A Sociologist Walks into a Bar (and Other Academic Challenges): Towards a Methodology of Humour

Watson, Cate

doi:10.1177/0038038513516694

Cited by 54 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Telling jokes and stories about fines, bureaucracy, scientists or seals can be ways to lighten or dismiss the demands and burdens involved in everyday work. It has been observed that all forms of work involve such coping mechanisms (Dean et al 1998;Holmes 2000;Morreall 2011;Watson 2015). This means that the subjects of jokes and cynicism are not always and ultimately considered as unacceptable or illegitimate.…”

Section: Methodological Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The quality of compliance: investigating fishers’ responses towards regulation and authorities

2016

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A substantial amount of scientific effort goes into understanding and measuring compliance in fisheries. Understanding why, how and when fishers follow or violate rules is crucial for designing effective fishery policies that can halt overfishing. Non‐compliance was initially explained almost exclusively with reference to economic and self‐interested motivations. More recently, however, most explanations involve a combination of economic, social, political and environmental factors. Despite this recent development towards more holistic explanations, many scientists continue to frame the issue in binary terms: fishers either follow rules, or they don't. In this article we challenge this binary interpretation and focus attention on the diversity of fishers’ dispositions and perceptions that underpin compliant behaviour. To this aim we construct a typology of fishers’ responses towards regulation and authorities, thereby developing conceptual tools to understand different motivations and attitudes that underlie compliance outcomes. For this purpose, we identify the motivational postures of ‘creativity’ and ‘reluctance’, and then highlight their empirical relevance with an interview study of Swedish fishers. Reasons for studying the quality and diversity of fishers’ motivations and responses are not purely academic. Conceptualizing and observing the quality of compliance can help policymakers and managers gauge and anticipate the potentiality of non‐compliant fishing practices that may threaten the resilience of marine ecosystems.

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Section: Methodological Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The quality of compliance: investigating fishers’ responses towards regulation and authorities

2016

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“…We could speculate that these rules attempt to create a pseudo-professional community rather than use reddit to widely disseminate scientific information -a view certainly felt by other corners of the internet, and by other reddit users who have created explicitly more informal alternatives. 8 This would tally with arguments that academics often try to minimise humour in written communication in order to preserve an image of detachment and professionalism [Heard, 2014;Watson, 2015].…”

Section: Redditmentioning

confidence: 99%

"People seem to really enjoy the mix of humour and intelligence": science humour in online settings

Marsh¹

2016

JCOM

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This commentary considers the topics of humour and online settings. Both have received increasing attention amongst researchers and practitioners of science communication, and both raise numerous questions around the role of informality and enjoyment in the spread of information. However, online settings also provide a great range of data with which to address these questions. Here I suggest that close consideration of technical infrastructure plays an important role in this data collection. I shall do so using case studies drawn from two popular participatory websites, reddit and Facebook, which display contrasting attitudes towards using humour. I argue that these attitudes are partly products of the different tools provided by the pages for users to show appreciation, which affect the appearance of content on the websites. I also suggest that these tools allow users to appreciate jokes in multiple ways, and by extension might provide researchers with methods for assessing different forms of engagement. AbstractPublic engagement with science and technology; Science and media Keywords

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“…The import of such a research agenda for the future direction of humour studies in sport should be clear as we touch upon the subtleties of humour (Watson, 2015). It appears that humour is neither 'trivial' nor 'playful' in the negative, and yet we cannot ignore how it has been used here in a plethora of ways to act as resistance to racism in sport.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

I'm not joking! The strategic use of humour in stories of racism

Hylton

2017

Ethnicities

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This study examines the use of humour by Black football coaches in England as a rhetorical device against racism. The paper draws on humour studies and critical race theory to illustrate signs of humour as defence. Research on humour has popularly explored the ambiguities and qualities of humour and in particular joke telling though its use as a foil to stem racial ills is less well understood. Where previous work has focused on explicit joke telling/banter in sport this paper examines how techniques of humour are used in everyday racialised experiences.The use of techniques of humour enable feelings of subordination, and humiliation to be transposed into forms of resistance, while its physiological and psychological benefits can lead to inter-racial relief and catharsis. The paper concludes that techniques of humour remain underexplored as important tools of resistance to everyday racism.

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A Sociologist Walks into a Bar (and Other Academic Challenges): Towards a Methodology of Humour

Cited by 54 publications

References 42 publications

The quality of compliance: investigating fishers’ responses towards regulation and authorities

The quality of compliance: investigating fishers’ responses towards regulation and authorities

"People seem to really enjoy the mix of humour and intelligence": science humour in online settings

I'm not joking! The strategic use of humour in stories of racism

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