In a series of posts, Jeff Goldfarb and I have been sketching an outline for the study of the social condition — the predictable dilemmas that haunt social life. We argue that one of the core intellectual missions of sociology is to account for the ways in which social patterns set up these dilemmas that actors experience as crucial for their lives and how they define themselves.

Social life, as anyone who is in the business of living knows, is riddled with ambiguities and contradictions. But these contradictions and dilemmas are not only the stuff tragedies and epics are made of. As importantly, they include materials from which comedy is crafted. If we attend to the structure of humor, we can see that jokes work precisely because they shine light on dilemmas that are built into the social fabric. Thus, one of the core insights of the study of the comic is that it depends on telling two stories at the same time (what Arthur Koestler called “bi-sociation”). Think about the following Jewish Joke:

A Jewish businessman warned his son against marrying a non-Jewish woman, a “shiksa.” The son replied, “But she’s converting to Judaism.” “It doesn’t matter,” the old man said. “A shiksa will cause problems.” After the wedding, the father called the son, who was in business with him, and asked him why he was not at work. “It’s Shabbos,” the son replied. The father was surprised: “But we always work on Saturday. It’s our busiest day.” “I won’t work anymore on Saturday,” the son insisted, “because my wife wants us to go to shul [synagogue] on Shabbos.” “See,” the father says. “I told you marrying a shiksa would cause problems.”

The structure of this joke, like that of most others, is the intertwining and surprising juxtaposition of two stories are told within it at the same time. One narrative is about a Jew “marrying out” and the anxieties and bigotries that “marrying out” entails for many Jewish families—ostensibly, of leaving one’s religion and ethnic group. The second, however, subverts this narrative: It is precisely by taking religion seriously that the . . .

Read more: Humor and the Social Condition