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Paper short abstract

This paper discusses the ethical dilemma of how, during my doctoral fieldwork studying everyday banter in post-industrial south Wales, I voiced discomfort with hegemonic banter while also listening to why research participants found these jokes funny and culturally important.

Paper long abstract

One of the core tenets of my ethnographic training underscored the importance of suspending one’s judgement in order to empathize with research participants. During my doctoral fieldwork studying everyday banter in Merthyr Tydfil – a Welsh, post-industrial town in south Wales – this “ethnographic mindset” was critical for familiarizing me with the particular sensibilities and functions of the local sense of humor, described as “affectionate abuse” by one local resident.

However, when I experienced certain instances of banter as crossing the “fine line” of banter into sexism, homophobia and racism, I began to question the ethnographic assumption that it is necessary to suppress one’s emotional responses in order to truly understand one’s research participants. I increasingly wondered how it might be possible to communicate my discomfort without moralizing judgement. Conscious of my positioning as a middle-class researcher with left-leaning values, I heeded Walkerdine’s (2017) warning about the dangers of outside researchers imposing a “progressive” agenda on working-class communities that reductively portrays them as culturally regressive or close-minded.

Drawing on Spencer’s (2011) work on ethnographic emotional reflexivity, in this paper I explore how I voiced criticism of local residents’ hegemonic banter while also listening carefully both to why those telling these jokes found them funny and to local residents who felt ambivalent about where they stood. I discuss the ethical dilemma of deciding to share with research participants that I felt offended by some of their jokes, and how these challenging conversations yielded generative avenues for deepened engagement.