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Stand-up comedy has enjoyed a huge boom in Sweden during the 2010s and 2020s. The overall aim of this thesis is to examine negotiations and struggles over meaning within the Swedish stand-up comedy field. More specifically, it examines boundaries, power hierarchies and disputes over what counts as funny, how to achieve success, and the role and function of the stand-up comedian in society. The study contributes to scholarship on stand-up comedy and ethnological and folkloristic humour research. The analysis is primarily based on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s political discourse theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s field and capital theory. The analysis also draws on selected concepts from critical discourse theory, intersectional perspectives, gender theories, rhetoric and humour theory. The main empirical material consists of 16 interviews with stand-up comedians conducted via video calls, 50 observations of recorded stand-up comedy and 3 observations at stand-up comedy clubs. It is supplemented by newspaper articles, TV programmes, videos, podcasts, social media posts and short video clips dealing in various ways with stand-up comedy or humour more generally. The dissertation highlights the antagonistic relationships that, during the period of the study, have dominated the field of Swedish stand-up comedy and manifested in discursive struggles over the conditions of the industry, what is and is not considered appropriate and ethically acceptable to joke about, and the role and responsibilities of the stand-up comedian in society. The negotiations and struggles over meaning in the stand-up comedy field are shaped by different discourses connected to questions of artistic freedom and freedom of expression, democracy, equality, inclusion, diversity, and political struggle. The study also shows how the possession of symbolic capital, that is, capital that is recognized as legitimate within the field, is crucial for being acknowledged as funny and for gaining access to different comedy venues.