“We can laugh at ourselves”

This chapter critiques the idea of Hawaiʻi as a “multicultural paradise” and the production of Local by examining the popular practice of ethnic humor. It argues that Hawaiʻi ethnic humor is a space for the production of “Local knowledge(s)” and ideologies where identities are constructed and social order and racial hierarchy are enacted. It draws attention to the production of Local as a nonimmigrant identity, especially the ways in which Local comedians appropriate the voice of immigrant Filipinos through the use of Mock Filipino (or speaking English with a “Filipino accent”). Although understood as “innocent” and “harmless” joking in which “we can laugh at ourselves,” Hawaiʻi ethnic humor in general, and Mock Filipino in particular, simultaneously produce racially demeaning or “racially interested” discourses that uphold the positive self-image of Locals, especially their membership in Hawaiʻi's “racial paradise,” while lowering that of immigrant Filipinos.

Ethnic humor uses a small number of universal stereotypes such as stupidity, laziness, etc., to ridicule a large number of ethnic groups, thereby setting boundaries between them and maintaining ethnic-based hierarchies in society (Hill 1995. Junk Spanish, covert racism, and the (leaky.) boundary between public and private spheres. Pragmatics 5(2). 197–212, Hill 1998. Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100(3). 680–689; Kuipers and Ent 2016. The seriousness of ethnic jokes: Ethnic humour and social change in The Netherlands, 1995–2012. Humour 29(4). 605–633). Ethnic humor, in this sense, is ethnic inasmuch as it targets different ethnic groups, but it does not address their ethnic identity because global scripts like stupidity and laziness are in no way related to or defining of ethnic groups and their identities. Based on this observation, the key objective of this study is to theorize and empirically evidence a relationship between ethnic humor and ethnic identity. To achieve this, the study will provide an overview of ethnic humor scholarship and its lack of focus on the relationship between ethnic humor and ethnic identity. It will critically re-examine the concept of global ethnic scripts, such as stupidity and laziness, countering these notions with evidence for the existence of different types of more local, ethnically distinctive scripts, such as those based on history, language, and customs. As evidence, it will present the results of a cross-cultural qualitative empirical study that offers insights into people’s perceptions of the ethnic character of humor.

How do ethnic jokes, a genre that is often considered to be offensive and discriminatory, relate to ethnic relations and discourses of ethnic difference? This article investigates the relation between ethnic jokes and ethnic relations in the Netherlands. It analyzes two corpora covering the range of ethnic jokes collected using an (almost) identical survey among high school students in 1995 (N = 248) and 2012 (N = 312). Finding a complex pattern of overlapping and shifting scripts, we identify three main categories of jokes with different dynamics. The first and second category, jokes about national groups and regional minorities and sick ethnic jokes, are both in decline. The third category, jokes about ethnic minorities, is prominent in both years, and the most important category in 2012. Jokes about minorities show considerable variation and a ‘lag’ in their reflection of societal changes. They refer to the most prominent ethnic stereotypes and ethnic discourse, and reflect the Dutch ethnic hierarchy and changes in ethnic relations over time. Besides, these jokes seem to function as a ‘cultural archive’, in which ethnic discourses are stored, even if they are (temporarily) less visible in serious discourses. We argue that a single theory or approach is not sufficient to explain all ethnic humor and its relation to societal relations. The large variety in ethnic jokes shows how varied ethnic discourses and interethnic relations are. We conclude with the question how ‘serious’ ethnic humor is and show two criteria to assess this seriousness of ethnic humor: the relation between jokes and actual hostility and exclusion, and the harshness of a joke cycle.

When wielded by the white majority, ethnic humor can be used to ridicule and demean marginalized groups. In the hands of ethnic minorities themselves, ethnic humor can work as a site of community building and resistance. In nearly all cases, however, ethnic humor can serve as a window through which to examine the complexities of American race relations. In Ethnic Humor in Multiethnic America, David Gillota explores the ways in which contemporary comic works both reflect and participate in national conversations about race and ethnicity. Gillota investigates the manner in which various humorists respond to multiculturalism and the increasing diversity of the American population. Rather than looking at one or two ethnic groups at a time-as is common scholarly practice-the book focuses on the interplay between humorists from different ethnic communities. While some comic texts project a fantasy world in which diverse ethnic characters coexist in a rarely disputed harmony, others genuinely engage with the complexities and contradictions of multiethnic America. The first chapter focuses on African American comedy with a discussion of such humorists as Paul Mooney and Chris Rock, who tend to reinforce a black/white vision of American race relations. This approach is contrasted to the comedy of Dave Chappelle, who looks beyond black and white and uses his humor to place blackness within a much wider multiethnic context. Chapter 2 concentrates primarily on the Jewish humorists Sarah Silverman, Larry David, and Sacha Baron Cohen-three artists who use their personas to explore the peculiar position of contemporary Jews who exist in a middle space between white and other. In chapter 3, Gillota discusses different humorous constructions of whiteness, from a detailed analysis of South Park to Blue Collar Comedy and the blog Stuff White People Like. Chapter 4 is focused on the manner in which animated children's film and the network situation comedy often project simplified and harmonious visions of diversity. In contrast, chapter 5 considers how many recent works, such as Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and the Showtime series Weeds, engage with diversity in more complex and productive ways.

Reviewed by: Taking Penguins to the Movies: Ethnic Humor in Russia Bert Beynen Taking Penguins to the Movies: Ethnic Humor in Russia. By Emil A. Draitser (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Pp. 199, preface, notes, bibliography, indexes.) In this book, Draitser provides a lot of good jokes and in the process raises fascinating questions. Many Russian jokes, he reminds us, are products of the best part of Russian society-its intelligentsia (p. 12). Therefore, jokes are an important part of Russia's cultural history. Ethnic jokes are especially interesting because of their uniformity, and in spite of their specificity. That is, the jokes ascribe specific characteristics to various ethnic groups, but these characteristics are interchangeable and are, sooner or later, ascribed to most groups, and what is more, most groups ascribe them to themselves. Russians, for example, describe Jews (p. 182) and Georgians (pp. 49-50) as sexually overactive, which is very surprising because they make similar jokes about themselves (pp. 21 ff., 183), although they resent it when outsiders make the same assumptions (p. 25). To complicate matters, opposite characteristics are not infrequently ascribed to different ethnic groups (p. 33). The universality of the specifics in "jokelore," as Draitser calls his subject matter, are jokes about stingy people: They are told about the Scots, as well as by Belgians about the Dutch, by Russians about the Ukrainians (p. 73), and by Bulgarians about the inhabitants of the village, Gabrovo. Therefore, ethnic jokes seem difficult to explain: They ascribe the same and opposite characteristics to several ethnic groups. They do not refer to any objectively existing and verifiable ethnic characteristics, as Draitser repeatedly points out (p. 20, quoting Wilson, who quotes Barron and Legman). How can this be explained? According to Draitser, who attempts to explain these characteristics of jokes, groups take a close look at neighboring groups and make fun of their characteristics, but these groups say that, in the final analysis, all humanity is both the same and unique: Each group is stupid or clever, sexually active or inactive, depending on which individuals are chosen as representatives (pp. 20, 23). Linguists will notice here a similarity with phonemes or, more appropriately, distinctive features. Distinctive features and phonemes, unlike morphemes and words but like ethnic characteristics, do not refer to reality but "denote mere otherness," in Roman Jakobson's words ("Phonology and Phonemics," Selected Writings, vol. I [Mouton,1962, p. 470]). Similarly, these ethnic characteristics do not describe ethnic groups but only "denote their otherness," that is, state that they are different. Just as Jakobson described a phoneme as a bundle of distinctive features, we can describe an ethnic joke as a bundle of ethnic characteristics with this difference: that the bundle is defined for each individual joke, while phonemes are permanently defined as a certain bundle of features. This conception of ethnic jokes as a means to identify one's own group by contrasting it with others seems implicit in Draitser's analysis, even if he does not say so directly (pp. 17, 20). De Saussure was right: The sign is arbitrary and one can show one's "awareness of its existence" (p. 17) by attributing any characteristic to any group. Draitser's book deals with very fundamental questions. What makes a state? What makes a nationality? How are our neighboring countries different from us? Are they? He shows us that people have pretty much the same vices and weaknesses all over the world-well, all over Eastern Europe-and he gives us lots of good anecdotes. Bert Beynen Des Moines Area Community College Copyright © 2002 American Folklore Society

The article focuses on hierarchical and inverse relations in social systems. Hierarchy is the basic form of organization in social systems. Complex hierarchies have the ability to form inverse relationships. Inverse relationships occur when the lower element in social hierarchy becomes the dominant, but formally remains in a subordinate position. In a hierarchical system, there are certain organizational principles that determine the mutual position of the elements. There are several such principles in complex hierarchies. Inversions arise when two or more organizational principles collide in social hierarchy. The developed inversions are a manifestation of internal contradictions in the hierarchical system. The accumulation of these contradictions can lead to the collapse of the hierarchical system. For example, the development of social inversions can cause a revolution in which certain organizational principles in the social system are abolished. But in some cases, resolving of these contradictions leads to another step in the progressive development of the system. Thus, the resolution of contradictions occurs when the subject actually moves to a higher position in the social hierarchy. One of the most important organizational principles that determine the position of the subject in the social hierarchy is based on the educational level of this subject. Increasing the level of education entails the increase of the subject’s social status. However, the position of the subject in the social hierarchy is also determined by other organizational principles. These principles may conflict with the educational organizational principle. As a result, there is a social inversion. Education is a factor that can both generate inversions in the social hierarchy and eliminate them. The development of society is closely connected with the manifestations of the educational organizational principle, with its interaction with other organizational principles in the social hierarchy. The analysis of inverse relations in social hierarchies is an effective research tool that allows to predict and prevent social tension in society.

Most ethnic humour that has been studied so far consists of jokes which use ethnically non-specific qualities such as stupidity or canniness in order to ridicule an ethnic group and thus to preserve and perpetuate ethnically based social hierarchies in western industrial societies. In light of this dominant logic in ethnic humour theory, the objective of this study is to problematize the relation of such non-ethnic qualities and the notion of ethnic identity, as well as their relation to a specific type of society, in an attempt to convincingly argue in favour of the need to differentiate between ‘ethnically-empty’ functional joke scripts and genuine ethnic joke scripts that are related to the ethnic identity of the target. In so doing, I extend ethnic humour theory by introducing and testing the notion of genuine ethnic joke scripts in order to motivate future research that will tackle other potential ethnic humour idiosyncrasies. Toward this end, I have collected and analysed joke material (N=369) coming from Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Albania, societies with histories and relations very different that those in the western industrial societies. Additionally, the study incorporates two questionnaires with members of the two largest ethnicities in the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonians and Albanians, to ascertain the relation between the genuine ethnic humour and ethnic identity.

If humor provides a means of analyzing a culture, what better way of understanding today's Russia than by examining the jokes people are telling? As ethnic conflicts have become hot political issues, Russian jokes about ethnic groups have become more common and ethnic humor even more prevalent than political humor.In Taking Penguins to the Movies, Emil Draitser offers an insider's view of Russian society by presenting and analyzing Russian ethnic jokes that center on Jews, Georgians, Ukrainians, Chukchis, and other groups. Drawn from Russian joke books and the author's private collection, most of the 300 jokes and popular rhymes, ethnicity-related proverbs and sayings appear in English for the first time and have been chosen for their analytical interest and the extent to which they represent folk humor.Draitser uses humor as a means of understanding the attitudes and customs, beliefs and idiosyncrasies, and inter- and intra-group relationships of this multinational society. In analyzing the jokes, he seeks to determine what makes them funny, why certain groups are targeted, and even why a mediocre joke can be received with great enthusiasm. He traces the evolution of ethnic stereotyping, examines the circumstances under which such jokes arise, shows how they are used to project anxieties on out-groups, and suggests what they reveal about those who tell them. He also examines jokes shared by Russian Jews to show how a minority uses humor to sustain its morale.Even though Russia has seen a new proliferation of joke books with the lifting of censorship, Russian scholars have been slow to analyze their own people's humor. Taking Penguins to the Movies provides a glimpse of many ofthe sociological processes taking place in today's Russia and offers readers a few chuckles along the way.

The study examined gender differences in behaviours and attitudes towards own and other ethnic groups among Sarawakians. The questionnaire data were from 70 respondents living in Sarawak, Malaysia. The questionnaire was on social interaction, attitudes towards ethnic relations, ethnic group perceptions, and ethnic group importance in the context of the Malaysian society. The results showed that there were no significant differences between female and male participants who reported frequent social interactions with people from their own ethnic groups and other ethnic groups. However, they seldom discuss interethnic issues and attend inter religious dialogues with other ethnic groups. The female and male participants were also not significantly different in their ethnic group perceptions. They preferred to be with people from the same ethnic groups in various settings, and acknowledged that people from different ethnic groups are different and yet similar. However, there was a gender difference for attitude towards ethnic relations. The participants reported positive attitude towards ethnic relations. Compared to the female participants, the male participants expressed a strong support for the right of ethnic groups to maintain their own unique traditions and, at the same time, expressed a stronger belief in the need for minority groups to accept the established system of government in this country to attain the Malaysian dream of racial harmony. There was also a significant gender difference for ethnic group importance in that the female participants were more selective in which ethnic group they felt warm towards unlike the male participants who felt similar levels of warmth towards Malay, Indigenous, Chinese, and Indians. The male participants were more upfront in asserting pride in their ethnic identity and the right for ethnic groups to maintain their distinctiveness. This analysis of gender differences in ethnic attitudes using a model of behaviour-attitudes-values is eye-opening because it shows that Malaysians can display social interaction behaviour that shows ethnic openness, and somewhat express attitudes that show ethnic openness but at the values level, they are still in the comfort zone of their own ethnic group.

Ethnic minorities in Indonesia have long experienced marginalization through state policies, everyday practices, and public discourses that reproduce unequal power relations. One of the discursive tools that sustains such marginalization is humor, which reinforces and normalizes negative stereotypes about minority groups. Beneath its entertaining surface, ethnic humor conveys stigmas that operate through three underlying dimensions: experiential, relational, and expressive. Speakers and media producers construct these jokes through textual structures that depict minorities as abnormal, unintelligent, or uncivilized. The persistent reproduction of such humor perpetuates ethnic prejudices that have been deeply embedded in Indonesian society since the Dutch colonial period. By normalizing exclusionary views under the guise of amusement, ethnic humor sustains discriminatory attitudes that hinder the development of an anti-discriminatory society. This paper argues that ethnic humor in Indonesia functions as a discursive mechanism that perpetuates the marginalization of minority ethnic groups by encoding ideological meanings that normalize ethnic hierarchy.

Despite many studies that address relations between the two major ethnic groups—Indigenous and Ladino—in Guatemala, there are no scales devised specifically to measure ethnic attitudes. Participants (196 university students) indicated agreement or disagreement on a four-point scale with a large pool of items expressing positive and negative attitudes towards the two groups, and, on a line from pure Indigenous to pure Ladino, their own ethnic identification (the label they use to describe their ethnicity). Reliable scales measuring Attitudes toward Indigenous (AIG) and Attitudes toward Ladinos (ALG) were constructed, and 35% of the participants claimed mixed ethnic identification. Ethnic identification was related to attitudes, with groups demonstrating in-group favoritism; that is, participants expressed more positive attitudes toward their own ethnic group. The results imply that the dichotomous categories of Ladino and Indigenous are inadequate for measuring ethnicity in Guatemala. The newly developed attitude scales may be used to advance knowledge about ethnic relations in Guatemala and to test the generality of findings relating to relations between dominant and subordinate groups.

This article explores how young people with minoritized ethnic (mostly Moroccan or Turkish backgrounds) and religious (Muslim) identities in Flanders employ humour for identity construction. The participants created comedy sketches that featured ‘ethnic humour’, which focuses on the characteristics and stereotypes of different ethnic, racial, and national groups. Thematic analysis revealed how humour serves as a powerful tool for minority youth to navigate self-identity and contest the sociopolitical contexts that shape their identities. By making fun of the social contexts that force them to enact ridiculous stereotypes, as well as mocking the taken-for-granted assumption that white culture is the norm, the participants challenged dominant systems of oppression that interpellate them as ethnic and religious subjects. Furthermore, humour played a crucial role in mediating the different lived experiences of the participants and the white atheist researcher throughout the study; as a result, their interactions provided a rich source for jokes and identity mapping as well. Through an analysis of the comedy sketches and researcher–participant interactions, this article examines the role of minority youth as humour producers and performers, hitherto a neglected area of scholarship. As such, it furthers an understanding of the dynamic interplay between humour, identity, and power.

In the sociological literature, the study of inter-ethnic relations has been dominated either by the problem of the black-white conflict in the U.S.A. or by the controversy over whether social relations in colonial and excolonial countries are ‘pluralistic’. The history of the Soviet Union provides quite a different context in which various ethnic groups, each with peculiar traditions and languages and at various levels of social, political and economic development, have interacted one with another. Study of the Soviet Union enables one to compare the role of Marxist-Leninist ideology in an ethnically mixed community with the usual examples of the impact of religious and ‘imperialist’ belief systems, and it may help to clarify whether ‘ethnic group’ is a useful analytical category or whether ‘ethnic relations’ can be explained in terms of the more traditional classifications of class, status and power.

Anthropological studies have been carried out in the field of ethnicity, ethnic relation and ethnic groups. In the traditional anthropological studies the tribe, race and ethnic groups were considered fundamental for classifica- tion of human populations which existed to distinct, inte- grated social units whose boundaries were clear and disdain. Later anthropological research has been carried taking into account the nature and persistence of ethnic boundaries, in- corporation of ethnic populations, organization of inter eth- nic relations and consequent competition of resource dis- tribution. The present paper attempts to analyse the social relations among different ethnic groups inhabiting Sikkim state, their place in the total environment, their relations to resources and other stakeholders.

Psychosocial explanations for socioeconomic status (SES) differences in health draw on non-human primate research to demonstrate how position in the social hierarchy is related to stress, as measured by cortisol....