Concepts of Laughter and Humor in the Sociology of Religion

Abstract

The present paper considers laughter and humor as a means of inter-action. Religion is interpreted as the major form of mutual coordination of action and communication experiences of participants and one of the social subsystems. The research is aimed to define a place of humor and laughter inside of this system. The study is based on the sociological approaches proposed by N. Luhmann, P. Berger, M. Mulkay. In this context the society itself has been presented as highly mobile system of relationships that depends on the presence or lack of understanding; similarity or difference of social, ethnic and gender identities; greater or lesser tolerance of the various public institutions, including Church, to laughter etc. Through various comic forms play and celebrity become the means of socialization, communication and understanding and at the same time institutionalization and selection of social structures. Contrary to the similar emotions among the animals, it is rooted in the communicative nature of the human community, multiplicity of the laughter's forms and their complicated dialogical character. This is a man who makes laughter cultural and anthropologically meaningful phenomenon in the context of his relations with the Other, God, world, nature. These relations outline Divine comedy of the postmodern and post-postmodern culture. It is the role of human being as the subject of humor and laughter, and at the same time religious ideas that should be clarified in future research.