ABSTRACT
This book engages anthropologically with humor as political expression. It reveals how humor is in many instances central to human efforts to cope with political struggle and significant to understanding power dynamics in socio-political life. The chapters examine humor and joking activities across a diverse range of geographic areas and cultural contexts. The contributors consider humor as it is constituted in political anxiety, aggression and power, and when it becomes a tool to resist, repair, reconcile or make a moral claim. Collectively they demonstrate that humor can provide a powerful critique, a non-violent form of political protest and the space for restoration of human dignity.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter 1|9 pages
You’ve got to be joking
Asserting the analytical value of humour and laughter in contemporary anthropology
chapter 3|15 pages
“Joke” elections
Satirical activism and political opposition in Lithuania’s electoral politics
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