The Anthropology of Humor - Responding to Everyday Racist Comments and Jokes

In the face of so much bigotry flying around on social media and in our daily lives, it's good practice to remind ourselves of the best practices out there when dealing with everyday racist comments and jokes.

How do anthropologists think about humor as a cultural trait?

According to Anthropologist Robert Lynch, a joke...is like a little brain scan: When we laugh, we reveal what's inside us. In an interview for NPR, Lynch is described as saying: When you and I laugh at the same joke, we signal to each other that we share the same values, the same beliefs. This may be why people all over the world want friends and romantic partners who share their sense of humor. His research on humor can be found here and here.

What are some simple practices we can follow when responding to racist humor?

Emma Thomson and Anne Pederson, Psychologists at Murdoch University, advocate that one simply disagree with a racist statement or to not laugh at a racist joke (acknowledging the importance of personal safety in the face of anger when doing so).

The Southern Poverty Law Centre is a rich resource for those wanting to know how to respond to everyday bigotry. In Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry, the authors include a diversity of response scenarios, including responses depending on the relationship between the oneself and the individual/structure. From siblings and joking in-laws, to real estate bigotry, unwanted emails as well as one's own personal bias. This is a gold mine.

At the end of this list - they advocate six steps:

1. Be ready
2. Identify the behaviour (call it out - not the person - the behaviour in order to receive a less confrontational response)
3. Appeal to principles (moral humanistic principals)
4. Set limits (for example, that you're unwilling to hear such jokes, etc.)
5. Find an ally/Be an ally (find solace in similarly-minded folks)
6. Be vigilant (making small steps)

Quick Links:

• An Anthropologist Walks Into A Bar And Asks, 'Why Is This Joke Funny?' - Shankar Vedentam, NPR (August 6, 2012)
• It's funny because we think it's true: laughter is augmented by implicit preferences - Robert Lynch (2010)
• Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry by The Southern Poverty Law Centre (January 25, 2015)
• Self-deception inhibits laughter - Robert Lynch and Robert Trivers (2012)
• What psychology says about how you should respond to racist behaviour - Thomson and Pederson (August 4, 2015)

#Canada150, Indigenous nations 13,000...

If you live in Canada, you will know that the country has just celebrated its sesquicentennial. You might have even learned the word "sesquicentennial" recently to describe what is the otherwise inescapable Canada 150.

JustUs! Coffee in Wolfville, Nova Scotia:
Canada 150; Mi Kmaki 13000

As anthropologists who have studied and taught about nationalism, it has been an interesting year, especially as the celebrations of a settler-society increasingly rub up against demands for the recognition of Indigenous peoples as founders of what is today "Canada," or as other Indigenous people publicly reject this nation-state as illegitimate (as Audra Simpson has so engagingly discussed in her work and life as Kahnawà:ke Mohawk).

As many scholars have discussed, in our national mythology, Canadians learn about Indigenous peoples are part of our foundation, our national past, rather than our national present.

The discussions that have emerged around what it means to be Canadian (or what it should mean...) have been fascinating to follow, and raise many important questions for public and ongoing discussion.

Canadian news outlets, for example, recently reported on the billboard message of Just Us! Coffee Roasters in Grand Pré, N.S. (shown right) where the owners of the coffee shop signaled "a reminder of how long this land has been inhabited: "Canada 150. Mi'kma'ki 13,000."

A local newspaper followed up with the owner who stated that the purpose of the message “[w]as meant as, we need to recognize multiple communities in our country and some of them get under-represented, I think,” he said. The Chronicle Herald went on to state that Grand-Pré is (...) located among three Mi’kmaq First Nation communities — Glooscap, Annapolis Valley and Bear River — in the Annapolis Valley. Just Us consults with them for partnerships, and recently began accepting status cards.

There are other settler initiatives that seek to educate other settlers. If one visits http://native-land.ca/ they can find an interactive map that is meant to be used as a resource to help North Americans learn more about their local history. Once there, you can search your address, or add territories to map below and click on polygons to learn more about the past histories and present narratives of where you live and work. On the 'about' page, you can read about why the author has created this resource:

"I'm Victor. I am a settler, born in traditional Katzie territory and raised in the Okanagan. I am concerned about many of the issues raised by using maps and colonial ways of thinking when it comes to maps. For instance, who has the right to define where a particular territory ends, and another begins? Who should I speak to about such matters?
There are over 630 different First Nations in Canada and I am not sure of the right process to map territories, languages, and treaties respectfully - and I'm not even sure if it is possible to do respectfully.
I feel that maps are inherently colonial, in that they delegate power according to imposed borders that don't really exist in many nations throughout history. They were rarely created in good faith, and are often used in wrong ways. I am open to criticism about this project and I welcome suggestions and changes."

In teasing apart the celebrations, the news coverage (both positive and detracting), and dialogue (both positive and negative) surrounding the Canada 150 celebration by Ottawa (our federal government) and Canadians (settlers and non-settlers alike), we wanted to highlight and recognize the opportunities for learning more.

In taking a holistic perspective from an anthropological toolkit, we can ask ourselves:

1. Who is telling the story of this celebration? Why are they telling it in this way? 
2. Whose voices may have been muted or not well listened to in this telling? 
3. What other perspective or realities exist of this event (and those leading up to it)? 

In speaking about this 150 celebration in terms of varying perspectives, one gains the sense that the national celebration that Ottawa is supporting is just one version, one rendition, of a multi-faceted history.

To end this post, the bloggers (writing under 'anthro everywhere!' for the first time) would like to leave those interested with a few links to gain different perspectives:

1. Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler (statement here)
2. Anishinabek Nation Statement on Canada 150 (statement here)
3. UNsettling 150: A Call to Action (link here)
4. UNsettling Canada150 Webinar: Ellen Gabriel, Russ Diabo, Beatrice Hunter (link here)

The Scream, on the cover, The Subjugation of Truth, by Kent Monkman (from Pamela Palmater's article in Now Toronto):

Quick links:

• Anishinabek Nation Statement on Canada 150 (7 June, 2017, Anishinabek News)
• NAN releases statement on Canada 150 (1 July, 2017, Wawatay News)
• Unsettling 150: A call to action (5 May, 2017, Idle No More)
• Canada 150 is a celebration of Indigenous genocide (29 March, 2017, Now Toronto by Pamela Palmater) 
• ‘A horrible history’: Four Indigenous views on Canada 150 (1 July, 2017 CBC News by Dakshana Bascaramurty)
• Grand-Pre coffee house garners national attention with Canada 150 sign (14 June, 2017 The Chronicle Herald)
• Native Land (2017, Victor)

• Audra Simpson's work (2017, Columbia University in the City of New York webpage)
• Canada 150 Banners Defaced, Destroyed (23, June 2017, Daniel J. Rowe, the Eastern Door)
• It’s time to recognize First Nations as founders of Canada: Steward (13, June 2017 Gillian Stewart, The Star)
• What does Canada 150 mean for Indigenous communities? (March 16, 2017, The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti - Colonial 150 art)
• Canadian 150 art (2017, Kent Hehr)
• Racist Mascots (11 April 2016, anthro everywhere!)
• More on Racist Mascots (1 June 2017, anthro everywhere!)

Book Report Entry #1: Field notes: A Guided Journal for Doing Anthropology

This blog will feature a series of posts on a new (2017) resource for first-time and long-standing ethnographers - a 'guided journal' for doing anthropology by Luis A. Vivanco. The incentive for reviewing certain features of this coil bound book are its uniqueness as a resource and its usefulness as a tool of reflection for those experienced ethnographers.

Much of this blog is dedicated to the application of anthropology and ethnography which is why it was with great pleasure to come across Vivianco's first chapter entitled "Fieldwork Skills are Life Skills."

Vivianco argues that competently conducting fieldwork, which he defines as "participant observation in a community to investigate its behaviors and beliefs" (2017, p.10). affords anthropologists the following list of life skills (explanations are paraphrased and at times expanded upon):

1. Directed learning - from our participants/interlocutors and about matters they find important.
2. Curiosity - a habitual approach to research and life in the field.
3. Asking good questions - formulating questions that elicit meaningful answers (perhaps through trial and error, and learning more over time about what is meaningful and to whom)
4. Accuracy and attention to detail - the focus on documentation for accurate data collection and interpretation.
5. Listening - Vivianco references active listening as one being at the 'heart of fieldwork'. This simple act speaks to the many things, including the primacy of the participant in anthropological fieldwork, the construction of worldviews through personal experience, and more.
6. Negotiation - while we're starting to sound like lawyers here - Vivianco is speaking to the balancing and building of relationships.
7. Networking - fieldworkers identify, understand and use networks to cultivate relationships
8. Adaptability - a requisite value for contemporary workplaces - speaks to the ambiguous grey zone that anthropologists typically work in and through  
9. Communication - about one's project - a skill that most researchers require and few master.
10. Recognizing, respecting, and working with difference - such an important skill and one which anthropologists rarely mention. Some might identify this as uniquely anthropological not just for their use of practical realism but in their approach to theory, data, and our attention to multivocality.
11. Critical thinking - a skill for researchers when collecting, analyzing and evaluating their data. 

Anthropology and Public Health Policy

Medical anthropologist (and medical student) Dave Campbell outlines "Anthropology's Contribution to Public Health Policy Development" (2011) in this accessible (and open access) piece published in the McGill Journal of Medicine.

The article is written for non-anthropologists, and therefore provides a useful brief overview of the history of medical anthropology, what it has contributed to public health policy to date, and importantly, areas where "anthropology can influence public health policy in ways that epidemiology or other methods cannot." In this relatively short paper, Campbell discusses the value of an anthropological perspective for public health and policy creation in terms of:

"(A) The ability to see culture in its proper context in the social world and how culture affects all research. (B) The ability to pick up on minute and seemingly irrelevant details. (C) Independence from biomedical goals and hegemony allows medical anthropologists to add a critical voice to the public health discourse. (D) Provision of objective, qualitative data in an otherwise quantitative field."

For more on the role of anthropology/ anthropologists in healthcare, check out the links on our Applying an anthropological perspective outside of university page.

Cultural constructions of illness

"The Diseases You Only Get if You Believe in Them" (2016, The Atlantic) looks at certain forms of illness that are culturally specific. In this piece, Julie Beck interviews Frank Bures, author of The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Meaning of the World’s Strangest Syndromes (2016).

Although Bures' book begins and ends with the 'exotic' cultural syndrome of penis theft in places like Nigeria and China, the interview provides a really interesting discussion of cultural syndromes in general, and asks "why the United States is not immune from them, and why asking if they’re “real” is the wrong question."

Some interesting points for discussion here include  the cultural imperialism and ethnocentrism of Western medical knowledge above understandings of health and illness in other cultures, and a critical reflection on how Western experiences of health/ illness are also culturally constructed.

What is "sensemaking"? Anthropology in marketing

Quantitative research -- which has long been the market research standard -- can provide insights into broad patterns and customer metrics. While this 'big data' can tell a company a lot about their customers' habits and needs, there are some questions that this approach simply cannot answer. This is where "sensemaking" comes in.

In short, "sensemaking" is how anthropologists approach problem-solving. Applying the kinds of qualitative methods and critically culturally-relative perspective that anthropologists are trained to these questions provides insights into the everyday life experiences and meanings that people use to understand their worlds.

In "An Anthropologist Walks into a Bar…" (Harvard Business Review, 2014) Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen explain how "sensemaking," or approaching a problem from an anthropological perspective, works and can provide companies with market-research solutions. "A growing number of organizations globally have begun to apply sense­making, having recognized that it can help solve some of the toughest business problems, such as finding new growth, winning in new markets, and capitalizing on cultural change." The authors recount how "sensemaking" solved key marketing problems for a major European brewing company, Lego Group, and Coloplast (a Danish medical technology firm). Coloplast found that despite their sophisicated R&D, their "biggest division, the ostomy division, was stagnating, even though the company was investing heavily in innovation and sales." This is when Coloplast decided to take a different approach.

Coloplast recast the question “How do we capture new sources of growth?” as “What is the experience of living with ostomy?” Its managers knew a lot about customer metrics—who bought how much of which products when, and so forth. But they realized they knew less about their customers’ worlds. What was it like to be an ostomy patient? How did it affect your self-image? Your social life? What was a good day, or a bad day?

In a classroom, this article might be useful for talking about the differences between qualitative and quantitative research, for illustrating cultural relativism in action, or for talking about the kinds of things that an anthropological perspective can bring to a workplace.

Everyday rituals

There's a reason that Horace Miner's (1956) Body Ritual Among the Nacirema has become a classic text in introduction to anthropology classrooms. It provides a fantastic, immersive introduction to confronting students' ideas about exotic otherness and the power of representation in academic texts (plus, it's always fun to watch students grapple with the realization that the Nacirema are actually...!). It also provides a useful introduction to thinking about another classic concern in anthropology: ritual.

The issue of everyday rituals is also something that Josiah Harrist has addressed in this article for Kill Screen (2016). In this piece, Harrist takes an anthropological approach (citing Victor Turner) to thinking about table top gaming as a form of ritual that players engage as members of a closed cultural group in the context of the game play. Addressing rites of passage and rituals of purification, political power, harvest, and commemorative or calendrical rituals, this short piece offers useful insights for thinking about the role of ritual at multiple levels.


Another useful link for teaching Miner:

• Jason Antrosio (Living Anthropologically blog) has written a post (with lots of links!) about teaching Horace Miner, “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” in an intro to anthropology course.

From Mutilation to Alteration...

A research article in a medical journal is featuring largely in the news today. The authors, Arora and Jacobs, have argued that "we must adopt a more nuanced position that acknowledges a wide spectrum of procedures that alter female genitalia. (...) Acceptance of de minimis procedures [of female genital alteration] that generally do not carry long-term medical risks is culturally sensitive, does not discriminate on the basis of gender, and does not violate human rights" (here). The authors argue that accepting the 'minor' less invasive procedures is a compromise for those cultures (statically defined) who continue and want to continue these practices.

This discussion is often featured in Anthropology 101 courses as we talk about genital modification and its juxtaposition with cultural relativism (arguing that there is no universal standard and that one should not criticize from outside a culture) and universal human rights.

This is not a new debate however, the fact that the discussion of cultural relativism is occurring in the medical community is a new turn of this long-standing anthropological discussion. In class, I would also ask, what difference does a label make? Mutilation to alteration...