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ABSTRACT
Humorous joking, teasing, and banter are fundamental forms of social intercourse. This paper is about the role and effect of ‘humour’ in multiethnic blue-collar workplaces. Humour delineates boundaries of group membership, establishes insiders and outsiders, and offers a ritual solution to ambiguity and liminality, tension and social unease. Humour is Janus faced though. Historically, it has been a central tool of the racist; a way of expressing disgust and hatred with an exit strategy: ‘just joking’. This paper draws on these themes to consider findings from a large comparative study of ‘Everyday Multiculturalism at Work’ which compares workplaces in Singapore and Australia. The essay focuses on blue-collar male-dominated Australian workplaces and explores the role and function of interactional humour in mediating, reinforcing, and overcoming boundaries of racial and ethnic difference in a context of forced ‘encounter’. I consider both the positive, ludic qualities of humour as well as its negative dimensions and further situate the discussion in terms of certain forms of Australian working class masculinity. I offer the concept of‘convivial labour’ to describe the work that goes into negotiating interactional humour frames in multi-ethnic settings of forced encounter.
Acknowledgements
This paper derives from a study entitled ‘Everyday Multiculturalism at Work’ funded by the Australian Research Council. It was conducted with my co-researcher and partner Selvaraj Velayutham, whom I thank for his insight and input as I worked up this paper. We would like to acknowledge the various research assistants who worked on the project; in particular Sudheesh Bhasi, Kais Al Momani, Nour Dados (in Australia), Yanchun Ong, Evangeline Katigbak, and Humairah Binte Zainal (Singapore). Their involvement in the project was most valued and we acknowledge the richness of the data they assisted us in acquiring.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Amanda Wise is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University. Her research interests include global cities and diversity; ‘everyday multiculturalism' in Australia and Singapore; racism and interethnic relations; transnational communities and labor migration. She is author of Exile & Return Among the East Timorese (UPenn Press 2006), co-editor (with Velayutham) of ‘Everyday Multiculturalism' (Palgrave 2009) and has authored numerous publications on the everyday phenomenologies of ‘living multiculture'.
Notes
1. The initial intent was to conduct ethnographic research in blue-collar workplaces however the team was not successful in negotiating access to single worksites under conditions that would have afforded complete freedom to report observations. In one example the CEO of a warehouse was willing to allow access, however the human resources manager repeatedly blocked access and insisted on selecting and vetting participants in the study. We took the decision to recruit instead by snowballing through informal channels directly via workers, and to bypass management altogether.
2. In Australia, the epitaph ‘Anglo’ is used to denote white Australians of British descent, and other long-time assimilated white northern Europeans. The phrase ‘non-Anglo’ typically denotes non-Caucasian, non-European ethnicities, and sometimes includes migrants from Southern Europe.
3. Admittedly I borrow rather loosely from Goffman here. Many have critiqued Goffman’s lack of precision, or at least complexity in his use of frames. Scheff (Citation2005) has analysed this in more depth.
4. Weet-Bix is an Australian brand of breakfast cereal. The manufacturer advertises this as quintessentially Australian. The slogan for Weet-Bix goes: Aussie Kids are Weet-Bix Kids.