Abstract
This article develops a theory of humor and uses it to assess the attempt to measure meaning-structures in cultural sociology. To understand how humor operates, researchers need to attend to two layers of cultural competencies: general typifications and situation-specific know-how. These cultural competencies are then invoked in ways that define humor as a specific form of experiential frame—the bi-sociation of meaning, its condensation, and resonance with experienced tensions in the social world. I show the usefulness of this theorization through the empirical case of AIDS humor in Malawi, a small country in South-East Africa. Using conversational diaries, everyday interactions, and newspaper cartoons, I argue both that such humor is widespread and that it reveals important facets of life in a country ravaged by the pandemic—what it means for the shadow of AIDS to be ever-present. Through this case, I then turn back to the question of measurement, arguing that although measuring tools may be able to identify large-scale semantic shifts, they necessarily miss forms of interaction such as humor, that are based on allusion, condensation, and what is left unsaid.
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Notes
Personal communication, 2006.
However, as Lukes and Galnoor (1985) note about political jokes, some tensions fit all too well in a variety of settings
Note that the transposability of cultural schemas is directly connected to bi-sociation. The ability to bi-sociate is predicated on the fact that we constantly move meanings between domains and situations in everyday meaning-making.
As the funnies are published bi-weekly, this means AIDS humor appeared in approximately 7 % of the days.
As before, there are other possible interpretations—switching to a humorous frame mitigates the cruelty of the remark, while allowing it to be said.
This cartoon has the advantage, at least from a research frame of reference, that the joke is explained by the rats. While this makes it perhaps less funny and more “educational,” it does make the cartoon’s interpretation much more straightforward.
Both these options, of course, entail methodological challenges. There may be a danger of over-confidence on the part of the researcher in the assumption that we can become insiders, as well as an assumption of a univocality of meaning (if only one possible interpretation is presented). On the other hand, as this article makes clear, when asked why something is funny, people often cannot explain it, neither to themselves nor to others.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Nahoko Kameo, Inna Leykin, and the participants of the measuring culture mini-conference—Chris Bail, Amin Ghaziani, Neil Gross, Jenn Lena, Omar Lizardo, Terry McDonnell, Ashley Mears, Ann Mische, John Mohr, Steve Vaisey, and Fred Wherry—for useful comments on earlier drafts. Ann Swidler, Tara McKay, and Susan Watkins talked me through the project in its early stages. I also thank Hrag Balian, Peter Bearman, and Harel Shapira for our attempt to think about humor together.
