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

Rudge, Alice

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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

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Copyright Statement
This is the version of the article accepted for publication in American Ethnologist, 46 (3). pp. 290-301 (2019), published by Wiley. Re-use is subject to the publisher’s terms and conditions.





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