1. Goldstein
1.1. Childhood
1.1.1. Parents = immigrants from Russia (p. 3).
1.1.1.1. Grandfather and father loved humor told stories and jokes, family loved to laugh
1.1.2. Lived in public housing project in Brooklyn NY (p. 3).
1.1.2.1. Holocaust Neighbors
1.1.2.1.1. Despite what happened to them and thier families - they still found ways to laugh
1.2. Research
1.2.1. 1980
1.2.1.1. Tabasco, Oaxaca, Michoacan, Mexico - research assistant interviewing peasant famers and documenting the effects of a large regional dam and the status of women (p. 27)
1.2.2. 1982
1.2.2.1. Ecuador to conduct research among peasant farmers (p. 27)
1.2.3. 1988
1.2.3.1. Exploratory summer research in Brazil (p. 28)
1.2.4. 1991
1.2.4.1. New Year's festival of Afro-Brazilian divinity in Rio de Janerio (p. 25)
1.2.4.2. Guillermoprieto's Samba - to help understand shantytown dwellers (p.31)
1.3. Issues with Felicidade Eterna
1.3.1. Trying to understand the meaning behind the laughter (p. 2).
1.3.1.1. Laughter reveals the cracks in the system and masks the ways that power is challenged (p. 7).
1.3.2. Trying to understand the complications of race, class, gender and sexual hierarchies (p. 6).
1.3.3. Understand the power relationships and how they are expirenced by the poor (p. 9).
1.3.3.1. Could Carnival reinforce the dominate social structure because of the inversions that take place during that week are temporary and only take place with elite approval (p. 34)
1.3.4. Know very little about this culture (p. 4).
2. Poverty
2.1. Felicidade Eterna
2.1.1. Rio's Shantytown (p. 1)
2.1.2. "Real" ony through power (p. 1).
2.1.2.1. Police, Medical Community, Prisions
2.1.3. No outside forces because they look down on them because of thier poverty (p. 1).
2.1.4. Everyone owned some kind of radio or TV, some newer than others (p. 23).
2.1.5. 2 or 3 families owned cars (p. 21).
2.1.6. People
2.1.6.1. Gloria - lowest of the lower class (p. 23)
2.1.6.1.1. Anita
2.1.6.1.2. Filomena
2.1.6.1.3. Soneca
2.1.6.1.4. Tiago
2.1.6.1.5. Zeca (died)
2.1.6.1.6. Felix
2.1.6.1.7. 3 former lover's children
2.1.6.2. Celina - Gloria's sister died in 1985, her children live with Gloria. (p. 23).
2.1.6.2.1. Lucas
2.1.6.2.2. Marta
2.1.6.2.3. Claudia
2.1.6.2.4. Alexandro
2.1.6.2.5. Roberto
2.1.6.3. Isadora - owns the bar and store (p. 23)
2.2. Quarto de Despejo (p. 4)
2.2.1. Carolina Maria de Jesus.
2.2.2. Only ethnography about Brazil's poor population.
3. Humor
3.1. Felicidade Eterna
3.1.1. Laughter (p. 2)
3.1.1.1. About political and economic structures.
3.1.1.2. About contraditions within thier own poverty.
3.1.1.3. Black humor
3.1.1.3.1. Gloria and her friends used their humor to oppose offical Brazilian racial, class and gender ideology (p.35).
4. Theories
4.1. Peter Burke (p. 4)
4.1.1. Much of the culture is oral and"words fly away".
4.1.2. Fieldwork based ethnographies proven best for anthropological studies.
4.2. Freud (p. 6)
4.2.1. Humor is a survivalist response to the vicissitudes of life.
4.3. Peter Gay (p. 6)
4.3.1. Claims that laughter covers vast and varied terrain and humor can be imbiuous in its intention.
4.4. Oring (p. 6)
4.4.1. Sees humor as an "escape valve" that allow for social strains and tensions to be expressed in a group .
4.4.2. Humor is two faced when it integrates the teller with a chosen audience but at the same time and by the same means it stigmatizes others as outsiders to be liked or disliked.
4.5. Michael Mulkay (p. 6)
4.5.1. Analyses of humor is important because it reveals ambiuity, contradiction, paradox and inconsistancy while encouraging multiple interpretations of the world.
4.6. Mary Douglas (p. 6)
4.6.1. Sees humor as an anti-rite, potentially disorganizing and revolutionary force.
4.7. James Scott, Thompson, Bourdieu (p. 7)
4.7.1. Suggests that humor maybe a weapon of the weak.
4.7.2. Argue that elites perform various acts of public domination that contract with the disguised forms of protest and insubordination (folktales, gossip, rumors, etc.) carried out by subordinate groups usually referred to as the hidden transcripts of resistance.
4.8. Gramsci (p. 9)
4.8.1. Hegemony is the predominance of ruling class interests and the acceptance of those interests as commonsense by those subordinated to those interests.
4.9. Henri Bergson (p.10)
4.9.1. Laughter is always the laughter of the group.
4.10. De Matta
4.10.1. Elite culture always moved down toward the masses and that the masses merely mimicked the elite, now there is greater interest in studying the effects of the elite and popular culture on one another (p. 11).
4.10.2. Carnival is a ritual where the poor take center stage to critque standard elite culture. It is where the home and street life is inverted. Members of the poorer class wear costumes and parade about while members of the higher classes stand in the street. It is a time when rules and realites of the world are forgotten (p. 32).
4.11. Bakhtin (p. 11)
4.11.1. Folk and race history. Vision of culture on bodily orifices and bodily functions - how members of a lower class would play with their bodies. Bad taste. References to Carnival when bad taste is embraced.
4.12. Morris (p. 11)
4.12.1. Comedy needs the body.
4.13. Scheper-Hughes (p. 33)
4.13.1. There would be no need for Carnival in the first place if there were not monstrous things that needs to be banished or forgotten.
4.14. Stam (p 34)
4.14.1. Everyday life and humor embeds Brazilian culture in a carnivalesque way.
4.15. Bourdieu (p. 36)
4.15.1. The struggle between classes over the appropriation of economic and cultural goods also becomes a symbolic struggle to appropriate distinctive signs. Certain tastes become legitimized while others are delegitimized. Taste is what drives social differences. This is the entity in which certain classes gain power in the social order.
4.16. E.P. Thompson (p. 49)
4.16.1. The only way to understand class is to see how class relations work work over a period of time.