Full Description
Anthropological writings on humor are not very numerous or extensive, but they do contain a great deal of insight into the diverse mental and social processes that underlie joking and laughter. On the basis of a wide range of ethnographic and textual materials, the chapters examine the cognitive, social, and moral aspects of humor and its potential to bring about a sense of amity and mutual understanding, even among different and possibly hostile people. Unfortunately, though, cartoons, jokes, and parodies can cause irremediable distress and offence. Nevertheless, contributors' cross-cultural evidence confirms that the positive aspects of humor far outweigh the danger of deepening divisions and fueling hostilities
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
