Humour as resistance to professional dominance in community mental health teams

This paper contributes to the sociological study of humour in health care settings by analysing its use by community mental health team members dealing with referrals made by consultant psychiatrists. It is about humour and hierarchy, and specifically about humour as a strategy used by rank and file team members to resist or attenuate instructions coming from powerful professionals. The paper draws on tape-recorded data from meetings of community mental health teams and describes the ways in which humour is used by participants to subvert or challenge existing occupational hierarchies.