It is just that scholars are more sophisticatcated now about the questions that might be asked; it is also that the equipment available today frees the fieldworker to ask more sophiscatcated or multidimensional questions. When fieldworkers can examine context-not just context of performance but also context of recording, the relation between scholar and source. Put another way, it is no longer just the joke that is investigated. Rather, modern researchers ask a host of question: Who tells which jokes to whom and under what circumstances? How are the jokes interpreted? Who laughs, and who does not laugh? What part do those jokes play in the social event going on? How does that redaction of the jokes relate to others made of the same words? Is the meaning the same if the context is different? What is the relation between observer and observed? The whole reflexive movement in field sciences in recent years (see, for example., Clifford and Marcus’ 1986 work,writing Culture) is predicated on a technology that can document the observer at the same time that it documents the observed.