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Greying mutuality: race and joking relations in a South African nursing home

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Casey Golomski
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Abstract

This article describes how residents and staff of an eldercare and Alzheimer's home in a small South African town joke with each other. Residents are mostly white and staff mostly black, but there are exceptions, and both groups are multilingual. Jokes between the two groups in the home are racialized, if not sometimes racist, in light of historical and contemporary post-apartheid socio-political and economic circumstances. Yet the relations between these two groups are forged mostly in joking about residents’ diminished cognitive and bodily abilities, staff work, multilingualism and interpersonal ties. In describing joking encounters in three ethnographic scenes, the article traces the ways in which age and race combine in institutionalized relationships of dependency to innovate social theory about human mutuality from the vantage point of multiracial, multicultural, postcolonial Africa.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article décrit comment les résidents et les membres du personnel d'un établissement pour personnes âgées et malades d'Alzheimer d'une petite ville sud-africaine plaisantent entre eux. Les résidents sont en majorité blancs et le personnel en majorité noir, mais il existe des exceptions, et les deux groupes sont multilingues. Au sein de l’établissement, les plaisanteries entre les deux groupes sont racialisées, sinon racistes parfois, au vu des circonstances sociopolitiques et économiques post-apartheid historiques et contemporaines. Cependant, les relations entre ces deux groupes se forgent principalement à travers des plaisanteries à propos des capacités cognitives et physiques réduites des résidents, du travail du personnel, du multilinguisme et des liens interpersonnels. En décrivant des plaisanteries observées dans trois scènes ethnographiques, l'article montre comment l’âge et la race se combinent dans des relations de dépendance institutionnalisées pour innover la théorie sociale concernant la mutualité humaine sous l'angle de l'Afrique postcoloniale, multiraciale et multiculturelle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 90 , Issue 2 , February 2020 , pp. 273 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2020

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