This article elaborates on the significance of humor and playful interactions in an ethnographic research project among 14- and 15-year-old teenagers in an international middle school in Finland. First, it discusses the role of humor among students and their teachers in the school. Second, the article elaborates on the role humor played when an adult ethnographer was negotiating her role and actions with these teenagers; humor and playful interactions provided useful tools with which to negotiate the researcher’s role and made the project a fun and enjoyable experience for the researcher and participants alike. The article employs the concept of reality play when analyzing everyday interactions in a school context, and it argues both that the use of humor can contribute to forming meaningful and ethically sound relationships between researcher and participants and that elaborations on research and ethics should pay more attention to the significance of humor and playfulness as essential parts of human life.

中文翻译：

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开怀大笑并协商局势：国际青少年田野调查中幽默的意义

本文阐述了幽默和有趣的互动在芬兰一所国际中学 14 岁和 15 岁青少年的民族志研究项目中的重要性。首先，它讨论了幽默在学校学生和老师中的作用。其次，文章详细阐述了一位成年民族志学者在与这些青少年协商自己的角色和行为时幽默所扮演的角色；幽默和有趣的互动提供了有用的工具来协商研究人员的角色，并使该项目成为研究人员和参与者的有趣和愉快的体验。该文章在分析学校环境中的日常互动时采用了现实游戏的概念，并认为幽默的使用有助于在研究人员和参与者之间形成有意义且道德上健全的关系，并且对研究和伦理的阐述应该更加关注幽默和俏皮作为人类生活的重要组成部分的重要性。