Fragments of a laughter anthropology in Kagera region (Tanzania) ; Pour une anthropologie du rire. Les cadres de l’expérience du corps riant dans les villages la Kagera (Nord-Ouest de la Tanzanie)

Laughter is a universal behavior, all humans laugh. Our purpose is not to dispute this but to argue that laughter cannot be solely reduced to this universal definition. Scholars on laughter have mostly focused on two antithetical paradigms. A naturalistic approach that has described laughter as a universal and innate behavior or a social sciences approach that has considered laughter as an institutionalized or discursive practice, forgetting the corporal and daily aspect of laughter. This study aims at going beyond the debate about innate and acquired behaviors by showing that although laughter may be universal, it results also from a social learning process. The manner in which laughter is transmitted and acquired must be considered. How do symbolic and social representations influence the daily ways of laughter?Can we talk about “Laughing know how” or even “technics of laugher”? To what extent body while laughing is domesticated by society?This research is based on an ethnographic survey undertaken in villages from theKagera region in Tanzania. Laughter has already raised a social challenge there in the past. In1962, a “fit of giggling”, locally known as "the disease of laughter", spread in a girl’s boarding school. This event proves the existence of an affective script. In these villages, laughter is an acquired social practice, to some extent laughter there is a right which must be acquired. Individuals must laugh according to their age, status and gender, and according to context. Some laughs are inappropriate and must be inhibited, if they are not, they are seen as disrespectful, obscene, even dangerous, as were the girl’s laughs in 1962. Other laughers reflect ethic and aesthetic social obligations. However, and despite the institution of these"laughing frames", people perpetually reinvent new ways of laughing. They appear in social back-stages, in liminal or in-between spaces. In these villages, there are also outsiders whose laughter compromise socials norms. Thus, if laugher can reinforce social order ...