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- Convenors:
-
Chloe Dominique
(University College London)
Victoria Tecca (University College London)
Claire Moll Namas (London School of Economics)
Marie Cornelia Grasmeier (Universtität Bremen)
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- Stream:
- Irresponsibility and Failure
- Sessions:
- Monday 29 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Humour has typically been theorised as a coping mechanism or a 'weapon of the weak'. This panel will examine the ways that humour can be employed as a tool for highlighting systemic irresponsibility and failure, particularly for those who cannot rely on traditional justice systems.
Long Abstract:
Humour has typically been theorised as a coping mechanism or 'weapon of the weak'. Anthropologists have long analysed humour as is found in joking relationships, as recognition of kinship or other social bonds, or of its use in religion, amongst others. Existing work also positions humour as a tool of resistance for the disempowered, yet this often serves to reiterate the notion that one's subjugated position is inescapable and static, emphasising the futility of defiance.This panel examines how humour can illuminate systemic irresponsibility and failure particularly for, but not limited to, those unprotected by traditional justice systems including sex workers and undocumented migrants. The convenors invite discussion of the potential for humour to responsibilise the state or other parties for the production of symbolic and structural violence. We encourage papers that draw on ethnographic accounts of how humour can not only mediate failing social relations - or relations which produce subjugation and inequity - but serve to increase tensions by explicitly naming an unequal power relation as a failure in and of itself. We also invite papers that speak to the embodied process of telling jokes and laughter, its affective qualities, and the banal experiences of humour that inflect in informants' lives. Guided by these various facets of humour, this panel draws together widely ranging ethnographic work - which may have otherwise not entered into conversation with one another - to develop a deeper understanding of how the serious study of humour can significantly contribute to studies of failure, irresponsibility, and systemic violence.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 29 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In my presentation, I will discuss ethnographic examples of humour and joking as a practice of seafarers on global merchant ships to cope with the stress experienced due to the strict hierarchical order characterising their workplace organisation.
Paper long abstract:
In my presentation, I will focus on the role of humour and joking among seafarers on global merchant ships as a way of coping with the stress caused by the strict hierarchical order on board. The findings are an outcome of my doctoral research in which I explored processes of occupational boundary-work among seafarers in the global fleet. My data are based on ethnographic fieldwork on a container ship with a multinational crew employed in worldwide trade. The workplace organisation on these ships resembles a quasi-military disciplinary regime which widely parallels the ethnic segmentation of the crew. (White) Europeans hold most of the senior positions while the junior officers and ratings mostly originate from labour supply countries of the global South. Thus, the ship constitutes a postcolonial space where global North-South relations project into the well-defined space at the micro-level of interpersonal relations among crewmembers. This hierarchical order on board significantly contributes to the occupational stress experienced by seafarers. During my fieldwork, the seafarers dealt with this stress by ritualised joking and establishing joking relationships directed at the order of authority. Thereby, the turned the major source of their psychological stress into an object of ridicule. The seafarers themselves interpreted this practice as a coping strategy, stating that they were "always joking to stay happy." By laughing at the system of command and obey, they created a sense of agency within the de-empowering hierarchical order.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, through careful analysis of jokes referencing Neoliberalism told at moments of possible unemployment in a local NGO in rural El Salvador, I posit that joke-telling in the face of uncertainty and precarity, more broadly, is a form of self- and collective empowerment.
Paper long abstract:
El Salvador is known for its systemic, interpersonal, and banal violence and uncertainty (Bourgois and Scheper-Hughes 2004, Hume 2009, Moodie 2010). While conducting fieldwork with a local NGO in rural La Libertad, my informants often faced threats of routine unemployment at the end of project funding. More than a mere coping mechanism, workers increased their joke telling around these difficult moments. Significantly, the jokes tended to highlight alternative forms of possible employment available to the workers. The two most common options were selling minutas (snow cones) at the tourist beaches and migrating to the United States. Interestingly, jokes typically noted the inequalities of the Neoliberal system and the punch line revolved around the workers exploiting, in return, those holding the power. In this paper, through careful analysis of these jokes, I posit that joke-telling in the face of uncertainty and precarity is a form of self- and collective empowerment.
Paper short abstract:
Looking at a public clinic in a Brazilian favela, this paper addresses mockery among staff as a form of inverting hierarchies of knowledge in the setting of a public clinic in Greater Rio de Janeiro.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses humorous mockery as a way to invert hierarchies of knowledge in the setting of a public clinic in Greater Rio de Janeiro. Examining events at a public clinic in Duque de Caxias, greater Rio de Janeiro, I look at how staff who reside in the local community mock better-off staff (and myself) for how they react to the sound of gunfire in the neighbourhood. Such reactions were in line with protocols for personal safety, set up by a humanitarian program by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), but laughed at by local clinic staff who knew a given situation did not pose danger. Such humour temporarily inverts the medical hierarchy of knowledge within the clinic, as doctors, nurses, and dentists are mocked by community healthcare agents who, through prolonged lived experience with armed violence, are better able to assess whether given instances of shooting pose a real threat to staff. More than a weapon of the weak, humorous mockery acted to prevent future failure within the dynamics of local government, which had in the past denied some of the staff at the clinic a voice when deciding whether their neighbourhood was too dangerous to work in.