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Abstract
Through a feminist approach this paper illustrates how humour is used as a resource and strategy for status among Finnish school boys and in constructing culturally accepted masculinity in the field of informal school. Based on interview and observation material collected in three schools, the results suggest that although humour is often affiliative and positive in nature, exclusive, violent humour is also used as a resource and strategy, which might have serious consequences on targeted students’ lives. The effect of humour as a symbolic resource of status depends not only on context and power relations between the agents, but also on a credible, strategic usage of the resources available to a boy. Humour has an important influence on constructing masculinities and the social status of boys. Furthermore, the status of a boy defines the value of his humour among his peer group.
Acknowledgements
This article was written in the project ‘From Violence to Caring’, funded by the Academy of Finland and led by Professor Vappu Sunnari. The authorship is equally shared between the two first authors. The third author is the supervisor of the work.
Notes
1. Keltner et al. (Citation2001, 234) define teasing as ‘an intentional provocation accompanied by playful off‐record markers that together comment on something relevant to the target’. According to Shapiro, Baumeister, and Kessler (Citation1991), teasing includes three components: aggression, humour, and ambiguity.
2. Ideals of hegemonic masculinity are in constant flux and vary in local, regional and global cultural practices. It should be noted that hegemonic masculinity should not be interpreted only as a cultural ideal that is almost impossible to reach, but that cultural factors, social structures and individual level attributes are all critical to an understanding of gender (Connell and Messerschmidt Citation2005).
3. The practices found by Kehily and Nayak are similar to those identified in our study, in that humorous actions included, for example, pulling a face, bumbling and fooling around, name‐calling, harassment, irritation, being cheeky, telling jokes or funny stories, sitcom, touching another student’s body in humorous play, and altering embarrassing situations to humour.
4. We define violence as ‘any action or structure that diminishes another human being, and conceive of different forms of violence as a means of people to seek control over others’ (Sunnari, Heikkinen, and Kangasvuo Citation2002, 10).
5. Informal school refers to ‘interaction among teachers, among students and between teachers, students and other staff, including informal hierarchies’ (Lahelma Citation2002, 368).
6. The data have been partly collected in the rural area of Finland. In order to protect the anonymity of the students, publishing exact dates are avoided. Moreover, some details that refer to certain persons have been changed both in the extracts and the descriptions of the data. All names are pseudonyms.
7. Middle‐sized: 200–400 students.
8. Racist humour, humour between girls and boys, and girls’ reciprocal humour, in which the similar pattern can be applied, also cuts across the data. However, since the data does not bring new insights into the existing work in the field, we do not focus on ethnicity in this paper. Due to limited space, the analysis of social class and humour is also left out of this article.
9. Age 12–13 years.
10. Age 15–16 years.
11. The total number of interviews was 45.
12. Age 7–8 years, N = 19.
13. Age 10–11 years, N = 30.
14. Age 12–13 years, N = 19 and 14–15 years, N = 24. Altogether 90 interviews were carried out during six weeks field periods.
15. We have analysed the status, including the power positions, of the students in several phases in the course of the research (Huuki Citation2002; Manninen Citation2002, Citation2006; Manninen, Huuki, and Sunnari, Citationsubmitted).
16. Martin et al. (Citation2003) identify four dimensions relating to individual differences in the uses of humour: affiliative, self‐enhancing, self‐defeating and aggressive humour styles. Aggressive humour refers to humour that belittles others although often masqueraded in playful fun. This categorisation seems interesting, but as we emphasise the viewpoint of the target and aim to make visible playful, exclusive humour, we suggest that the nuances of the phenomenon can be reached in a more expedient way by the term ‘exclusive humour’.
17. BS:ing refers to ‘bullshitting’.
18. Irony is a literary or rhetorical device in which there is an incongruity between what is said or done and what is really meant or generally understood. Even though irony is a type of humour, it is not always fun and many times an ironic comment is meant as hidden insult or snub.