Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the relationship between power and knowledge in the ethnography of Romanian practical jokes. Pranks are social games played according to ethical competitive individualism in a culture permeated by secrecy and distrust where knowledge creates power, and power implies knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Young men in Sateni enjoy playing elaborate jokes on the expense of hapless co-villagers. A practical joke involves a group of pranksters spontaneously conspiring to fool a gullible "victim" into performing an absurd action based on a patently absurd pretence. This paper makes two arguments about how these jokes relate to a particular way of perceiving and acting in the social world of Sateni. First, I will show that practical jokes are legitimated by and played according to an ethic of self-responsibility which characterises general social relations between unrelated villagers. The humiliation experienced by victims is seen as stemming from their fault at being unable to guard against the perils of social life, as expected from competent social actors. On the opposite, pranksters emerge as winners in a battle of wit and dramaturgical performance which echoes "real" social confrontations in arenas of economy and politics. I will a;so argue that practical jokes reflect a wider preoccupation of villagers with power and knowledge. The artful manipulation of uncertainty, trust and information present in practical jokes mirrors the widespread culture of secrecy in a "limited good" society. Pranks serve, for actors as well as for audiences, as lessons in social pedagogy about the value of true knowledge in a competitive society and the perils of gullibility and misplaced trust when facing a potentially maleficent world. The paper ends with a discussion on the study of jokes and pranks as ethnographic contexts for understanding the relationship between communication, knowledge, and power.