The sociology of humor Giselinde Kuipers 1. Introduction Humor is a quintessentially social phenomenon. Jokes and other humorous utterances are a form of communication that is usually shared in social in- teraction. !ese humorous utterances are socially and culturally shaped, and o"en quite particular to a specific time and place. And the topics and themes people joke about are generally central to the social, cultural and moral order of a society or a social group. Despite the social character of humor, sociology, the discipline that stud- ies society and social relations, has not concerned itself much with humor. When sociology emerged in the nineteenth century, it focused mainly on the great structural transformations of the modern times: modernization, indus- trialization, urbanization, secularization, etc. It was not very interested in the “unserious” business of everyday life: interactions, emotions, play, leisure, private life, and other things not directly related to great developments on the macro-level of society – such as humor. In the course of the twentieth cen- tury, sociology became more diverse and increasingly concerned with the micro-reality of everyday life, but it still remained overwhelmingly devoted to the study of social problems, great transformations, and other serious mat- ters. As a result, humor came into focus mainly when it seemed problematic in itself, or was concerned with important social issues: race and ethnicity, political conflict, social resistance, gender inequalities. Meanwhile, questions about the social nature of humor were addressed by many other disciplines. Many of the classical humor theoreticians (Mor- reall 1983) touch on social aspects of humor. However, these questions were mostly answered from a more philosophical or psychological perspective. Anthropologists and folklorists were much ahead of the sociologists in pay- ing serious and systematic attention to the social meanings and functions of humor (see Apte 1985; Oring this volume). Only a"er the 1970s can we speak of a serious emergence of a sociological interest in humor (Fine 1983; Paton 1988; Zijderveld 1983). 11-kuipers.indd 365 18/06/2008 13:39:14 366 Giselinde Kuipers In this chapter, I will give an overview of sociological thought about humor. Sociological thought is defined here broadly (and somewhat imperi- alistically) as any scholarship concerned with the social functions or social shaping of humor. Since the authors discussed here have used very different conceptualizations and definitions of humor, I will simply adopt the vari- ous notions of humor used by the authors discussed, and leave the matter of the definition of humor to other authors in this volume. First, I will discuss a number of theoretical perspectives on humor, roughly in chronological order: the functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist, phenomenological, and comparative-historical approach. A"er that, I will discuss a number of issues central to today’s sociological thought about humor: the relation be- tween humor, hostility and transgression; humor and laughter; and the social shaping of humorous media and genres. 2. Sociological perspectives on humor 2.1. Pre-disciplinary history Superiority theory, relief theory, and incongruity are usually described as the three “classical” approaches to humor and laughter. !ese approaches pre- date academic disciplinary specialization, so most of the classical formula- tions are subsumed today under the heading of philosophy (Morreall 1983; 1987). !e earliest sociologist who discussed humor was the British philoso- pher/sociologist/political theorist Herbert Spencer. His discussion of laugh- ter can be placed in the tradition of relief theory: laughter, to Spencer, is “the discharge of arrested feelings into the muscular system . in the absence of other adequate channels.” (Spencer 1861/1987: 108109) However, Spencer connected this energy release with the experience of incongruity: “laughter naturally results only when consciousness is unawares transferred from great things to small – only when there is what we may call a descending incon- gruity.” (ibid. 110, italics in original) !e discharge of tension is still one of the main functions humor is believed to fulfill, and as such the relief theory has had great influence on modern humor scholarship, mostly via the work of Sigmund Freud (1905/1976). However, “pure” relief theorists, explaining all humor and laughter as release of tension or “safety valve”, cannot be found anymore in humor scholarship these days. Of the three “classical” approaches, superiority theory is the most obvi- ously connected with social relations. !is tradition can be traced back to 11-kuipers.indd 366 18/06/2008 13:39:14 The sociology of humor 367 Plato and Aristotle, and has most famously been formulated by !omas Hob- bes: “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.” (Hobbes 1650/1987: 20) Superiority theorists state that humor and laughter are expressions of superiority, which of course reflects a social relationship. However, on close consideration the classical theorists describe superiority as an individual experience: the com- municative or relational aspect of the joking and laughing is generally not examined in these theories. In other words: while addressing a social event, superiority theories of humor are not very sociological. As will become clear in this article, the relation between humor and superiority – although referred to in other terms, such as power, conflict, or hierarchy – is still central to so- cial scientific studies of humor. Incongruity theory – the theory that states that all humor is based on the perception or recognition of incongruity – is not as obviously related to socio- logical questions, since it is mainly concerned with the nature of humorous texts or other stimuli, or with the mental operations involved in processing these texts. However, as incongruity theory, in several varieties (Attardo and Raskin 1991; Oring 1992; 2003; Raskin 1985; Ruch 1998), became the dom- inant perspective in humor scholarship, it has been incorporated in socio- logical thought in various ways: how incongruities and their humorous poten- tial are culturally and socially determined (Davis 1993; Oring 1992; 2003); how the incongruous form permits specific social functions (Mulkay 1988), and how incongruities get to be perceived and constructed as funny (Douglas 1973). !e first full-fledged theory of humor was developed by Sigmund Freud. In his Jokes and !eir Relation to the Unconscious (1905) he integrated elements of relief and incongruity theory, and combined them with his psy- choanalytic theory. While Freud’s theories on humor (and other topics) are much disputed, he was the first to systematically address what I have called here sociological questions about humor, and his influence on the sociology of humor has been immense. Without attempting to explain Freud’s entire humor theory (see Martin 2006: 3342; Palmer 1994: 7992), let me note two important themes. First, Freud discussed the importance of social rela- tionships between the teller of the joke, his audience, and (when applicable) the butt of the joke. In other words: he introduced the social relationship into the analysis of humor. Second, Freud paid attention to the relationship be- tween humor and – socially constructed – taboos. Jokes, according to Freud, were a way to avoid the “censor”, or the internalized social restrictions, thus 11-kuipers.indd 367 18/06/2008 13:39:15 368 Giselinde Kuipers enabling the expression (and enjoyment) of drives otherwise inhibited by society. To Freud, these forbidden drives were mostly sex and aggression. Freud’s theory has been strongly criticized, especially for the claim that all humor in the end is based on sex and aggression, although, in all fairness, Freud is more nuanced about this in his discussion of actual jokes than in the general statement of his theory. Another main point of criticism is the unfalsifiability of Freud’s theory: the references to underlying drives are, by necessity, “veiled” and therefore hard to disprove. However, the notion of jokes as related to, and attempting to circumvent, social taboos has become very central to humor scholarship.1 !e other early theorist of humor with sociological insight was Henri Bergson. Like Freud’s theory, Bergson’s Laughter (1900/1999) contains a number of rather untenable and untestable generalizations (for instance, that all laughter is a response to “something mechanical encrusted on the living”), alongside insightful contributions. For sociologists, his most rele- vant observations have to do with the social character of laughter. Bergson described humor and laughter as essentially social and shared. Laughing at someone, on the other hand, functions as a means of exclusion, and hence as a social corrective and form of social control. A"er Freud and Bergson, the various disciplines of humor studies branched out, and in the course of the twentieth century, a number of approaches emerged that are more or less specific to the social sciences: the functional- ist approach; the conflict approach; the symbolic interactionist approach; the phenomenological approach; and the comparative-historical approach. 2.2. !e functionalist approach !e functionalist approach interprets humor in terms of the social functions it fulfills for a society or social group. Especially in older studies of