Description
Book SynopsisAnthropological writings on humour are not numerous, but they do contain insight into the social processes that underlie joking and laughter. This volume examines the cognitive, social, and moral aspects of humour and its potential to bring about a sense of mutual understanding, even among different and possibly hostile people.
Trade Review “This collection is like a charm bracelet. The essays are attractive and bright, but their interconnection derives largely from being gathered in one place. The general theme is anthropological—the collection presents humor as both a topic and a method in anthropological research—but the title is broad enough to permit scholarship from a wide variety of disciplines…. All the essays in this volume have something valuable to say and say it well.” · Choice
“All in all, the present volume is a notable contribution to understanding humor and comic performances. It clearly shows that humor is such a nuanced topic that in order to understand it in its complexity, one has to analyze it from a varied range of perspectives, sometimes through the study of seemingly unconnected phenomena.” · Anthropology Book Forum
“This book is a valuable contribution to the anthropology on humour as there is so little of it, despite the important place of humorous phenomena within social life. The wide variety of topics reflects the myriad ways humour may figure in different contexts: how in some cases it is an important aspect of the situation in question and in others it provides a specific lens through which to consider a topic.” · Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute
“…humour has been a fleeting theme in anthropology. This is surprising, since everybody laughs – although not at the same things, which makes humour rich with cultural context. That richness certainly emerges in the nine diverse chapters gathered here,.. Most revel in their material, offering readers plenty of interest.” · SITES – A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies
“There is no doubt that Lidia Dina Sciama’s edited volume… is an impressive, ambitious and timely volume. The subheading, Obscenities, Paradoxes, Insights and the Renewal of Life, seems a tall order for two hundred pages, but in their own ways, the editor and contributors have responded admirably to the challenge. While grounded in the field of social anthropology, this volume is also notable for its interdisciplinarity.” · JASO
“An interesting and unique read… Each scholarly contribution makes a creative effort to cross the traditional boundaries of anthropological theories and methods with other closely related disciplines. It is an excellent example of anthropological cross-disciplinary engagement with psychology, philosophy, aesthetics, film, and theater and music theory.” · Jana Kopelentova Rehak, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Introduction
Lidia Dina Sciama
Chapter 1. The Origins of Comic Performance in Adult-Child Interaction
Ian Wilkie and Matthew Saxton
Chapter 2. Learning from the Ludic: Anthropological Fieldwork
Judith Okely
Chapter 3. Humour as a Form of Cognition
Elisabeth Hsu
Chapter 4. Comic Strips and the Making of American Identity
Ian Rakoff
Chapter 5. Jokes without Frontiers, War without Tears: Humour, Stress and Power in an Anglo-German Bank Branch
Fiona Moore
Chapter 6. Laughing at the Future: Cross-Cultural Science Fiction Films
Dolores Martinez
Chapter 7. The English Pantomime: Toying with History, Playing with Gender, Laughing at Today
Shirley Ardener
Chapter 8. The Function of Satire in Italian Popular Song
Glauco Sanga
Chapter 9. Laughing at the Past among Venetian Islanders: Carlo Goldoni’s Scuffles in Chioggia
Lidia Dina Sciama
