Mike Lloyd

This chapter draws upon two case studies that use naturalistic third-party video data, that is, mountain biking action captured from helmet-mounted action cameras which are then posted on social media sites. The aim is to understand how things ‘fall into place’, and to show the salience of social interaction in spatially situated mountain biking action. Necessarily, there is an inferential aspect to the sociological interpretation, but the beauty of video data is that close examination and the presentation of graphic transcripts can give an outside reader a good feel for how mountain biking problems unfold in the vivid present. Thus, the chapter offers a contribution to the understanding of how spatial, interactive, and embodied elements coalesce to constitute the unfortunate elements that are the other side to the thrill and pleasure of mountain biking.

Cycling is often carried out in public places, meaning that it is easy to both observe and video‐record cycling in action. Within sociology, ethnomethodology focuses on practical activities, often by collecting and analysing video data. Geographers have also used video data in researching cycling, but the two perspectives have little crossover. This article showcases an ethnomethodological analysis of video data on everyday cycling navigation, presenting three empirical examples. We see that cycling, accomplished by real interacting people, needs analysing in fine detail. Further knowledge of the mundane aspects of cycling mobility can usefully build upon such a videographic approach.

The history of music, literature, theater, dance, and painting reflects an interest in humor. From the Greeks, tragedy and comedy were two sides of the same coin that reflected the psychic world of the human being. The same can be said of literature, with works as magnificent as Don Quixote, in which through satire the value of books is questioned and, in this sense, of knowledge itself; or that Candide of Voltaire, in which the criticism of philosophy is mixed with the finest black humor and a particular pedagogical attitude... The list is extensive. In this third volume of the series Humor: transdisciplinary approaches, edited by Ediciones UCC, these close links are reflected, from the analysis of exaggerated stage performances of clowns to the analysis of universal and regional literary works. This volume also includes a fundamental theme: education. Can humor facilitate teaching processes? Is it possible that it works as a facilitator for teaching a second language or other school learning processes? How do humorous acts show the most important features of a culture and help transmit them from one generation to another? The reader will find a variety of topics that combine, culture, education, art and humor from a scientific perspective. La historia de la música, de la literatura, del teatro, de la danza y de la pintura, refleja un interés por el humor. Desde los griegos, la tragedia y la comedia eran dos caras de una misma moneda que reflejaba el mundo psíquico del ser humano. Lo mismo se puede decir de la literatura, con obras tan magníficas como el Quijote, en la que a través de la sátira se pone en entredicho el valor de los libros y, en este sentido, del conocimiento mismo; o ese Cándido de Voltaire, en el que la crítica a la filosofía se mezcla con el más fino humor negro y una particular actitud pedagógica... La lista es extensa. En este tercer volumen de la serie Humor: aproximaciones transdisciplinares, editada por Ediciones UCC, se reflejan estos vínculos tan estrechos, desde el análisis de las puestas escénicas exageradas de los payasos, hasta el análisis de obras literarias universales y regionales. También este volumen recoge un tema fundamental: la educación. ¿Puede el humor facilitar los procesos de enseñanza? ¿Es posible que funcione como un facilitador para la enseñanza de una segunda lengua o de otros procesos de aprendizaje escolar? ¿De qué manera los actos humorísticos evidencian los rasgos más importantes de una cultura y ayuda a transmitirlos de una generación a otra? El lector encontrará una variedad de temas que combinan, la cultura, la educación, el arte y el humor desde una óptica científica.

This empirical study uses video data to examine interactional adaptation between cyclists and pedestrians in a relatively new cycle-lane. Existing research on intersections shows order is achieved through the frequent use of a look-recognition-acknowledgement sequence. Whereas this is found in the cycle-lane interactions, there is also an important divergent technique which on the surface seems less cooperative. Others are made to cede space based on ‘doing and being oblivious’, in short, forms of non-looking force others to take evasive action and subtly alter their line of travel. Here the dynamic nature of this obliviousness is shown through empirical examples. Even though it is not always easy to distinguish between the two forms of non-looking, it is concluded that ‘doing oblivious’, whilst possibly annoying for others, is most probably harmless, but there are good reasons to be more concerned about ‘being oblivious’, for it may lead to collisions between pedestrians and cyclists. Aspects of non-looking provide an important addition to knowledge of the mobile world, suggesting we renew attention to specific sites where people concert their movements in minutely detailed ways.

Since their creation in 2005, My Family stickers have become a familiar sight on car windscreens. Existing scholarship has offered several explanations of this phenomenon, key amongst them being that the stickers reflect a conservative nostalgia for the nuclear family. These explanations have value, however, they move very quickly from description to explanation, sometimes leaving the grounds for their argument obscure. After summarizing existing work, some new My Family data collected in New Zealand are described. Using as many visual examples as possible, the full variety in the data is glimpsed, before some speculative explanation is offered. It is suggested that My Family stickers pinpoint a common structure shared with humour: the recognition of incongruity. Not discounting the role of conservative nostalgia for the nuclear family, it is possible that the use of My Family stickers is also strongly playful.

This article builds on a previously published article in this journal that analysed the first twenty episodes of a photo caption competition running in a very popular New Zealand magazine. Visible hand gestures and embodied expressions were central in the photos that entrants completed by submitting a caption. These provide a readily understandable and economic platform for directing competitors in the task of making humour. Returning to the competition over two years later, embodiment is still central, but another interesting feature of the competition is discovered. Using a fuller set of 132 episodes, and on the basis of readily available categorizations of the people shown in the photos, we see an interesting breakdown in the types of people shown in the photos: politicians are most frequently shown, but the British Royal Family are also high up in the appearance stakes. The strong royal presence deserves analysis, and to help in this task Davies’ work on Jokes and Targets (2011), and varied work from celebrity studies, is employed. Such work can only partly explain the complexity of such visual humour, as each photo has its own particularities that help channel humour construction.