherently interdisciplinary field, which is evident in the range of research methods employed in ethnomusicological research since its inception in the late 19th century. This entry looks at how research methods have developed in ethnomusicology from the 19th century onward. It begins by looking at how an interest in music and musical activities has mobilized thinkers across the centuries in many parts of the world, before turning to the foundations of the contemporary discipline. Trends addressed include the scientific methods of comparative musicology and its developments, the shift to a fieldwork-based discipline, the developments in orientations to the field, and fieldwork over the course of the 20th century. The final section looks at research methods used by ethnomusicologists in the collection of data in the field and in the preparation of the data for analysis.

Popular Music and Society, 2019

This article explores the understudied thematic of Nigerian Pentecostal musicianship, by focusing... more This article explores the understudied thematic of Nigerian Pentecostal musicianship, by focusing on overlapping practices, perceptions, and experiences of musicians performing across religious and secular settings in Greece. The implementation of Nigerian Pentecostal music-making principles in secular performance contexts generates transcendent experience and fulfills politics of venue-popularity, similarly to congregational contexts. Largely informed by ethnomusicology and the anthropology of music, I employ a threefold analytic tool to show how music-making blurs the boundaries between popular religious and secular culture, and why this blurring broadly shapes and reflects popular cultural practice.

Book Chapter in The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking, edited by Suzel A. Reily and Katherine Brucher, 2018

This chapter discusses the relation between religious musicking and locality by looking at the wa... more This chapter discusses the relation between religious musicking and locality by looking at the ways in which music is made and perceived among members of a Nigerian Pentecostal parish in Greece. Central to Nigerian Pentecostal worship, music making is seen as a powerful means of spiritual engagement. Appointed music ministers carry special responsibility for directing the musical parts of services and for conveying musico-spiritual skills to the congregation. However, the ethos of musicking in these services is deeply participatory, inviting the entirety of congregants to take an active part in musically articulated worship, praise, and thanksgiving. While proposing that musicality and spirituality are inseparable and interchangeable skills of experience in the ethnographic context in question, I argue that participatory musicking in religious services can bring about a shared musico-spiritual experience. This shared experience creates a transcendent place, a locality not defined by mapped territories, but rather by worshippers connecting with one another while reaching the divine.

Book Chapter in Taking Part in Music: Case Studies in Ethnomusicology, edited by Ian Russell and Catherine Ingram. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, in association with the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology., 2013

Academic Contributor to Visual-Art Exhibition, entitled ‘Suicide Blonde’, hosted by the French Institute of Greece, Athens (4-10 May 2017). , 2017

The rhetoric against the dyed blonde in late 20th - early 21st century Greece is a product of cul... more The rhetoric against the dyed blonde in late 20th - early 21st century Greece is a product of culturally-specific perceptions ranging from ‘sexy’ to ‘second-class’, in either case conveying an exoticisation of the ‘foreign’ blond/e, in contrast to the ‘indigenous’ wheatish complexion of the Mediterranean peoples. This rhetoric corresponds to an informal code of communication, often practised/perceived by social (frequently also class- and politically-charged) groups distinguishing between ‘high quality’ and ‘low quality’ [the terms used in the context in question literally translate as ‘quality’ (ποιοτικό) and ‘cheap’ (φτηνό)]. The perceived ‘fakeness’ of the dyed blonde is just a cultural interpretation of hair bleaching, which is actually a chemical process similar to that of hair darkening. This interpretation has evolved into a collective perception of the so-called phenomenon of the dyed blonde. The great cultural analyst Stuart Hall argues that phenomena do not have any meaning before they are represented and that the process of representation itself involves interpretation. Interpretation here connotes information, ideological stance, taste, critique. In this sense, the phenomenon of the dyed blonde takes shape through the representation which particular social ‘senders’ and ‘receivers’ perform themselves. In other words, both the phenomenon itself, and the rhetoric about ‘real’ and ‘fake’ that goes with it, are culturally-specific, rather than universal social constructs.