Gary Alan Fine (born May 11, 1950, inNew York City) is anAmericansociologist and author.
The son of Bernard David Fine and Bernice Estelle Tanz, Fine grew up inManhattan and went to theHorace Mann School. He studiedpsychology at theUniversity of Pennsylvania (Phi Beta Kappa). He attended graduate school atHarvard University from 1972 to 1976 and received hisPhD from Harvard insocial psychology. His dissertation advisor was the eminent small group theoristRobert F. Bales.
In 1976, he became anassistant professor in the sociology department at theUniversity of Minnesota. At various times, he was avisiting professor atIndiana University (1980), theUniversity of Chicago (1985), theUniversity of Bremen (1986), and theUniversity of Iceland (1988). In 1988, he received theAmerican Folklore Society'sOpie Award for the Best Scholarly Book in the field of Children's Folklore and Culture for his workWith The Boys, anethnographic study ofLittle League baseball teams.
In 1990, he became the department head of the Department of Sociology at theUniversity of Georgia, a position he held until 1993, after which he remained a professor. In 1990 he was also the President of theSociety for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism. During the term of 1994 to 1995, he was a fellow at theCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, affiliated withStanford University. He continued at the University of Georgia but accepted a position atNorthwestern University inEvanston, Illinois beginning in 1997, where in 2005 he was named John Evans Professor. In 2002, he was the President of theMidwest Sociological Society, and in 2005 he was President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He remains at Northwestern and in 2003 was a fellow at theSwedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences atUppsala University in Sweden. In 2005 and 2006, he was a visiting scholar at theRussell Sage Foundation in New York City. He is a former editor ofSocial Psychology Quarterly, an official journal of the American Sociological Association. He is married to Susan Hirsig Fine and has two children.
Fine has written ethnographies of a number of diverse small group activities from analyses ofDungeons & Dragons players andmushroom hunters to high schoolpolicy debaters and restaurant workers. Fine maintains that these different groups and distinct areas connect:
My central research and writing focus is on the relationship betweenculture and social culture. This interest informs all of my writing from my study ofLittle League baseball to that ofrumor to that of fantasy games. The question I ask is how isexpressive culture shaped by thesocial system in which we all live and how does this social system affect the culture that we create and that we participate in. I examine the way in which small groups affect and give meaning to our shared experiences.[citation needed]
His work onrumor has made a substantial contribution to the understanding ofurban legends and the transmission of rumors. In 2001, he co-authored a book withUniversity of California-Davis ProfessorPatricia Turner onrumors in the African-American community and rumors andurban legends held by whites about blacks in theUnited States. He is currently researching rumors related to theSeptember 11 attacks andterrorism. A recently published manuscript deals with the social production and communication ofscientific work at theNational Weather Service.
Another area of research includes the complicated historical and social reputations of figures such asThorstein Veblen,Benedict Arnold,Fatty Arbuckle,Herman Melville,Vladimir Nabokov,Warren Harding,Sinclair Lewis, andHenry Ford. On August 4, 2004, several months before the2004 Presidential Election, he set off a minor storm, especially in the politicalblogger community,[citation needed] with hisop-ed piece inThe Washington Post "Ire to the Chief" that argued that the commonly expressed hatreds of presidentsGeorge W. Bush,Bill Clinton, andRichard Nixon reflected their behavior and activities in youth more than their specific policies as president.[1]
Fine is also a major figure in the study of the work ofErving Goffman and the theory ofsymbolic interactionism. He co-edited withGregory W. H. Smith a major compilation of Goffman's work and of criticism and analysis of his contribution to the social sciences. Together withKent Sandstrom andDan Martin, he has produced a forthcoming textbook on symbolic interactionism entitledSymbols, Selves, and Social Reality: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach to Sociology and Social Psychology.
In addition to his analysis of restaurant establishment culture in his 1996 bookKitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work, Fine considers himself a sort of amateurrestaurant critic. Through 2015, he maintained a blog, calledVeal Cheeks,[2] describing his restaurant visits while living in New York City. His writing style, punchy and wry, can also be seen in his review ofEric Schlosser's book,Fast Food Nation, forReason magazine.[3]
Another subject in which Fine has combined his personal and academic interests isart. While researching his book aboutoutsider artEveryday Genius, he became well-acquainted with many of the major figures and artists in that segment of the art world. He studied the cases of major outsider (self-taught) artists likeHenry Darger,Bill Traylor,Edgar Tolson,Thornton Dial,Lonnie Holley,Martin Ramirez,Sam Doyle, andHoward Finster. He is also an avid collector of outsider art himself. While researching the book and living in Georgia, he was a member of theNexus Center for Contemporary Art and a board member at theHigh Museum of Art inAtlanta. He is also currently a board member of theIntuit: Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art inChicago.
During his research forGifted Tongues: High School Debate and Adolescent Culture, he followed and observed several high schoolpolicy debate teams inMinnesota. The book depicts an activity, although popular in United States, that is often seen as esoteric and confusing. His son, Todd David Fine, as described in the dedication to the book, first saw a video of the activity as a young child while Fine was researching the book. Apparently inspired, in high school, Todd, along with his partners Adam Goldstein and Julie Bashkin, went on to capture the national-circuit debate championship theTournament of Champions and theBarkley Forum atEmory University, another major championship in the activity.
