Laughing when you shouldn't: Being "good" among the Batek of Peninsular Malaysia

Rudge, Alice

Abstract

Batek people describe their many laughter taboos with utmost seriousness, and in ethical terms of good and bad. Despite this, people often get it wrong—sometimes laughing all the more when the taboos forbid it. Because laughter can be ambiguous and impossible to control, being wrong can be accepted without the need for discussion or reflection. People thus act autonomously while holding deeply shared ethical orientations. Here, ethics can be both culturally predefined and shaped by individuals, as when it comes to laughter people draw on individual and shared concerns in an ad hoc, flexible manner. Laughter's tangled contradictions thus demonstrate that people's understandings of being “good” are mutually implicated with their understandings of what it means to be a person in relation to others.

Citation

Rudge, A. (2019). Laughing when you shouldn't: Being "good" among the Batek of Peninsular Malaysia. American Ethnologist, 46(3), 290-301. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12826

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 1, 2019
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Sep 22, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 22, 2023
• Journal: American Ethnologist
• Print ISSN: 0094-0496
• Electronic ISSN: 1548-1425
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 290-301
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12826
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.12826