Almost everyone tells and appreciates jokes. Yet the nature of jokes has proved elusive. When asked what they really mean, people tend to laugh off the question, dismissing jokes as meaningless or too obvious to require explanation. Of those who have seriously sought to understand humor, most have explained jokes as expressions of aggression- a socially acceptable way of showing contempt and displaying superiority. Elliott Oring offers a fresh perspective on jokes and related forms of humor. Criticizing and modifying traditional concepts and methods of analysis, he delineates an approach that can explain the peculiarities of a wide variety of humorous expression. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Jokes and Their Relations will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered how jokes work and what they mean. Humor, Oring argues, depends upon the perception of an appropriate incongruity. The first step in understanding a joke, anecdote, or comic song is to unravel this incongruity. The second step is to locate the incongruity within particular individual, social, or cultural contexts. To understand the meaning of a joke, one must know something of its tellers, the social and historical circumstances of its telling, and its relation to a wider repertoire of expression.

This early work by Sigmund Freud was originally published in 1905 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious' is a psychological work on the effects on the mind of jokes. Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6th May 1856, in the Moravian town of Príbor, now part of the Czech Republic. He studied a variety of subjects, including philosophy, physiology, and zoology, graduating with an MD in 1881. Freud made a huge and lasting contribution to the field of psychology with many of his methods still being used in modern psychoanalysis. He inspired much discussion on the wealth of theories he produced and the reactions to his works began a century of great psychological investigation.

In this book, Nathan Miczo demonstrates that humor operates at different levels of identity, exploring how within- and between-group dynamics shape the creation and reception of disparagement humor. While positive forms of humor arise in interpersonal settings, negative forms reflect the activation of group-based, communal identities. Building on this dual sociality view, Miczo critiques the superiority theory of disparagement humor, rooted in Hobbes’s definition of laughter, and tied to his notion of a “war of all against all.” Miczo employs the agōn (Greek for contest) to replace the Hobbesian metaphor with a view that groups use disparagement humor to pursue rival goals. This perspective forwards the multifunctional utility of humor in social life, analyzing examples of naturally occurring interaction drawn from studies in Communication, Psychology, and Anthropology. Scholars of humor studies, communication, and anthropology, will find this book of particular interest.

The book is intended to provide a definitive view of the field of humor research for both beginning and established scholars in a variety of fields who are developing an interest in humor and need to familiarize themselves with the available body of knowledge. Each chapter of the book is devoted to an important aspect of humor research or to a disciplinary approach to the field, and each is written by the leading expert or emerging scholar in that area. There are two primary motivations for the book. The positive one is to collect and summarize the impressive body of knowledge accumulated in humor research in and around Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research. The negative motivation is to prevent the embarrassment to and from the "first-timers," often established experts in their own field, who venture into humor research without any notion that there already exists a body of knowledge they need to acquire before publishing anything on the subject-unless they are in the business of reinventing the wheel and have serious doubts about its being round! The organization of the book reflects the main groups of scholars participating in the increasingly popular and high-powered humor research movement throughout the world, an 800 to 1,000-strong contingent, and growing. The chapters are organized along the same lines: History, Research Issues, Main Directions, Current Situation, Possible Future, Bibliography-and use the authors' definitive credentials not to promote an individual view, but rather to give the reader a good comprehensive and condensed view of the area.

A group of anti-conscription activists break into a prison, demanding to be jailed together with their friend already locked up because of his beliefs. Clowns from the rebel clown army mimic police sent to control political protests. Visiting Santas hand out presents taken from shop shelves without the approval of the shopping centre management. These are examples of humorous political stunts - public actions, hoaxes and happenings that confront systems of power. This book contains many amusing stories of such stunts, showing the boldness and creativity of the activists. Interviews and documents are used to show how humour can facilitate outreach, mobilisation and a culture of resistance. Humorous Political Stunts combines insights from the fields of nonviolence and humour studies and makes theoretical contributions to each area.

The seventeen essays in this book examine the power of humour in framing social and political protest.

The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues examines theoretical perspectives and empirical issues concerning the psychology of humor. Theoretical views of humor range from the physiological to the sociological and anthropological. The relations between humor, laughter, and smiling are considered, along with the connection between collative variables and arousal. Comprised of 13 chapters, this book begins with an introduction to the history of thought and major theoretical issues on humor, followed by a description of models of different aspects of humor. The next section deals with empirical issues in which selected research areas are given detailed attention. The relations between humor, laughter, and smiling, on the one hand, and collative variables and arousal, on the other, are analyzed. Subsequent chapters explore the cognitive origins of incongruity humor by comparing fantasy assimilation and reality assimilation; a two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons; and the social functions and physiological correlates of humor. The relationship between arousal potential and funniness of jokes is also explored, together with humor judgments as a function of reference groups and identification classes. The final chapter presents an annotated bibliography of published papers on humor in the research literature and an analysis of trends between 1900 and 1971. This monograph will be of interest to psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and behavioral scientists.

Critical appreciations of George A. De Vos, a pioneer in the cross-cultural application of projective techniques (M. Suarez-Orozco, P. Lerner), and De Vos's own reminiscences, are followed by contributions true to the spirit of De Vos's methodology. They include a demonstration of the usefulness of projective tests in the psychodiagnostic evaluation of schizophrenia (J. Stone, P. Wilson & B. Boyer); an examination of the role of historical events in the development of Chinese and Japanese personality characteristics (J. Connor); a review of the impact of Freudian and Jungian thought in India (S. Kakar); and a study of loss and grief in a community of the North American Great Plains (H. Stein).

A rigorous study of the social meaning and consequences of racist humor, and a damning argument for when the joke is not just a joke. Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended—laughing even at a taboo thought or at another's expense. The insinuation is that laughter eases social tension and creates solidarity in an overly politicized social world. But do the stakes change when the jokes are racist? In The Souls of White Jokes Raúl Pérez argues that we must genuinely confront this unsettling question in order to fully understand the persistence of anti-black racism and white supremacy in American society today. W.E.B. Du Bois's prescient essay "The Souls of White Folk" was one of the first to theorize whiteness as a social and political construct based on a feeling of superiority over racialized others—a kind of racial contempt. Pérez extends this theory to the study of humor, connecting theories of racial formation to parallel ideas about humor stemming from laughter at another's misfortune. Critically synthesizing scholarship on race, humor, and emotions, he uncovers a key function of humor as a tool for producing racial alienation, dehumanization, exclusion, and even violence. Pérez tracks this use of humor from blackface minstrelsy to contemporary contexts, including police culture, politics, and far-right extremists. Rather than being harmless fun, this humor plays a central role in reinforcing and mobilizing racist ideology and power under the guise of amusement. The Souls of White Jokes exposes this malicious side of humor, while also revealing a new facet of racism today. Though it can be comforting to imagine racism as coming from racial hatred and anger, the terrifying reality is that it is tied up in seemingly benign, even joyful, everyday interactions as well— and for racism to be eradicated we must face this truth.