ABSTRACT
Total institutions such as detention homes or prisons are inevitably highly emotional places, and studies have illuminated the many negative affects circulating such as pain, aggression and sadness, often conceptualized as part of a construction of (hyper-)masculinity. This chapter draws on video-ethnographic data from a Swedish detention home for boys, in order to investigate, not only these negative affects, but also those of joy and playfulness in the incarcerated boy's humorous interactions. The chapter offers an overview of research on humour and laughter in interaction. Drawing on Wetherell's ( 2013 ) notion of affect as both an embodied and a social meaning-making practice together with Ahmed's ( 2014 ) thoughts on emotions as performative, the analysis explores the boys’ use of humour practices such as stylizations. The analysis illuminates how humour practices produce particular social hierarchies and social order through both laughter and unlaughter, as well as reproduce affective norms in line with previous findings on “hypermasculine” emotion work. However, the use of humour also allows for the boys to enact less tough affective practices such as joyfulness and intimacy between male friends. At the same time, through these humour practices, the participants play with various identity positions linked to age, criminality and masculinity.
