Christie Davies
Biographic Data
| ID | 3609908 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christie Davies |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christie |
| FAMILY NAME | Davies |
| SIGNATURE | DAVIES C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Reading |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 315 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Reply to Abedinifard: Jokes have no Consequences
The incessant telling of political jokes hostile to the regime over decades had no impact on the strength of the Soviet Union. If under these most propitious of circumstances jokes had no effect then Davies concludes that jokes never do have any macro-consequences. Abedinifard disagrees claiming, using Iranian jokes about the homosexuals of the town Qazvin as his example, that jokes can have consequences where they reinforce a growing local senti…
Matthew Baigell: The Implacable Urge to Defame, Cartoon Jews in the American Press, 1877-1935
Jure Gantar: The Evolution of Wilde’s Wit
Moira Marsh: Practically Joking
Who's your Paddy? Racial expectations and the struggle for Irish American identity
This is an interesting, empirical study based on interviews and participant observation of Irish Americans living in Yonkers, a town bordering New York with a recent history of conflict between its
Political ridicule and humour under socialism
Socialism produces distinct forms of humorous ridicule that are relatively rare in capitalist, bourgeois democracies. These forms are arranged in a hierarchy that reflects the distribution of power in this type of social and political order, one which differs markedly from a bourgeois democracy or indeed even a traditional or dictatorial authoritarian society. Merely authoritarian societies lack the kind of over-riding ideology and central contro…
Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews and American Culture
Dynamic Belonging: Contemporary Jewish Collective Identities
Dynamic Belonging: Contemporary Jewish Collective Identities." Journal of Contemporary Religion, 28(1), pp. 178–179
Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities
Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities HANS GEYBELS & WALTER VAN HERCK, eds., 2011 London & New York: Continuum 272 + xii pp., £65.00, US$120.00 (hb) ISBN 978–1–4411–6313–4 ‘Humour and Rel
Rite out of Time: A Study of the Churching of Women and its Survival in the Twentieth Century
The Dialogue of the Government of Wales (1594): Updated Text and Commentary, ed. John Gwynfor Jones
This is a new edition of an Elizabethan text, previously printed in 1906. The author (curiously not named on the title-page) is George Owen of Henllys—better known for his The Description of Pembrokeshire—a Pembrokeshire gentleman legally trained in London, as his father had been before him. Professor Gwynfor Jones, a leading historian of sixteenth-century Wales, has modernised spelling and grammar to produce an accessible text. He provides an ex…
Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture
Danusha V. Goska, BIEGANSKI: THE BRUTE POLAK STEREOTYPE, ITS ROLE IN POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS AND AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE, Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011, 342 pp., £49.95 (hard) Bieganski
The Rhetoric of Racist Humour, Us, Uk and Global Race Joking
The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change c. 1920–1960
Logical mechanisms: A critique
The Comparative Study of Jokes
Jokes as the Truth about Soviet Socialism
The political jokes told in Estonia and other parts of the Soviet Empire were very important to those who told them. They were tiny areas of freedom, a brief escape from socialist hegemony. Those scholars such as Alexander Shtromas who took the jokes seriously were alone in predicting the rapid collapse and demise of the Soviet Union. Shtromas' thesis was rooted in a hardheaded analysis of power and politics but he knew that the jokes were a good…
Humor theory and the fear of being laughed at
Systematic empirical research into the extent to which individuals in different societies fear being laughed at is new and has implications for humor theory. Humor theorists such as Hobbes and Bergson implicitly assume that such fears were generally at a high level and both Hobbes' superiority theory of laughter and Bergson's view of it as a social corrective depend on this assumption. They purport to be general theories but are in fact the produ…
A general theory of jokes whose butts are the stupid and the canny
Jokes about stupidity are extremely common in most countries, as ethnic, national, regional and locality jokes, political jokes, jokes about occupations and social classes, and blonde and Essex-girl jokes. The aim of this paper is to provide a theory that will explain why such diverse groups of people should be the butts of what is essentially the same joke. It will also explain jokes that are the opposite of the stupidity jokes, the widespread j…
American jokes about lawyers
In the 1980s, a substantial cycle of lawyer jokes appeared in the United States. Unlike earlier waves of American jokes, the jokes did not spread to Britain and Europe, nor did the peoples of these countries invent large numbers of new jokes about lawyers at this time. The dominant theme of the American jokes was that lawyers are canny—i.e. calculating, crafty, and fond of money. It is striking that such jokes should be told about a group so clos…
The Muhammad cartoons and humor research: A collection of essays
At the 2006 conference of the International Society for Humor Studies (Danish University of Education, Copenhagen), several panels addressed issues raised by the Muhammad cartoon story. Among these, a colloquium organized by Paul Lewis and decorously titled “Transnational Ridicule and Response” focused on the implications for humor research of the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons. Along with other materials, panelists were encou…
Making sense of suicide missions
Making sense of suicide missions. Edited by DIEGO GAMBETTA, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, 378pp., £40, hardback (ISBN 9780199276998), £14.99, paperback (ISBN 9780199297979). The road to ma
Death redesigned, British crematoria: History, architecture and landscape
Death redesigned, British crematoria: History, architecture and landscape. By HILARY J. GRAINGER, Spire Books, Reading, 2005, 500pp., 300 illustrations, £34.95, paperback (ISBN 1 904965 07 5). Hill
Committed to the cleansing flame, the development of cremation in nineteenth century England
Committed to the cleansing flame, the development of cremation in nineteenth century England. By Brian Parsons, Spire Books, Reading, 2005, 328pp., £34.95, hardback (ISBN 1904965040). Dr. Parsons h
Humour and Protest: Jokes under Communism
The largest corpus of jokes we have ridiculing both rulers and a political system comes from the former Soviet Union and the then communist countries of eastern Europe. These forbidden jokes were important to those who told them at some risk to themselves. They can be construed as a form of protest, but the relationship between jokes and protest is not a simple one. The number of jokes told was greater, and the telling more open, in the later yea…
Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries
The universal popularity of ethnic jokes and in particular those about supposedly 'stupid' or 'crafty' ethnic minorities is to be explained in terms of the general characteristics of industrial societies rather than the particular circumstances of each separate society. The ethnic jokes of western industrial societies in both peacetime and wartime reflect the competing moral values, uncertain social boundaries and impersonal power structures of t…
Humour and Protest: Jokes under Communism
The largest corpus of jokes we have ridiculing both rulers and a political system comes from the former Soviet Union and the then communist countries of eastern Europe. These forbidden jokes were important to those who told them at some risk to themselves. They can be construed as a form of protest, but the relationship between jokes and protest is not a simple one. The number of jokes told was greater, and the telling more open, in the later yea…
Ethnic humor around the world: A Comparative Analysis
The Muhammad cartoons and humor research: A collection of essays
At the 2006 conference of the International Society for Humor Studies (Danish University of Education, Copenhagen), several panels addressed issues raised by the Muhammad cartoon story. Among these, a colloquium organized by Paul Lewis and decorously titled “Transnational Ridicule and Response” focused on the implications for humor research of the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons. Along with other materials, panelists were encou…
Goffman's concept of the total institution: Criticisms and revisions
The Rhetoric of Racist Humour, Us, Uk and Global Race Joking
Sexual Taboos and Social Boundaries
The strong taboos against homosexuality, bestiality, and transvestim that exist in many Western societies are teh result of attempts to establish and defend strong ethnic, religious, or institutional boundaries. If religious, military, or political leaders decide to strengthen the boundaries of their group, they tend in consequence to impose harsh penalties on forms of sexual behavior that breach social or symbolic boundaries. This may be because…
A Cultural History of Humour. From Antiquity to the Present Day
List of illustrations. Notes on contributors. Preface. Introduction: Humour and History: Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg. 1. Jokes, Jokers and Jokebooks in Ancient Greek Culture: Jan Bremmer. 2. Cicero, Plautus and Roman Laughter: Fritz Graf. 3. Laughter in the Middle Ages: Jacques Le Goff. 4. Bakhtin and his Theory of Carnival: Aaron Gurevich. 5. Frontiers of the Comic in Early Modern Italy, c1350--1750: Peter Burke. 6. The Comic and the Count…
Jokes as the Truth about Soviet Socialism
The political jokes told in Estonia and other parts of the Soviet Empire were very important to those who told them. They were tiny areas of freedom, a brief escape from socialist hegemony. Those scholars such as Alexander Shtromas who took the jokes seriously were alone in predicting the rapid collapse and demise of the Soviet Union. Shtromas' thesis was rooted in a hardheaded analysis of power and politics but he knew that the jokes were a good…
Exploring the thesis of the self-deprecating Jewish sense of humor
Victor Raskin on jokes
Victor Raskin's clear delineation of the differences between humorous and bone fide serious communication and his systematic formal account of how jokes work was not only a major contribution to linguistics but also made possible revolutionary advances in other areas of the social sciences of humor. It was Raskin's account of the fictional, conventional, and mythical scripts used in jokes that freed us from the earlier tendentious and misleading …
A Cultural History of Humour
Cultural History of Humour. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg. eds. Cambridge: Polity, 1997. 264 pp
The Protestant Ethic and the Comic Spirit of Capitalism
Commentary on Anton C. Zijderveld's Trend Report on `The Sociology of Humour and Laughter
Humor theory and the fear of being laughed at
Systematic empirical research into the extent to which individuals in different societies fear being laughed at is new and has implications for humor theory. Humor theorists such as Hobbes and Bergson implicitly assume that such fears were generally at a high level and both Hobbes' superiority theory of laughter and Bergson's view of it as a social corrective depend on this assumption. They purport to be general theories but are in fact the produ…
European ethnic scripts and the translation and switching of jokes
Many European jokes depend on local ethnic scripts that by convention pin a comic characteristic on a particular ethnic group such as the canny Cardi in Wales, the slow Swiss in France, the stupid Belgian incessantly eating freedom fries in the Netherlands. How are such jokes to be translated into the language of another country with a different culture and comic conventions? Sometimes it is straightforward because similar jokes about the same gr…
Change and continuity in one of Europe's oldest comic ethnic scripts
Permissive Britain: Social Change in the Sixties and Seventies
Logical mechanisms: A critique
The Failure of Calendar Reform (1992-1931): Religious Minorities, Businessmen, Scientists, and Bureaucrats
The standardization of measurements of length, mass, temperature, etc is a central part of the process of modernization and rationalization described by Weber. However, attempts by businessmen, scientists and bureaucrats to reform the calendar, as a rationalizing measure and to improve economic efficiency, have been thwarted by religious minorities. Curiously, the religious opposition is rooted in material interests, in contrast to the ideal inte…
An explanation of Jewish jokes about Jewish women
Political ridicule and humour under socialism
Socialism produces distinct forms of humorous ridicule that are relatively rare in capitalist, bourgeois democracies. These forms are arranged in a hierarchy that reflects the distribution of power in this type of social and political order, one which differs markedly from a bourgeois democracy or indeed even a traditional or dictatorial authoritarian society. Merely authoritarian societies lack the kind of over-riding ideology and central contro…
Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities
Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities HANS GEYBELS & WALTER VAN HERCK, eds., 2011 London & New York: Continuum 272 + xii pp., £65.00, US$120.00 (hb) ISBN 978–1–4411–6313–4 ‘Humour and Rel
The Comparative Study of Jokes
A general theory of jokes whose butts are the stupid and the canny
Jokes about stupidity are extremely common in most countries, as ethnic, national, regional and locality jokes, political jokes, jokes about occupations and social classes, and blonde and Essex-girl jokes. The aim of this paper is to provide a theory that will explain why such diverse groups of people should be the butts of what is essentially the same joke. It will also explain jokes that are the opposite of the stupidity jokes, the widespread j…
Permissive Britain: Social Change in the Sixties and Seventies
Pre‐industrial England1
The Social Origins of Some Sexual Taboos
Italian military efficiency: A debate
Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries
The universal popularity of ethnic jokes and in particular those about supposedly 'stupid' or 'crafty' ethnic minorities is to be explained in terms of the general characteristics of industrial societies rather than the particular circumstances of each separate society. The ethnic jokes of western industrial societies in both peacetime and wartime reflect the competing moral values, uncertain social boundaries and impersonal power structures of t…
Sexual Taboos and Social Boundaries
The strong taboos against homosexuality, bestiality, and transvestim that exist in many Western societies are teh result of attempts to establish and defend strong ethnic, religious, or institutional boundaries. If religious, military, or political leaders decide to strengthen the boundaries of their group, they tend in consequence to impose harsh penalties on forms of sexual behavior that breach social or symbolic boundaries. This may be because…
Commentary on Anton C. Zijderveld's Trend Report on `The Sociology of Humour and Laughter
Ethnic jokes and social change: The case of the Welsh
Ethnic minorities and immigrants in most societies tend to become the subject of jokes told by the dominant majority. The Welsh, England's nearest neighbouring people, an aboriginal remnant of the autochthonous inhabitants of Britain have been the subject of English jokes for well over 400 years. When under the Tudors, a dynasty with a Welsh name and a tinge of Welsh descent, Wales was merged with England both legally and politically by the Act o…
Tactics of Legal Reform: Learning from the Recent Past
Present and future reformers can learn a great deal from the tactics successfully employed in the past or in other societies. In Britain in the 1960s, major reforms relating to abortion, capital punishment, censorship, and homosexuality succeeded because the reformers argued their case in utilitarian, welfare terms and thus avoided fundamental moral clashes and countervailing moral crusades. In Ireland, Ulster and the United States religious ferv…
Language, identity and ethnic jokes about stupidity
Goffman's concept of the total institution: Criticisms and revisions
Ethnic humor around the world: A Comparative Analysis
An explanation of Jewish jokes about Jewish women
Debate Ethnic humor, hostility, and aggression: A reply to Elliott Oring
Exploring the thesis of the self-deprecating Jewish sense of humor
Ethnic Humor around the World: A Comparative Analysis
The Protestant Ethic and the Comic Spirit of Capitalism
Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens.David Cohen
A Pack of Lies: Towards a Sociology of Lying. J. A. Barnes
The Newfoundland joke: A Canadian phenomenon viewed in a comparative international perspective
A Cultural History of Humour. From Antiquity to the Present Day
List of illustrations. Notes on contributors. Preface. Introduction: Humour and History: Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg. 1. Jokes, Jokers and Jokebooks in Ancient Greek Culture: Jan Bremmer. 2. Cicero, Plautus and Roman Laughter: Fritz Graf. 3. Laughter in the Middle Ages: Jacques Le Goff. 4. Bakhtin and his Theory of Carnival: Aaron Gurevich. 5. Frontiers of the Comic in Early Modern Italy, c1350--1750: Peter Burke. 6. The Comic and the Count…
Redeeming Laughter, the Comic Dimension of Human Experience
A Cultural History of Humour
Cultural History of Humour. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg. eds. Cambridge: Polity, 1997. 264 pp
The fragmentation of the religious tradition of the creation, after‐life and morality: Modernity not post‐modernity
Religion asks three central questions: ‘What becomes of us after death?’, ‘How should we lead a moral life?’, and ‘How and why were the universe, life and human beings created?’ In the past, these questions were answered together as part of a single unified narrative. From the mid‐nineteenth century onwards, the growth of modern science and of spiritualism led to a fragmentation of this religious tradition so that the questions are now often aske…
Change and continuity in one of Europe's oldest comic ethnic scripts
Sociology (39 works) · Philosophy (28 works) · Political science (26 works) · History (25 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · History (22 works) · Law (22 works) · Art (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Psychology (18 works)