Christie Davies is a British

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 sociologist, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Reading

University of Reading

The University of Reading is a university in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The University was established in 1892 as University College, Reading and received its Royal Charter in 1926. It is based on several campuses in, and around, the town of Reading.The University has a long tradition...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, the author of many articles and books on criminology, the sociology of morality, censorship, and humor. He has also been visiting professor in India, Poland, United States, and Australia.

Humor research

In his 2002 book, The Mirth of the Nations, he criticizes the theories which derive humor from conflict and superiority, and argues instead that they are a form of play

Play (activity)

Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...

 - a play with aggression, superiority, and taboo-breaking. He also argues against the Freudian theory about Jewish jokes being mostly self-deprecating, claiming that instead they are based on the cultural tradition of analytical thinking and self-awareness. American folklorist Alan Dundes

Alan Dundes

Alan Dundes, was a folklorist at the University of California, Berkeley. His work was said to have been central to establishing the study of folklore as an academic discipline. He wrote 12 books, both academic and popular, and edited or co-wrote two dozen more...

 called the book "the provocative critique of previous scholarship on the subject".

Davies is past president of the International Society for Humor Studies.

Books

• 1973: Wrongful Imprisonment
• 1973: The Reactionary Joke Book, ISBN 0723404941
• 1975: Permissive Britain: Social change in the Sixties and Seventies
• 1978: Censorship and Obscenity
• 1990, 1996: Ethnic Humor Around the World: a Comparative Analysis, ISBN 025321081X
• 1998: Jokes and their Relation to Society
• 1998: The Corporation under Siege
• 2002: The Mirth of Nations, ISBN 0765800969 ; a social and historical study of jokes told in the English-speaking countries, based on archives and other primary sources, including old and rare joke books.
• 2003: (with Goh Abe) Esuniku Joku, Kodansha
  Kodansha
  , the largest Japanese publisher, produces the manga magazines Nakayoshi, Afternoon, Evening, and Weekly Shonen Magazine, as well as more literary magazines such as Gunzō, Shūkan Gendai, and the Japanese dictionary Nihongo Daijiten. The company has its headquarters in Bunkyō, Tokyo...
  
   ; the title is a gairaigo
  Gairaigo
  Gairaigo is Japanese for "loan word" or "borrowed word", and indicates a transliteration into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed from Chinese, primarily from English. Japanese also has a large number of loan words from...
  
  for "Ethnic joke
  Ethnic joke
  An ethnic joke is a humorous remark relating to an ethnic, racial or cultural group, often referring to a stereotype of the group in question for its punchline....
  
  "
• 2005: Jokes and groups. Monograph Series, 44. Institute for Cultural Research, London, ISBN 0904674398
• 2005, Dewi the Dragon, a collection of humorous fantasy stories
• 2006: The Strange Death of Moral Britain
• 2011: Jokes and Targets, Indiana University Press, ISBN 0253223024