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Humour at the Model United Nations: The role of laughter in constituting geopolitical assemblages

Dittmer, J; (2013) Humour at the Model United Nations: The role of laughter in constituting geopolitical assemblages. Geopolitics , 18 (3) pp. 493-513. 10.1080/14650045.2012.742066. Green open access

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Abstract

Model United Nations (MUN) is a simulation in which students take on the roles of ambassadors to the United Nations, engaging in debate on 'real' issues from the perspective of their assumed national identities. This paper, based on a year of ethnography and interviews of a college-level MUN team, examines the role of humour in producing particular geopolitical imaginations among those participating and also in producing the MUN assemblage itself. Key here is the circulation of affects among participants' bodies, producing an orientation among them that facilitates debate and consensus-building. This finding is seen as a corrective to past work on geopolitics and humour, which has tended to emphasise irony and satire, as well as mass-mediated humor. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Type: Article
Title: Humour at the Model United Nations: The role of laughter in constituting geopolitical assemblages
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2012.742066
Language: English
Additional information: © Jason Dittmer. Published with License by Taylor & Francis This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1573196
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