Anthropology of Humour

Although it has been an almost ubiquitous discourse from ancient times to the present, satirists and critics do not agree on a single definition of satire. A synthetic definition of satire could be reached through a critical survey of its various definitions. Accordingly, satire is a discursive practice in a Foucauldian sense to which four elements, with varying degrees, are essential: attack or aggression, laughter or humor, play, and judgment. Defining satire as a Foucauldian discourse allows the critical analysis of its interactions with other discourses within respective power structures. Therefore, a general discursive model of satire is deduced according to which the discourse of satire not only shapes, but is also shaped by, five major discourses—namely discourses of economy, politics, morality, patriarchy, as well as learning and knowledge—through their negotiations and transactions within specific epistemes.

A partir de materiales etnográficos de campo, se describen diversas instancias de fenómenos que hacen reír a los chacobo (Pano) de la  Amazonía boliviana en contextos discursivos o prácticos como la caza, las fiestas, las relaciones interétnicas, las relaciones de parentesco, la onomástica o la mitología, y se propone una hipótesis sociológica de interpretación del humorismo chacobo.

Humour has constantly intrigued scholars and has been extensively analysed from disciplines as varied as anthropology, sociology, psychology, neuroscience or linguistics. Within this, it has received due attention from discourse and conversational analysts, semanticists, semioticians or pragmatists, for example. Researchers have looked into its manifold manifestations and a wide array of its fascinating, but often complex characteristics. Several models and theories have been proposed to account for this ever-present and ubiquitous phenomenon -suffice to mention the Semantic Script Theory of Humor or the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo and Raskin 1991), to name but two. Obviously, the post-Gricean, cognitive pragmatic framework of relevance theory Wilson 1986, 1995) could not be alien to the interest aroused by humour, so relevance theorists soon incorporated it into their research agendas. On the basis of this ground-breaking and revealing theory put forward thirty years ago by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, there have been many illuminating attempts to unravel how jokes, punning, monologues, ironies or sitcoms, among other types of humorous texts, work and achieve their effects (number of studies has not been accompanied so far by a unified, all-encompassing analysis of humour through the lens of relevance-theoretic pragmatics.

This course examines the link between political economy and the everyday, lived social relations. Taking stock of new political anthropology, it showcases some available approaches for understanding the political from a grassroots, bottom-up perspective.

The paper intends to track the naming criteria for dogs among the chané. Links between onomastics and diverse cultural contexts are thus analysed - such as the daily treatment and attitudes towards dogs, mythic symbolism, etymology, human names, names of domestic pets and taxonomic classification. In a comparative perspective, meaningful relationships are also verified with the dynamics of ethnic relationships and mythologies of Chaco ethnic groups.

With a few remaining Yaminahua and Pacaguara, the Chacobo are currently the only Pano-speaking group of Bolivian Amazonia. Through ethnographic description the paper analyses practical, symbolic and discourse contexts such as hunting, drinking bouts, interethnic relationships, mythology, gender ideology, kinship and onomastics in order to track down several phenomena that make the Chacobo laugh. After discussing some possible ways of classification of Chacobo humour, the paper proposes a sociological interpretation of joking as a form of collective thought.

This paper explores two different forms of male soci-ality in a coastal village in southern Sri Lanka, where sociality, in both cases, is expressed through a combination of humour and deception. I illustrate how men express friendship and brotherhood through elaborate deceptions involving outsiders as well as through the collective ridicule of close friends. The first case study explores the use of humour as a commentary on domestic realities and an affirmation of community. In this article I am specifically concerned with the relationships between men. I argue that men, between whom kinship exists, regard the efforts of their wives to stall their drinking activities as an indication of a well-run home. The assumption is: my wife is looking for me, she is concerned about me, she cares for me, I too care for her so I lie to her. While men's jokes about other men's private lives are meant to poke fun they also reveal underlying concerns about domestic problems and, constant ridicule may be interpreted as an effort, on the part of male friends and kin, to address these problems. The second case study explores the deception and ridicule of foreigners by villagers in the aftermath of the tsunami. Foreigners who settled in the village in recent years are often the victims of elaborate deceptions where villagers, especially local youths, either recount a heart-rending tale of loss and attempt to separate foreigners from their money or cajole them into performing tasks as parts of non-existent traditions. Successfully fooling a foreigner in this way is the cause of much glee and laughter. It confirms foreigners' status as 'outsiders' through their lack of local knowledge and villagers assert their superiority over them and rhetorical control over their dominion.

In seinem Essay "Frames of comic freedom" beschreibt Umberto Eco das Komische als das Resultat einer Regelverletzung, die von jemandem begangen wurde, den wir als "Barbaren" abtun können. Voraussetzung ist, dass uns der andere nicht allzu sympathisch und die Regelverletzung nicht allzu gravierend ist. Heißt: Man fühlt sich vom Regelbruch des anderen nicht allzu sehr betroffen, aber man fühlt sich ihm hoffnungslos überlegen. Insofern der Barbar dergestalt zur komischen Figur schlechthin wird, gilt laut Eco: "Comic is always racist: only the others, the Barbarians, are supposed to pay" . Der Barbar ist aber auch eine Figur der Grenze: Er ist der Einwanderer, der von außerhalb kommt, der die Sprache der Einheimischen und die geltenden gesellschaftlichen Standards nur stotternd beherrscht. Insofern ist er die Figur der Nicht-Integration par excellence. Indes sind auch die Einheimischen nicht davor gefeit, die geltenden Standards zu unterbieten. Jeder kann also zeitweise und situationsbedingt zum Barbar – zur nicht-integrierten, komischen Figur – werden.

"In the best-known in C. S. Lewis's (1898-1963) heptad of children's books about Narnia, an old professor is approached by two children who worry that their little sister is deranged because she claims to have passed through a wardrobe into another world. After the two give a full rehearsal of her behaviour and answer a few pointed questions, Lewis subjects the evidence to logical analysis...Although formal logic is taught even less often today than it was in the Professor's--or Lewis's--day, the situation in the twelfth century was altogether different. The stock of logic or dialectic stood as high in the schools of twelfth-century western Europe as it had ever done--and as it ever would do again. In other words, eight hundred years ago the schoolmasters did teach logic."

On 23 August 2009 YouTube user TheKassitus released the video Mihemmed – Niilin hanhet (’Geese of Nile’), which by May 2010 had been nearly 2,5 million times. In the video, the Syrian Kurd musician Ebdo Mihemed (Abdo Mohamed in Arabic) performs with a group of musicians, singing a popular folk song Pinsedî Zêde. The video is subtitled in Finnish using homonymous translation, resulting in absurd and mainly obscene phrases.

Using the video and its adjacent Internet commentary as research material, the focal point of the analysis is formed by the ways in which music, social media and humour function and are interlinked as mediators of cultural representations and meanings. In more precise terms, it is investigated how issues of ethnic otherness are mediated in the case of Niilin hanhet.

At issue are the ways in which music constitutes an aesthetic practice with its peculiar identity politics, the role of YouTube as a technological platform and its promises and hindrances, and the significance of humour as an ideological constituent is examined.

The analysis in contextualised by the questions pertaining to the notion of ’multicultural Finland’ and postcolonial studies in more general. The central argument is that Niilin hanhet attests to the prevalence of exceptionalist discourse in Finland, and in that discourse the notion of humour is utilised in order to refute the possiblity of accusations of racism.

Lari Aaltonen is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Tampere.

Antti-Ville Kärjä is Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Turku.

In Anthropology, the body is perceived as something which can be influenced  by culture and society. The ‘physical’ body is constantly modified by social categories, and there can “be no naturally way of considering the body that does not involve a social dimension” (Douglas 2003,7). The body then becomes a medium of expression and perception .With increasing globalization and consumerism,  the body is being objectified and commodified , especially the female body. The  Female body which has been historically seen as something to be gazed at, through films, magazines and advertisements is subjected to scrutiny on the basis of its size and shape. The association of body size and shape with feminine beauty -is a near universal phenomenon. But if we were to talk in context of India, then beauty is primarily defined by euro-centric parameters. Women are expected to adhere to prescriptive norms of skin-colour, weight, personal grooming etc. One of the key platforms which reiterate such notions is the Hindi  film Industry (popularly known as Bollywood ), which is considered one of the largest  cinema hubs in the world.  The connection between cinema and the creation-perception of a body image is both multifaceted and fascinating . The female actors become a powerful tool of marketing tool of what an “ideal” body is.  This dissertation aims to look at  firstly, how the body size of  and promoted by female actors  impacts the norms of beauty in India. Secondly, I would present an ethnographic analysis of selected mainstream Hindi films which engage in body-shaming, in order to substantiate my pursuit of cinema  an object  of analysing the anthropology of body, gender and humour.

Although it has been an almost ubiquitous discourse from ancient times to the present, satirists and critics do not agree on a single definition of satire. A synthetic definition of satire could be reached through a critical survey of its various definitions. Accordingly, satire is a discursive practice in a Foucauldian sense to which four elements, with varying degrees, are essential: attack or aggression, laughter or humor, play, and judgment. Defining satire as a Foucauldian discourse allows the critical analysis of its interactions with other discourses within respective power structures. Therefore, a general discursive model of satire is deduced according to which the discourse of satire not only shapes, but is also shaped by, five major discourses-namely discourses of economy, politics, morality, patriarchy, as well as learning and knowledgethrough their negotiations and transactions within specific epistemes.

This article focuses on the analysis of gossip that is done in a playful key, including laughter as a salient feature, drawing on extracts taken from two naturally occurring conversations among Galician female undergraduate students. The analysis indicates that gossip emerges as a form of indirect mockery in the data, which are commonly based on dramatized reported speech of the ‘victim’, including parodic stylization devices that are orientated to elicit laughter by making fun or through ridicule. The evaluation component also reveals important differences in relation to serious gossip, as it is not necessarily negative and is not always explicitly established or developed. For this reason, this component can be ambiguous in some cases. From a functional perspective, the article emphasizes that sociability and entertainment are not the only functions that playful and humorous gossip can play; at a fundamental level, this discourse practice has other benefits for the participants: as a way of constructing group identity and getting group comfort for a feeling of envy; of increasing self-esteem from the problems of another party; and of degrading other people’s success. The common element behind these underlying functions is a comparative competition of the gossipers with the person who is the subject of their talk. Thus, gossip as mockery is not free of maliciousness and competitiveness.

Según los casos latinos, se declina el silencio en relación con el humor, en una frase. Nominativo: plantea la importancia del sujeto psicológico. Vocativo: nuestro tiempo tiene verdadera necesidad de invocar ambos elementos (silencio y humor) para vivir y comunicarse mejor. Genitivo: dos situaciones negativas, la comicidad del silencio mal entendido y el silencio como censura del humor. Acusativo: silencio y humor son filtrados por las categorías de vértigo y éxtasis. Dativo: retoma la cuestión del nominativo (interdependencia de ambos elementos): uno lleva al otro y viceversa. Ablativo (epílogo): disección de procesos humorísticos y silenciosos.

Der Beitrag fragt nach den Qualitäten populären Humors, genauer: populären Lachens. Mit Mary Douglas trennt er die humoristischen Texte und Performanzen als Lachanlässe von den Leistungen und Funktionen des Lachens selbst - die sind nämlich nur im Rahmen einer Analyse der "totalen sozialen Situation" konkret zu bestimmen. Deshalb, das wird am Beispiel des Kriegshumors 1914 ff. vorgeführt, ist kollektives Lachen auch der "Massen" keineswegs per se subversiv, kritisch o.ä. Wohl aber kann man es, wie an verschiedenen Beispielen ausgeführt wird, als Indikator von sozialen, politischen, machtbezogenen Spannungen lesen.

Im Folgenden geht es um Lachen als soziale Praxis. Dabei können wir vom verbreiteten Kriegshumor nicht direkt auf das Kriegslachen schließen. Lachen in einem anthropologisch auch nur etwas strikteren Sinn bezeichnet nicht etwa die Reaktion auf einen Humor-Reiz, sondern ein differenziertes Spektrum menschlicher Äußerungsformen, deren körperliche Dimension nicht weniger wichtig ist als ihre mentale, kommunikative oder soziale.