HARD ECONOMIC TIMES – SHIFTING GENDER AND SOCIAL STATUS

In recent decades, environmental and economic challenges have affected social organization in Mauritania. Massive droughts in the early 1970s resulted in large demographic shifts as people abandoned their nomadic lifestyles, leading to the rapid swelling of urban areas and an increase in the number of people entering wage labour and experiencing financial difficulties. Economic hardships were compounded by neo-liberal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s that aimed to promote economic growth by privatizing industry, devaluing the currency and restructuring the banking system, but actually led to increasing gaps between rich and poor and a declining GDP (Ould-Mey Reference Ould-Mey1996). In recent decades, economic challenges have continued, propelled by additional droughts and locust invasions, a series of military coups, and global economic crisis. Furthermore, increased consumption of material goods like cellphones, television sets and other luxury items has increased many people's living expenses.

This backdrop of economic volatility and increased consumption has affected how gender relations and labour are organized. While historically men were supposed to provide for the household, at least ideally, in recent decades increasing numbers of women have begun working outside of the home. Many women, due to high divorce and male migration rates, now provide the sole income for their families. In 2008, 44.2 per cent of heads of household in Kankossa were women; of these female heads of household, 31.1 per cent were married, 29.7 per cent were divorced, and 39.1 per cent were widowed (Fall Reference Fall2008). These statistics reflect larger trends in Mauritania, where married women are often left behind as de facto heads of household when men travel to look for work elsewhere (Cleaveland Reference Cleaveland2000; Brhane Reference Brhane1997); in 2002, 56 per cent of Kankossa's population was female (ANADELP 2004). Even if husbands are present, the high incidence of poverty means that few households can get by on a single income.Footnote ³ Women's increasing participation in income-generating activities has brought questions about gender roles to the forefront as people try to make sense of these changes.

Economic hardship has also propelled shifts in Mauritania's social hierarchy. Along with sub-Saharan African groups, who constitute about one-third of the country's population, Mauritania is composed of the Bīẓān and Ḥarāṭīn. Bīẓān are generally of Arab or Berber descent and historically have dominated political and economic life. Ḥarāṭīn are generally of black African descent and are usually former slaves or descendants of slaves of the Bīẓān.Footnote ⁴ Their shared histories mean that these two groups speak a common dialect of Arabic, Hassaniya, and share many cultural attributes including dress and diet. Bīẓān and Ḥarāṭīn society is composed of a hierarchical system which in the past placed the Ḥarāṭīn near the bottom, although the fluidity of social rank also meant that people have long manipulated their positions within it (Cleaveland Reference Cleaveland2002; Bonte Reference Bonte and Baduel1990; Curtin Reference Curtin1975).

The marked decline of slavery in recent decades has been due more to environmental and demographic shifts than to legal action, and Ḥarāṭīn have made economic and political gains. Grassroots human rights organizations and Ḥarāṭīn political movements have intensified their fight for an end to slavery and better social and economic positions for Ḥarāṭīn (Ould Ahmed Salem Reference Ould Ahmed Salem, Ellis and van Kessel2009; McDougall Reference McDougall2010). In recent years, they have made significant steps forward: Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, a Ḥarāṭīn politician, was the runner-up in the 2009 presidential election and serves as the president of the National Assembly, and in 2013 the government launched an autonomous public agency to assist slaves and other marginalized populations. In Kankossa, Ḥarāṭīn have seen economic success: some women work for the NGO, World Vision, or earn significant incomes in the informal sector; and several of the most successful and wealthiest merchants in the market are Ḥarāṭīn men. But, despite these gains, discrimination against Ḥarāṭīn endures, as do tensions between some Ḥarāṭīn and Bīẓān. In Kankossa, it was common to hear Ḥarāṭīn complaining that Bīẓān funnel government money towards their own interests, while some Bīẓān claimed that Ḥarāṭīn were uneducated and incompetent. The jokes that I analyse below address these transformations in gender relations and the social hierarchy.

WHAT'S IN A JOKE? AMBIGUOUS MEANINGS OF JOKING IN MAURITANIA

Joking is part of the daily rhythm of the busy market in Kankossa, a south-central Mauritanian town where I conducted eleven months of research between 2009 and 2011. Kankossa is a departmental capital, serving as an urban centre for over 63,000 people who live in the surrounding region.Footnote ⁵ It provides department residents, who include members of all of the country's major ethnic groups, with access to state services, including a secondary school, hospital and government offices, and it contains the largest daily market in the department. The market is a sprawling place; its streets are lined with cement shops, many of which are run by men. These shops sell a variety of goods, from bulk food items to televisions and brightly coloured children's clothing. Many suwāqāt (female merchants who deal in small quantities of goods) have set up squat, wooden ṭāblas (tables) in front of the shops, on which they sell items like vegetables and beauty products.

During my fieldwork, the market streets frequently rang with laughter as female ṭābla owners joked with each other and with passersby, often in explicitly sexual ways. Women might draw attention to their vaginas, pointing to the lower parts of their bodies or even imitating them; one woman pursed her lips firmly together to show what a vagina looked like in the heat, then waved her forearms back and forth, elbows at her sides, hands loosely clapping together to demonstrate what a ‘happy’ vagina looked like in the cold. Some jokes took on an almost ritualized quality, revolving around one topic and involving basically the same participants; others were more spontaneous, only occurring once in passing. Though not every woman joked, many did, and I often left the market with my cheeks literally aching from laughing.

The positive view of laughter and joking (ijawwaq: to joke) that Mariem offered above is widely shared amongst the market women. People who do not laugh, like Murād, are called ka’ib and ‘abūs, words that have negative connotations in Hassaniya.Footnote ⁶ Conversely, being mash‘ūra, an adjective describing a person who is funny and adept with language, is a desirable trait. When they discuss what characteristics make women attractive, people often mention not only their physical beauty, but also their mastery of words and ability to make people laugh.

Mariem's explanation of laughter indicates that people who laugh and joke are liked and will have many friends; people are drawn to them. This has important material consequences in market settings, where enticing shoppers is essential to making a living, and also in a culture where cordial relations with others, and the subsequent exchange relationships that stem from them, are essential to getting by financially and garnering respect. Market women often cite the role of laughing and joking in attracting and retaining their clients. When I asked one market vendor who her clients were, she explained that ‘there are some of them who are my relatives. There are some who just like me, who are happy with me. I laugh with them, joke [ijawwaq] with them, and they buy from me.’ Similarly, suwāqāt also talk about their friends as people with whom they laugh. As I will discuss below, while wanting to laugh with friends is not surprising, it is significant because it sheds light on the contexts in which joking is acceptable in this setting.

Despite these positive connotations, joking is also characterized by its ambiguous nature (Bakhtin Reference Bakhtin1984; Crawford Reference Crawford2003) since it involves both friendliness and antagonism (Radcliffe-Brown Reference Radcliffe-Brown1952). This characteristic is captured in the Arabic word ‘to laugh’ which can also mean to jeer, mock, or scorn (Wehr Reference Wehr1994: 626). Women acknowledge this ambiguity, sometimes explicitly pointing out that someone is joking. For example, when I was walking in the market with a friend, a butcher said that he had not seen me for a while and asked whether I had been secluded by a man, implying that I might have been confined to my house (and married). We assured him that this was not the case. Later my friend explained that the butcher was ‘only joking’, assuring me that people do not seclude women in Kankossa. Her assurance that this was a joke highlights how jokers cannot control how the audience may interpret their utterances.

Throughout my research, I was often the target of women's jokes. Once a Pulaar woman whom I barely knew stopped me in a busy market street and asked me when I was going to get married, while vigorously rubbing one of my breasts (as though she were trying to unscrew it) to the backdrop of howls of laughter from the nearby suwāqāt and passersby. Similarly, several suwāqāt repeatedly teased me that I wanted to marry an older butcher from whom I picked up meat for a friend. His wife soon got in on the act, miming slitting my throat and threatening me as I walked by her ṭābla, to the great amusement of the surrounding women. While my friend insisted that the butcher's question about me being secluded by my ‘husband’ was only a joke, he too was asking about my marital status.

As the above jokes suggests, jokes that focused on me often illustrated this ambiguity as well as the ambiguity of my position in Mauritania, something that other researchers have experienced elsewhere (Rasmussen Reference Rasmussen1993; Launay 2006). Women's teasing in the market was often unnerving, largely because I was never sure whether the joking that involved me was a means of including me and displaying closeness or of singling me out and showing difference. After all, many of these jokes clearly offered a dimension of critique. During her fieldwork, Susan J. Rasmussen observed that ‘joking was an ethnographic analysis by local residents of field researcher’ (1993: 219). In Kankossa, women's joking was one way through which they both tried to understand my peculiar marital status and also critiqued it. Some women disapproved of my single status because it was unnatural for a woman to remain unmarried (and childless) at my age (thirty-three). Furthermore, as a single woman who came from a country that is a desirable destination among Mauritanian men I posed a threat to their own marriages. As I will explore below, my presence also surely affected the sorts of jokes and concerns that women voiced, since they knew that speaking to me meant that their words might reach an imagined audience in the United States.

I draw upon Judith T. Irvine's (Reference Irvine, Hill and Irvine1992) discussion of insult in a rural Wolof village as a way to understand joking in the Mauritanian context. While joking and insult may be different speech genres, they are closely related, since a joke that goes awry may be taken as an insult, while an insult may be masked by passing it off as ‘only a joke’. A colourful newspaper article in Mauritania, for example, described how two female shoppers in one of Nouakchott's largest markets fought following a joke, ‘beating each other like boxers, disfiguring each other like tigers’ (Aliou Reference Aliou2012). A joke can rapidly turn from laughter into something else.

To be understood, insults and jokes depend upon more than their content (Irvine Reference Irvine, Hill and Irvine1992). Insults are ‘constructed in interaction’; they emerge in particular social settings and under specific cultural frameworks of moral assumptions (ibid.: 110). Wolof speakers got away with insults by voicing them in certain contexts (such as ritual settings), diffusing the responsibility for utterances (nobles having others speak for them), and performing metacommunicative acts such as laughing and smiling. Determining whether an utterance is meant to be a joke requires looking at the content along with the accompanying interactions and cues that speakers provide (Robinson and Smith-Lovin Reference Robinson and Smith-Lovin2001; Kotthoff Reference Kotthoff2006). Mauritanians rely upon a variety of signals to identify utterances as jokes: the setting in which they occur and who is present, the meta-communicative keying that accompanies their speech (laughing, smiling, exaggerated mimicry), and explicitly stating that they are joking are all ways of marking utterances as jokes and not something more serious. The example below will serve as an illustration.

SHAPING REPUTATIONS AND GENDER IN THE MARKET

Toutou is a middle-aged Ḥarāṭīn market woman who is one of my closest friends in Kankossa and a fairly successful merchant. During my fieldwork, she arrived at the market early each morning, setting up her vegetable ṭābla along one of the main thoroughfares and roaming the side streets seeking out the best deals on the fresh produce, spices, and other cooking necessities that she sold. Despite the fact that her husband of over a decade boasted one of the rare salaried positions in Kankossa, Toutou often spoke of how his earnings were not enough for their family to make ends meet, and she contributed to her family by purchasing food, clothing and other household items. She also used her income for her own projects – investing in land and business ventures, giving cash and gifts at ceremonies, and helping friends and family members in need – acts which attested to her relatively secure financial status and helped reinforce a respected social position within her community.

One day I stopped by Toutou's vegetable ṭābla late in the morning. She told me that there was ‘no money’ in the market, a common refrain particularly during the hot season, and that, with no business, the suwāqāt were all just sleeping. She laughed as she demonstrated, drooping her head towards her chest and closing her eyes. If there was money, she said, they would be more alert, pantomiming an active vendor by opening her eyes widely, swaying her hands back and forth in front of her chest in a little dance, and grinning. We laughed. She continued her discussion of finances, saying that having work as a woman was important, partly because men like to marry women who have money themselves. And, she added, if women have their own money, they do not have to worry about husbands at all. Laughing, she said that if she had been wealthier at the time, she would not have married her current husband; rather, she would have chosen someone who was good-looking and rich. A tall friend of her husband's happened to walk by her ṭābla as she said this and she called to him, saying that if she had had money, she would not have paid attention to people like him and her husband. He laughed, and responded that they were not interested in people like her, that it was now young women of her teenage daughter's age who liked them. She retorted that he was a liar and we all laughed.

Toutou's joke makes visible the unravelling of gender relations, and suggests ways in which they may be shifting. Marking her commentary on marriage as a joke with her exaggerated gestures and laughter, Toutou juxtaposes her husband and his passing friend with men who are good-looking and rich, thus implying that they are not. Her words call into question men's reputations and their abilities to support their families, concerns shared by most of the suwāqāt. Women often connected their own participation in work to poverty, absent men, and divorce. One day, after watching a friend imitate both a sad and a happy vagina to much laughter from her friends, a young woman said to me, ‘Vagina mā ‘andha penis lā buda tishtqal’ (A vagina that does not have a penis must work).’ Although her saying ‘vagina’ and ‘penis’ in English – words she had (laughingly) asked me to teach her and never forgot – in effect continued her friend's joking, her statement voiced the serious concerns that many young, divorced women or women with absent husbands face.

In her joke, Toutou proposes an alternative life path in which she would have married a wealthy man. Going further, she suggests a world in which women would replace husbands with money. Her words suggest that women's increasing access to income will provide them – or perhaps has already provided some of them – with expanded choices since they will not be dependent upon men for financial support. That her commentary occurs in the market is significant, since women's work there could be a major source of income for them and certainly was for her.

But while Toutou's joke contains elements of critique, the accompanying interaction with her husband's friend illustrates the ambiguity of joking and social relations. She suggests that, advantaged by their increasing economic power, women will take more control over their choices in marriage. But the man's response contradicts this, implying that men – at least those who are relatively powerful and independent – will select whom they wed. He also contradicts Toutou's earlier assertion that men want to marry women with money (like herself) by suggesting that men will choose young, attractive women over older women. While marked as a joke by his laughter, his words bite, since many Mauritanian men do leave their wives, often for much younger women, and high divorce rates are a major factor that propels women to work for money. Thirty-one per cent of first marriages in Mauritania end in divorce (BESCAD 2011), and this percentage may be even higher amongst Ḥarāṭīn (Brhane Reference Brhane1997). While Ḥarāṭīn emphasize that few of them practise polygamy, the permissibility of this practice within Islam further contributes to the potential for marital instability – particularly if a woman disagrees with her husband's wish to marry a second wife. So does the practice of secret marriage in which, unbeknown to their wives, men marry other women and often contribute to their financial support, thus draining resources away from their other families (Fortier Reference Fortier and Badran2011). While Toutou's joke suggests a social order in which women have more control over whom they wed, the man's response reminds her that this vision has not been achieved. Furthermore, his immediate laughter at Toutou's words marks them as a joke and thus dismisses their seriousness.

Despite the ambiguity of this exchange, Toutou's implied critique of men is significant, since reputations in Mauritania are fragile and vulnerable to the play of words. This power of language is illustrated by the iggāwen, a caste of poets, singers, and musicians who are often referred to as griots in the West African literature. As they have elsewhere in West Africa (Hale Reference Hale1998), iggāwen have long occupied ambiguous positions in Mauritania (Nikiprowetzky Reference Nikiprowetzky1962; Tauzin Reference Tauzin2001; Deubel Reference Deubel2012). While they play an important role at ceremonies, praising notable people and entertaining the audience with their songs and dances, they are also feared because their public praise or critique of others can bring people's reputations into question (Diawara Reference Diawara1990; Shoup Reference Shoup2007). People told me that they were afraid of iggāwen, explaining that griots, if provoked, could say negative things about them to others, thus jeopardizing their social standing.

The idea that talk could affect how people viewed others was not limited to griots. When women taught me about the importance of giving, they emphasized that I should tell others what I was given and by whom. Sharing the news of gifts received and testifying to the giver's generosity were essential parts of the exchange process. Similarly, wedding hosts are often anxious that guests will feel that they have not been given enough food and drink, and will subsequently complain about their stinginess to others. People who can only afford a small wedding celebration may not invite others, hoping to avoid criticism for the lack of refreshments. Words both build and destroy people's reputations, which are important not only for garnering clients in the market, but also for affecting how others perceive their social positions. Women's jokes in the market are utterances through which others are evaluated, critiqued, and brought into being.

As speech act theorists have argued, speech can be performative and have real material consequences in the world (Austin Reference Austin1962 [1955]; Searle Reference Searle and Giglioli1972). Mauritanians use the phrase ‘having a word’ to signify people who are important and who garner attention when they speak, a use which is also found elsewhere in the Arabic-speaking world (Abu-Lughod Reference Abu-Lughod1986: 108). Someone who can speak for (and about) others is a significant person. That Toutou had the ability to speak in ways that called others’ reputations into question and potentially destabilized their social standings serves as a testament to her own power. If her joke questions her husband's and other men's abilities to carry out particular roles, her voicing of the question also indexes her authority, since she is someone who ‘has a word’, or at least acts as if she does. That Toutou voices her joke aloud in front of others, specifically inviting one of the targets to listen, attests to her agency and suggests the power that her economic and social positions can offer.

GETTING AWAY WITH IT: JOKING IN THE MARKET

The meaning of speech acts is not delineated solely by their content and the identity of those who voice them; the spaces and settings in which they occur also add meaning to what is being communicated (Irvine Reference Irvine, Hill and Irvine1992). In Toutou's case, the market setting both facilitated her joking and also intensified the power of her words. In Mauritania, proper comportment varies, depending on the setting and who is present. This is connected to the idea of iḥtirām (respect, honour, deference) – the codes of behaviour that are also found elsewhere in the Muslim world (cf. Abu-Lughod Reference Abu-Lughod1986; Buggenhagen Reference Buggenhagen2012). Bīẓān children (and adults) follow a code of politeness (saḥwa) that regulates their relations with others and prescribes behaviour, including accepted positions for sitting and the content and volume of speech (Tauzin Reference Tauzin, Champault and Jamin1986; du Puigaudeau Reference du Puigaudeau2010 [1930]). My Ḥarāṭīn interlocutors frequently instructed children (and me) in proper conduct, which they often explained with references to the Qur’an. These guidelines involve showing respect and deference to people of higher age and rank. Social ideals are, of course, not fixed, but are rather shifting and relational (Buggenhagen Reference Buggenhagen2012) and proper comportment varies depending upon the setting and the gender, social status, relationship, and relative age of those present (Tauzin Reference Tauzin1989; van Til Reference van Til, Konings and Foeken2006).

Transgressing notions of respect could lead people to feel ḥishma (shame, embarrassment, shyness) and avoiding ḥishma was a commonly cited reason when people explained their actions to me. A bride does not dance at her wedding ceremony, a woman told me, because she would feel shame in doing so in front of older people. This is similar to the sense of shame elsewhere, where it is entwined not just with the idea of doing something wrong, but also with being observed to do so by (particular) others (Myers Reference Myers1979: 361–2; Irvine Reference Irvine, Lutz and Abu-Lughod1990: 134; Abu-Lughod Reference Abu-Lughod1986). Ḥishma was generated by acting inappropriately – or by being aware of the potential to act inappropriately – giddām an-nās (in front of people), specifically those of higher status.

People consider joking with or in front of older, more respected people to be a shameful act. When describing her travels through Mauritania in the 1930s, Odette du Puigaudeau described how a man told her that people should not drink, eat, smoke, sing, laugh, or joke in front of their older brothers: doing so would show that they were not ashamed (2010 [1930]: 39). In Kankossa, people who joked, especially vulgarly, in the presence of elders were called ‘aīn matīn (strong-eyed), an expression which could mean impolite, but which many people said especially referred to people who spoke rudely or bawdily. Accepted behaviour differed amongst peers, those who were intāj (of the same age, of the same generation), and conversations that I observed between age-mates often involved bawdy teasing. At one gathering of female age-mates, the women asked me to teach them the words for ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’ in English, enacted sexual gestures (one woman lay on her back undulating her body as if she were having sex and making satisfied ‘ohs’), and discussed whether men preferred small or large vaginas. All this was accompanied by raucous laughter. Interactions like these would have been unacceptable if elders or in-laws had been present, but women who were amongst their peers could confide and speak freely.

Toutou's public critique of men seems to ignore concepts like iḥtirām and ḥishma and the kind of comportment they advocate. After all, people from all walks of life visited the market: children during the morning school break, men on their way to friends’ shops, women of all ages shopping for the midday meal. Since markets are often unbounded spaces that anyone can enter (Masquelier Reference Masquelier, Comaroff and Comaroff1993), the large volume of people who visit Kankossa's market each day means that joking women may have audiences, speaking in effect giddām an-nās (in front of people). Women acknowledge the potential for spectators by making their performances more or less public. While they may loudly berate customers who fail to pay debts in the hearing of others to encourage payment, suwāqāt also avoid having audiences, whispering when discussing something particularly private. That Toutou performed her joke in a loud voice with exaggerated gestures meant that it might be heard by shoppers who were older or of a higher social status than her, and it was, of course, directed at a man. So how did she get away with joking giddām an-nās?

I argue that joking like this does not represent a blatant rejection of these codes of comportment because it occurs in a particular kind of space. While in highly stratified societies, markets can be places in which people are able to speak in ways that they cannot in others (Bakhtin Reference Bakhtin1984; Kapchan Reference Kapchan1996), the gendered nature of Kankossa's market streets also facilitates joking. Although the shops themselves are run by men and women, women's ṭāblas compose the majority of small businesses that line the streets. Likewise, the shoppers at these ṭāblas are primarily (though not exclusively) women, and many of the goods they stock target female customers. Women frequently joke that men do not understand how to shop for food, maintaining that a man shopping in the market will end up buying much more than he needs. One day a local gendarme (military policeman) garnered loud laughter by acting this out. He asked a woman for a kilo of onions and then, laughing, scooped up large handfuls of onions himself, piling them on her balance until it was overflowing with what was obviously much more than a kilo. The saleswoman laughed and poured them out and he proceeded to repeat the process to the laughter of nearby suwāqāt and observers. Part of the reason that his actions were funny was because, as a male shopper, he was not expected to understand market transactions as well as women. That he was a frequent shopper who, everyone knew, was aware of the approximate number of onions in a kilo also enhanced the joke.

The gendered space of the market, then, makes it a place of peers, where women can feel comfortable joking together in a way that they might not in mixed company. Outside of the market, joking often occurs in places that are segregated by gender and age, such as at naming ceremonies where women tend to sit with their age-mates and men are generally absent. While I also observed women joking with men in their homes, they usually did so with relatives or close family friends. While it is true that a man might come around a corner at any time in the market, women create and claim the market as female space by lining its streets with their ṭāblas and calling to each other, thus making it a de facto female space where women can ‘get away’ with joking that they might not normally engage in within more male-dominated areas. Furthermore, the act of joking itself, in which women's laughter rings out from both sides of the street, helps constitute the market as a space where women can speak freely.

But that men or other targets of jokes are potential audience members gives women's joking added weight that it would not have in spaces, like naming ceremonies, where they primarily joke with age-mates. The effectiveness of insults (or praise) depends not just on the content of the utterances, but on having people to hear them and on how they interpret them (Irvine Reference Irvine, Hill and Irvine1992: 113). The existence of an audience, sometimes composed of the very people at whom their jokes poke fun, gives women's words a significance that they might not have had in a setting where they would only be heard by peers.

Aspects of women's identities also made it possible to joke before others. Many suwāqāt are middle-aged, which makes them a de facto peer group that can joke together. But Ḥarāṭīn women's joking in public also speaks to their ambiguous status. Historically, the behaviour of slaves or lower-status people was less regulated than those of free status, which both gave them increased possibilities for action and also marked them as members of lower social categories (Irvine Reference Irvine1989, Reference Irvine, Hill and Irvine1992; Grosz-Ngaté Reference Grosz-Ngaté1989; Heath Reference Heath1994; Launay 2006). For Ḥarāṭīn, then, as a group that has in the past occupied a low place in the social hierarchy, their joking in ways that clash with proper social comportment is befitting of lower status groups. Bīẓān women did joke in the market, but their jokes usually occurred within their shops and not loudly on the streets. Conversely, this kind of speech also suggests a sort of authority: the authority to speak before others. In this sense, women's joking is an assertion of status and power, especially because others may witness it. The very public nature of the market contributes to the weight of their words, giving them bite that they would not have in a setting that was inhabited only by their peers.

JOKING AND HIERARCHY

Joking, or the absence of joking, is also a way through which hierarchy is constituted since, as is the case elsewhere (Basso Reference Basso1979), the ability to joke in Kankossa depends in part on one's own social status in relation to others. One day, for example, two older market women teased a younger unmarried woman, Mona, about her interest in men. They said that Mona's eyes were constantly focused on the street watching for men and that her ears were white (a phrase that can mean someone is a good listener) since she was always listening for men to walk by. The older women laughed as one of them imitated Mona, turning her head from side to side with her eyes bugged out as if she was following a passing man. The other one took over, adding that even if Mona heard a man cough she would look up. She demonstrated, giving the tiniest cough and then quickly snapping her head up and grinning. Finally, they mimicked how Mona – and all women who wanted a man – greeted men, with one woman giggling, covering her mouth with her hand as she said hello excitedly to an imaginary man. Mona did not respond, looking down and clearly embarrassed.

This interaction, in which older women teased a teenage girl, reinforced dynamics of age, social status and family. Mona's shameful response – averting her eyes, not responding – was appropriate in this context since she was teased by women whose more advanced age gave them the power to shame. The younger woman could not contest the words of the older women, one of whom was her mother, without disrespect, and their ability to make her the butt of their joke emphasized their higher status. They enjoyed the same advantage when they made me the target of their jokes.

The older women were also exerting a measure of social control. People denounced premarital pregnancy in Kankossa, and their joke warned Mona that too much interest in men could have severe consequences. It cautioned her against entering into relationships outside of their oversight; many parents in Kankossa like to influence their children's marriage matches for the better, although this does not always work out in practice. But jokes like this also illustrate the anxiety that people feel about their social worlds. While the women attempt to exert control over Mona through their joke, that they voiced it at all suggests Mona's potential for transgression and their unease over this possibility.

Unlike the above example, which reinscribes the social hierarchy by shaming a young woman, other jokes challenged the social order. Late one afternoon, I sat with Lala, a middle-aged Ḥarāṭīn woman who has a ṭābla down the street from Toutou. Like Toutou, Lala is married and beyond childbearing years. Her husband has a fairly successful shop in the market and her vegetable ṭābla is better stocked than most. I was interviewing her about women's work, and I asked her why so few Bīẓān women sell vegetables in the market. She told me, ‘Bīẓān women, they say that they are not like us [Ḥarāṭīn]. You see Soninke, Pulaar, us, we are the same [pointing to her skin, indicating its dark color]. Those who have white skin, who are like that … .’ Lala trailed off, pointing to a Bīẓān woman who was walking down the street. She began an exaggerated imitation of a Bīẓān, pulling her malaḥfa (Mauritanian veil) over the lower part of her face and swaying gingerly from side to side, her arms bent at the elbows, hips swinging back and forth, nose in the air. I laughed and she continued, saying that Bīẓān women ‘don't like our work… . That's the reason a [non-Bīẓān] woman does a ṭābla – she leaves them [Bīẓān who she might have worked for or been enslaved by]. Understand? Leaves them there. Some [Bīẓān] now they say, “Did you see a maid for me?” Like that one there.’ Lala again indicated the Bīẓān woman who was passing and then responded to the question of whether she had seen a maid: ‘There isn't one. There isn't one.’ She broke from her impersonation and laughed as did I and other nearby suwāqāt who had been listening. When mimicking the Bīẓān woman's voice, Lala adopted a high-pitched tone; her laughing, smiling, and exaggerated movements helped mark her utterance as a joke. Lala's gestures and high-pitched voicing also draw upon popular stereotypes of Bīẓān women as lazy prima donnas that are shared by many Ḥarāṭīn.

Lala's commentary on the Bīẓān provides insight into her vision of the social order, suggesting that Ḥarāṭīn have made gains within it. She directly references the social hierarchy by noting that Bīẓān ‘say that they are not like us’ and that they do not like to engage in the work that Ḥarāṭīn women do, implying that they think that they are above them. But Lala's words and performance also call this hierarchy into question. By asking for a maid the Bīẓān woman is indirectly asking Lala if she will work for her. Lala lowers her voice in her own response, not merely saying that she cannot work for the woman, but that there is no one at all who can.

Humour can shift the status quo since it provides new perspectives and thus ‘communicates sovereignty, creative power, and the freedom to intervene in the world’ (Kotthoff Reference Kotthoff2006: 5). Lala's joke illustrates her agency and her ability to assert a higher social status. By making fun of Bīẓān women, Lala challenges a social order that historically has placed her beneath them. Her words suggest that Ḥarāṭīn have already earned valued positions and do not have to work for, or respect, others. Work in Mauritania has long been tied to social rank, with free status partly being marked by an ability to work for oneself, while slave status is linked to working for others (Ruf Reference Ruf1999; Villasante-de Beauvais Reference Villasante-de Beauvais1991).

That Lala's performance occurred in front of others further emphasizes her challenge to the social hierarchy, and so does her direct reference to a Bīẓān woman by pointing at her as she passed. While I could not tell if this woman overheard, Lala did not do anything to prevent her from hearing, and spoke in an audible voice. But the presence of others complicates things as well. Lala was not just asserting her power and authority in front of a Bīẓān woman and other suwāqāt, she was also doing so in front of a foreigner (and her audio recorder), someone she knew to be writing about women's work. When seeking to boost the status of Ḥarāṭīn, Lala may very well have had an imagined audience in mind (readers in the United States and beyond) to whom she wished to send a particular message about her community. Likewise, the Bīẓān woman she singled out was young and alone. She might not have criticized her so openly if the woman had been accompanied by others, or was closer to Lala's age.

While she acts out rejecting Bīẓān requests for work, Lala still utters these requests, thus indicating the positionality of status. Even if she considers Ḥarāṭīn status to be higher than it was in the past, Lala admits that many Bīẓān may not recognize improved Ḥarāṭīn social rank. But, later in the interview, she suggests that Bīẓān also acknowledge the shifting social hierarchy. Lala notes that it was true that a Bīẓān might come to her and ask her if she could find her a maid. But then Lala adds that if she responded that she was a maid and was willing to work, the Bīẓān would reply, ‘“That's not true.” She knows that you will not come and work. “That's not true.”’ Again employing a high pitch when voicing the Bīẓān's part, here Lala explicitly states that it is not only Ḥarāṭīn who believe that the social hierarchy has shifted; the Bīẓān woman also recognizes that Lala will not work for her, perhaps due to her successful business in the market. Lala thus testifies to a less significant difference between Ḥarāṭīn and Bīẓān status than in the past, when many Ḥarāṭīn would have worked for Bīẓān or been their slaves.

Lala's joke occurred in a fluctuating social hierarchy, since over the past decades many Ḥarāṭīn have begun to participate in the paid work force. Their increasing access to income may be shifting how social rank is configured, causing it to be based more upon economic status and less on ascribed attributes such as genealogy, as in the past. Certainly, their successful market businesses have contributed to the power Toutou and Lala enjoy to speak and joke before others. But while the Bīẓān woman voiced by Lala rejects her contention that she could work for her, the fact that she asks her at all suggests that other Ḥarāṭīn continue to occupy positions of lower social rank.

CONCLUSION: JOKING AND PERSONAL CONCERNS

As we have seen, Toutou and Lala joke to ambiguous effect. Although they propose alternatives to the social order, they also reproduce it. While Toutou indicates that she has more control over wealth and marriage than women had in the past, the man counters that wealthy men prefer younger women. While Lala implies that status is shifting, her example suggests that many Ḥarāṭīn continue to occupy disadvantaged positions, since she indicates that Bīẓān women would come to her looking for a maid.

Despite this ambiguity, Toutou's testimony that she would have married differently also emphasizes her ability to mock men who do not treat women as she feels they should, and suggests a social order in which men are not fulfilling expected gender roles. Likewise, Lala's assertion that Bīẓān cannot (and do not) command her labour, demonstrates her ability to criticize this category of persons publicly and to assert her own economic independence. Both of these incidents also emphasize that Toutou and Lala understand themselves as agents who can shape their social worlds. Toutou says that if she had been wealthier at the time she would have chosen her husband differently, indicating that she now has the power to do so. Likewise, Lala says that a Bīẓān would not believe that a successful businesswoman like Lala would work for her. There was more behind this joking than simply ‘getting away with it’; their words had real bite. That their joking occurred in front of others in a space occupied by a variety of people meant that it was a way through which women could critique notions of gender and hierarchy. That they did so in the presence of a researcher who they knew might write about these happenings elsewhere emphasized their desire to do so, suggesting an aspiration to extend their words in space and time.

Their jokes critique gender relations and the social hierarchy, subjects that were deep personal concerns for them. Outside of a joking context, Toutou frequently told me of the challenges that she faced to help support her family and pay for the kind of life she wished to live. She explained to me that

Toutou's joking voices real concerns with men's lack of financial stability and the strain it puts on women to provide for their families. Like Tuareg smith (griot) women who criticize men (Rasmussen Reference Rasmussen2003), Kankossa's market women were not trying to subvert the established gender order, but rather to improve their positions within it. Toutou noted, for example, that money is worth having because it helps to attract men. Nevertheless, her joke captures and makes public some of the difficulties that women grapple with during challenging economic times, just as it emphasizes women's growing potential to wield economic power.

Likewise, Lala's suggestion that not only do the Ḥarāṭīn no longer need to work for the Bīẓān, but that the two groups also share a more equal status, is reflected in the fact that she defines herself as Khaẓarīn, not Ḥarāṭīn. The term Khaẓarīn comes from khaẓar in Hassaniya, a word which refers to dark colours including blue and green. Its meaning in Kankossa was ambiguous, with some people using it to refer to anyone who was dark-skinned (Ḥarāṭīn, Pulaar, African American), while others employed it to indicate black Hassaniya speakers whose families had been freed for generations and who claimed wealth and respect. In the latter use, it suggests a separation from Ḥarāṭīn, creating a hierarchy of black Hassaniya speakers in which Khaẓarīn come above Ḥarāṭīn, with slaves ranked lowest. While people did not know when this usage had begun, its widespread use in Kankossa seems to be a fairly recent development. That Lala defined herself in this way suggests that she was giving voice to a world in which the social hierarchy was already reconfigured.

There is a saying in Mauritania that you should listen to the words that make you cry, not those that make you laugh (isma‘ gūl imbakīnak, lā tasma‘ gūl imẓaḥkīnak), a proverb which is similar to others elsewhere in the Arabic-speaking world (see Kassis Reference Kassis1999: 136). My research assistant explained to me that this proverb is helpful because hearing the truth makes you cry, while people who make you laugh are ‘only joking’. But Toutou and Lala's jokes highlight the importance of taking joking seriously, particularly when it occurs in spaces that could have audiences, in these cases an audience that potentially extended beyond the Kankossa context since it included an ethnographer. Similarly, the public space of the market gave their jokes more weight than they would have had in other places that had more limited potential audiences. Through their joking women critiqued others, a powerful act that could tarnish reputations. They asserted their economic power, value and agency. They called into question gender roles and the social hierarchy, and they envisioned and expressed alternative social orders. Joking, then, did not just make people laugh; it was also a way through which women voiced their hopes for altered and improved social configurations.