ABSTRACT
The chapter presents an analysis based on empirical material produced by the interaction in ‘The Image Exercise’, in a research project about gendered meanings in Danish development aid organisations. Here the topic of humour repeatedly made its way into the conversations about gender and organisational life. The chapter provides a partial window into the analytical possibilities of exploring historically situated humour work in human interaction. The chapter points to how humour plays a pivotal part as a powerful boundary maker in relation to the (re)production of gender meanings. When humour ‘works’ it tells us about social categories and cultural expectations both along and across relations of power. It is a particularly communicative practice of complex and ambiguous normative dimensions and therefore a productive site for the exploration of the process of construction of meaning. The chapter exposes the potential of the method to investigate how different groups within an organisational hierarchy relate to social positions and categories through humour. A focus on humour can also point to wider psychosocial trends about how a phenomenon is understood, perceived and negotiated by different groups in different contexts and over time.
