An almost contact metric structure is parametrized by a section of an associated homogeneous fibre bundle, and conditions for this to be a harmonic section, and a harmonic map, are studied. These involve the characteristic vector field, and the almost complex structure in the contact subbundle. Several examples are given where the harmonic section equations reduce to those for the characteristic field to be a harmonic section of the unit tangent bundle. These include trans-Sasakian structures, and certain nearly cosymplectic structures. On the other hand, we obtain examples where the characteristic field is harmonic but the almost contact structure is not. Many of our examples are obtained by considering hypersurfaces of almost Hermitian manifolds, with the induced almost contact structure, and comparing the harmonic section equations for both structures.
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