Search results for ""author gary alan fine""
The University of Chicago Press Fair Share: Senior Activism, Tiny Publics, and the Culture of Resistance
A deeply researched ethnographic portrait of progressive senior activists in Chicago who demonstrate how a tiny public wields collective power to advocate for broad social change. If you've ever been to a protest or been involved in a movement for social change, you have likely experienced a local culture, one with slogans, jargon, and shared commitments. Though one might think of a cohort of youthful organizers when imagining protest culture, this powerful ethnography from esteemed sociologist Gary Alan Fine explores the world of senior citizens on the front lines of progressive protests. While seniors are a notoriously important—and historically conservative—political cohort, the group Fine calls “Chicago Seniors Together” is a decidedly leftist organization, inspired by the model of Saul Alinsky. The group advocates for social issues, such as affordable housing and healthcare, that affect all sectors of society but take on a particular urgency in the lives of seniors. Seniors connect and mobilize around their distinct experiences but do so in service of concerns that extend beyond themselves. Not only do these seniors experience social issues as seniors—but they use their age as a dramatic visual in advocating for political change. In Fair Share, Fine brings readers into the vital world of an overlooked political group, describing how a “tiny public” mobilizes its demands for broad social change. In investigating this process, he shows that senior citizen activists are particularly savvy about using age to their advantage in social movements. After all, what could be more attention-grabbing than a group of passionate older people determinedly shuffling through snowy streets with canes, in wheelchairs, and holding walkers to demand healthcare equity, risking their own health in the process?
£26.96
The University of Chicago Press Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial
We take reputations for granted. Believing in the bad and the good natures of our notorious or illustrious forebears is part of our shared national heritage. Yet we are largely ignorant of how such reputations came to be, who was instrumental in creating them, and why. Even less have we considered how villains, just as much as heroes, have helped our society define its values. Presenting essays on America's most reviled traitor, its worst president, and its most controversial literary ingenue (Benedict Arnold, Warren G. Harding, and Lolita), among others, sociologist Gary Alan Fine analyzes negative, contested, and subcultural reputations. This volume offers eight compelling historical case studies as well as a theoretical introduction situating the complex roles in culture and history that negative reputations play. Arguing the need for understanding real conditions that lead to proposed interpretations, as well as how reputations are given meaning over time, this book marks an important contribution to the sociologies of culture and knowledge.
£28.78
The University of Chicago Press A Second Chicago School?: The Development of a Postwar American Sociology
From 1945 to about 1960, the University of Chicago was home to a group of faculty and graduate students whose work has come to define what many call a second "Chicago School" of sociology. Like its predecessor earlier in the century, the postwar department was again the center for qualitative social research - on everything from mapping the nuances of human behaviour in small groups to seeking solutions to problems of race, crime and poverty. Howard Becker, Joseph Gusfield, Herbert Blumer, David Riesman, Erving Goffman and others created a large, enduring body of work. In this book, sociologists critically confront this legacy. The eight original chapters survey the issues that defined the department's agenda: they focus on deviance, race and ethnic relations, urban life and collective behaviour; the renewal of participant observation as a method and the refinement of symbolic interaction as a guiding theory; and the professional and institutional factors that shaped this generation, including the leadership of Louis Wirth and Everett C. Hughes; the role of women; and the competition for national influence Chicago sociology faced from survey research at Columbia and grand theory at Harvard. The contributors also discuss the internal conflicts that call into question the very idea of a unified "school".
£45.00
The University of Chicago Press With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture
What are boys like? Who is the creature inhabiting the twilight zone between the perils of the Oedipus complex and the Strum und Drang of puberty? In With the Boys, Gary Alan Fine examines the American male preadolescent by studying the world of Little League baseball. Drawings on three years of firsthand observation of five Little Leagues, Fine describes how, through organized sport and its accompanying activities, boys learn to play, work, and generally be "men."
£28.78
Princeton University Press Gifted Tongues: High School Debate and Adolescent Culture
Learning to argue and persuade in a highly competitive environment is only one aspect of life on a high-school debate team. Teenage debaters also participate in a distinct cultural world--complete with its own jargon and status system--in which they must negotiate complicated relationships with teammates, competitors, coaches, and parents as well as classmates outside the debating circuit. In Gifted Tongues, Gary Alan Fine offers a rich description of this world as a testing ground for both intellectual and emotional development, while seeking to understand adolescents as social actors. Considering the benefits and drawbacks of the debating experience, he also recommends ways of reshaping programs so that more high schools can use them to boost academic performance and foster specific skills in citizenship. Fine analyzes the training of debaters in rapid-fire speech, rules of logical argumentation, and the strategic use of evidence, and how this training instills the core values of such American institutions as law and politics. Debates, however, sometimes veer quickly from fine displays of logic to acts of immaturity--a reflection of the tensions experienced by young people learning to think as adults. Fine contributes to our understanding of teenage years by encouraging us not to view them as a distinct stage of development but rather a time in which young people draw from a toolkit of both childlike and adult behaviors. A well-designed debate program, he concludes, nurtures the intellect while providing a setting in which teens learn to make better behavioral choices, ones that will shape relationships in their personal, professional, and civic lives.
£43.20
The University of Chicago Press The Hinge: Civil Society, Group Cultures, and the Power of Local Commitments
Most of the time, we believe our daily lives to be governed by structures determined from above: laws that dictate our behavior, companies that pay our wages, even climate patterns that determine what we eat or where we live. In contrast, social organization is often a feature of local organization. While those forces may seem beyond individual grasp, we often come together in small communities to change circumstances that would otherwise flatten us. Challenging traditional sociological models of powerful forces, in The Hinge, Gary Alan Fine emphasizes and describes those meso-level collectives, the organizations that bridge our individual interests and the larger structures that shape our lives. Focusing on “tiny publics,” he describes meso-level social collectives as “hinges”: groups that come together to pursue a shared social goal, bridging the individual and the broader society. Understanding these hinges, Fine argues, is crucial to explaining how societies function, creating links between the micro- and macro-orders of society. He draws on historical cases and fieldwork to illustrate how these hinges work and how to describe them. In The Hinge, Fine has given us powerful new theoretical tools for understanding an essential part of our social worlds.
£25.16
The University of Chicago Press Players and Pawns: How Chess Builds Community and Culture
A chess match seems as solitary an endeavor as there is in sports: two minds, on their own, in fierce opposition. In contrast, Gary Alan Fine argues that chess is a social duet: two players in silent dialogue who always take each other into account in their play. Surrounding that one-on-one contest is a community life that can be nearly as dramatic and intense as the across-the-board confrontation. Fine has spent years immersed in the communities of amateur and professional chess players, and with Players and Pawns he takes readers deep inside them, revealing a complex, brilliant, feisty world of commitment and conflict. Opening with a close look at a typical tournament in Atlantic City, Fine carries us from planning and setup through the climactic final day's match-ups between the weekend's top players, introducing us along the way to countless players and their relationships to the game. At tournaments like that one, as well as in locales as diverse as collegiate matches and community chess clubs, players find themselves part of what Fine terms a "soft community," an open, welcoming space built on their shared commitment to the game. Within that community, chess players find both support and challenges, all amid a shared interest in and love of the long-standing traditions of the game, traditions that help chess players build a communal identity. Full of idiosyncratic characters and dramatic gameplay, Players and Pawns is a celebration of the ever-fascinating world of serious chess.
£24.24
The University of Chicago Press Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds
This classic study still provides one of the most astute descriptions available of an often misunderstood subculture: that of fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Alan Fine immerses himself in several different gaming systems, offering insightful details on the nature of the games and the patterns of interaction among players - as well as their reasons for playing.
£32.41
The University of Chicago Press Fair Share: Senior Activism, Tiny Publics, and the Culture of Resistance
A deeply researched ethnographic portrait of progressive senior activists in Chicago who demonstrate how a tiny public wields collective power to advocate for broad social change. If you've ever been to a protest or been involved in a movement for social change, you have likely experienced a local culture, one with slogans, jargon, and shared commitments. Though one might think of a cohort of youthful organizers when imagining protest culture, this powerful ethnography from esteemed sociologist Gary Alan Fine explores the world of senior citizens on the front lines of progressive protests. While seniors are a notoriously important—and historically conservative—political cohort, the group Fine calls “Chicago Seniors Together” is a decidedly leftist organization, inspired by the model of Saul Alinsky. The group advocates for social issues, such as affordable housing and healthcare, that affect all sectors of society but take on a particular urgency in the lives of seniors. Seniors connect and mobilize around their distinct experiences but do so in service of concerns that extend beyond themselves. Not only do these seniors experience social issues as seniors—but they use their age as a dramatic visual in advocating for political change. In Fair Share, Fine brings readers into the vital world of an overlooked political group, describing how a “tiny public” mobilizes its demands for broad social change. In investigating this process, he shows that senior citizen activists are particularly savvy about using age to their advantage in social movements. After all, what could be more attention-grabbing than a group of passionate older people determinedly shuffling through snowy streets with canes, in wheelchairs, and holding walkers to demand healthcare equity, risking their own health in the process?
£80.00
The University of Chicago Press The Hinge: Civil Society, Group Cultures, and the Power of Local Commitments
Most of the time, we believe our daily lives to be governed by structures determined from above: laws that dictate our behavior, companies that pay our wages, even climate patterns that determine what we eat or where we live. In contrast, social organization is often a feature of local organization. While those forces may seem beyond individual grasp, we often come together in small communities to change circumstances that would otherwise flatten us. Challenging traditional sociological models of powerful forces, in The Hinge, Gary Alan Fine emphasizes and describes those meso-level collectives, the organizations that bridge our individual interests and the larger structures that shape our lives. Focusing on “tiny publics,” he describes meso-level social collectives as “hinges”: groups that come together to pursue a shared social goal, bridging the individual and the broader society. Understanding these hinges, Fine argues, is crucial to explaining how societies function, creating links between the micro- and macro-orders of society. He draws on historical cases and fieldwork to illustrate how these hinges work and how to describe them. In The Hinge, Fine has given us powerful new theoretical tools for understanding an essential part of our social worlds.
£86.80
The University of Chicago Press Players and Pawns: How Chess Builds Community and Culture
A chess match seems as solitary an endeavor as there is in sports: two minds, on their own, in fierce opposition. In contrast, Gary Alan Fine argues that chess is a social duet: two players in silent dialogue who always take each other into account in their play. Surrounding that one-on-one contest is a community life that can be nearly as dramatic and intense as the across-the-board confrontation. Fine has spent years immersed in the communities of amateur and professional chess players, and with Players and Pawns he takes readers deep inside them, revealing a complex, brilliant, feisty world of commitment and conflict. Within their community, chess players find both support and challenges, all amid a shared interest in and love of the long-standing traditions of the game, traditions that help chess players build a communal identity. Full of idiosyncratic characters and dramatic gameplay, Players and Pawns is a celebration of the fascinating world of serious chess.
£22.43
The University of Chicago Press Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in Mfa Education
The idea of a graduate art program likely conjures up images of young artists in lofty studios, learning advanced techniques and honing the physical practice of their creativity. In truth, however, today’s MFA culture is centered almost entirely around discussing art rather than actually making it. In Talking Art, ethnographer Gary Alan Fine gives us an eye-opening look at the culture and practices of the contemporary university-based master’s level art program. Central to this culture is the act of the critique, an often harrowing process—depicted here in dramatic and illuminating detail—where artists in training must defend their work before classmates and instructors. Through analysis of the practice of the critique and other aspects of the curriculum, Fine reveals how art schools have changed the very conception of the artist: no longer a misunderstood loner toiling away in a garret, now an artist is closer to being an articulate tour guide through the maze of contemporary art rhetoric. More importantly, he tells us, MFA programs have shifted the goal of creating art away from beauty and toward theory. Contemporary visual art, Fine argues, is no longer a calling or a passion—it’s a discipline, with an academic culture that requires its practitioners to be verbally skilled in the presentation of their intentions. Talking Art offers a remarkable and disconcerting view into the crucial role that universities play in creating that culture.
£26.96
The University of Chicago Press Authors of the Storm: Meteorologists and the Culture of Prediction
In "Authors of the Storm", Gary Alan Fine offers an inside look at how meteorologists and forecasters predict the weather. Through field observation and interviews, Fine finds a supremely hard-working, insular clique of professionals who often refer to themselves as a 'band of brothers'. In Fine's skilled hands, we learn their lingo, how they 'read' weather conditions, how forecasts are written, and, of course, how those messages are conveyed to the public. Weather forecasts, he shows, are often shaped as much by social and cultural factors inside local offices as they are by approaching cumulus clouds.
£28.78
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Group Life: An Invitation to Local Sociology
Sociological analysis is replete with debates about “micro” and “macro,” individual and society, but all too often these miss the point: interacting groups are the hinge that connects the two. To understand how structures matter and how individuals navigate them, we must take groups and people in local communities seriously. Gary Alan Fine and Tim Hallett skillfully argue that sociologists have the obligation to examine the role of small communities in the creation of both the interaction order and structural realities. With novel concepts and rich ethnographic examples, this book describes how group commitments shape selves and society, emphasizing the importance of a meso-level approach to social organization. Fine and Hallett provide new models of identity, culture, conflict, and control, and consider how a network of groups can provide insight into extended communication channels and social media lattices. Ultimately, they show that, despite the importance of institutions and individuals, group life is the fundamental building block of community. This timely book makes the case for a local sociology that includes sociality. It will be a welcome resource for students and sociologists, and a necessary call to action for the discipline as a whole.
£50.00
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Group Life: An Invitation to Local Sociology
Sociological analysis is replete with debates about “micro” and “macro,” individual and society, but all too often these miss the point: interacting groups are the hinge that connects the two. To understand how structures matter and how individuals navigate them, we must take groups and people in local communities seriously. Gary Alan Fine and Tim Hallett skillfully argue that sociologists have the obligation to examine the role of small communities in the creation of both the interaction order and structural realities. With novel concepts and rich ethnographic examples, this book describes how group commitments shape selves and society, emphasizing the importance of a meso-level approach to social organization. Fine and Hallett provide new models of identity, culture, conflict, and control, and consider how a network of groups can provide insight into extended communication channels and social media lattices. Ultimately, they show that, despite the importance of institutions and individuals, group life is the fundamental building block of community. This timely book makes the case for a local sociology that includes sociality. It will be a welcome resource for students and sociologists, and a necessary call to action for the discipline as a whole.
£15.99
The University of Chicago Press Everyday Genius: Self-Taught Art and the Culture of Authenticity
From Henry Darger's elaborate paintings of young girls caught in a vicious war to the sacred art of the Reverend Howard Finster, the work of outsider artists has achieved unique status in the art world. Celebrated for their lack of traditional training and their position on the fringes of society, outsider artists nonetheless participate in a traditional network of value, status, and money. After spending years immersed in the world of self-taught artists, Gary Alan Fine presents Everyday Genius, one of the most insightful and comprehensive examinations of this network and how it confers artistic value.Fine considers the differences among folk art, outsider art, and self-taught art, explaining the economics of this distinctive art market and exploring the dimensions of its artistic production and distribution. Interviewing dealers, collectors, curators, and critics and venturing into the backwoods and inner-city homes of numerous self-taught artists, Fine describes how authenticity is central to the system in which artists—often poor, elderly, members of a minority group, or mentally ill—are seen as having an unfettered form of expression highly valued in the art world. Respected dealers, he shows, have a hand in burnishing biographies of the artists, and both dealers and collectors trade in identities as much as objects.Revealing the inner workings of an elaborate and prestigious world in which money, personalities, and values affect one another, Fine speaks eloquently to both experts and general readers, and provides rare access to a world of creative invention-both by self-taught artists and by those who profit from their work. “Indispensable for an understanding of this world and its workings. . . . Fine’s book is not an attack on the Outsider Art phenomenon. But it is masterful in its anatomization of some of its contradictions, conflicts, pressures, and absurdities.”—Eric Gibson, Washington Times
£36.04
University of California Press Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America
Legends are arguably the most common narrative form of folklore in American society. From sex acts to business transactions, from fashion to food, from heroes to heroin, rumors and legends take on every charged topic. Children circulate texts about toys and candy; teenagers share stories about sex, drugs, and rock and roll; young professionals commiserate over the hazards of the work world. These stories address aspects of life about which we receive mixed or ambiguous messages. Given that matters relevant to race remain confused and divisive in many corridors of American society, it is not surprising that rumors and legends that reflect racial misunderstanding and mistrust frequently circulate. "Whispers on the Color Line" focuses on a wide array of tales told in black and white communities across America. Topics run the gamut from alleged governmental conspiracies, possible food tampering, gang violence, and the sex lives of celebrities. Such beliefs travel by word of mouth, in print, and increasingly over the Internet. In many instances these stories reflect the tenacious level of racial misunderstanding that continues to vex efforts to foster racial harmony, creating separate racialized pools of knowledge. The authors have spent over twenty years collecting and analyzing rumors and contemporary legends - from the ever-durable Kentucky Fried Rat cycle to persistent beliefs about athletic footwear manufacturers and their support for white supremacist regimes. These implausible stories serve many purposes: they assuage anxieties, entertain friends, increase our sense of control - all without directly proclaiming our own attitudes. Fine and Turner consider how these tales reflect attitudes that blacks and whites have both about each other and about the world they face. In an engaging and penetrating narrative, they brilliantly demonstrate how - by transforming unacceptable impulses into a narrative that is claimed to have actually happened - we are able to express the inexpressible.
£27.00
Emerald Publishing Limited Cutting Edge: Advanced Interactionist Theory
Featuring articles reprinted from "Studies in Symbolic Interaction" and "Symbolic Interaction", this book covers such topics as theoretical directions in interactionism, interpretations of the theory of George Herbert Mead, Meadian connections, and dramaturgy and Goffman.
£37.22
