Gary Alan Fine

Reputational entrepreneurs and the memory of incompetence: Melting supporters, partisan warriors, and images of President Harding

Reputational entrepreneurs attempt to control the memory of historical figures through motivation, narrative facility, and institutional placement. Whereas the study of those remembered as great or evil draws on Durkheimian Theorys consensus and cohesion, this does not explain the memory of the incompetent. Reputational politics is an arena in which forces compete to control memory. Reputations are grounded in a social construction of character, subsequently generalized to policy and the character of the society. In the case of Warren G. Harding, the U.S. president rated lowest by historians and the public, political opponents set the agenda, while potential supporters did not defend him, given their political interests, structural positions, and a lack of credible narrative.

Three principles of Serendip : insight, chance, and discovery in qualitative research

This article discusses the role of serendipity in qualitative research. Drawing on ideas and methodological suggestions from a set of classic and recent fieldwork accounts, the authors examine conceptions of serendipity and the ways that these conceptions become embedded in the processes by which we incorporate and embrace the temporal, relational, and analytical aspects of serendipity. The authors reject the perspective that it is the divine roll of the dice that determines serendipity and argue that serendipity is the interactive outcome of unique and contingent “mixes” of insight coupled with chance. A wide range of attempts to make sense of serendipity in sociology and anthropology are provided as exemplars of how planned insights coupled with unplanned events can potentially yield meaningful and interesting discovery in qualitative research.

Wittgenstein's kitchen: Sharing meaning in restaurant work

Talk is poetry: sociological poetry rhythmic webs of connotative meaning bound together within a social structural matrix. Meaning depends upon a community of shared understanding in which strings of lexical items are interpreted. When we talk about things we do not directly refer to the whole of our thought our language is necessarily imprecise and capable of variable interpretations. Garfinkels recognition of the presence of the etc. rule underlines that much of what we know we must leave unstated full explication is a never-ending process.1

Naturework and the taming of the wild : The problem of overpick in the culture of mushroomers

Although nature often has been treated as an unproblematic reality, I argue for treating it as a contested concept, suggesting that “nature” is a cultural construction. Drawing on interactionist and ecological theory, I claim that the creation of social problems involving the environment is inevitably grounded in cultural choices. Through a set of ideological structures (a protectionist vision, an organic vision, and a humanistic vision), social actors develop templates for understanding the proper relationship between humans and nature. Based on an ethnography of mushroom collecting, I contend that these models lead us to experience nature through cultural eyes – wishing to be away from civilization, to be at one with nature, and to engage in the pragmatic use of nature for personal ends. Conflicting stances toward nature account for debate over the moral acceptability of the commercial collection of mushrooms and the “problem” of overpick. Templates of human-environmental interaction, leading to models for experiencing the wild, provide the basis for understanding the conditions under which environmental change is defined as a social problem.

Credit and blame in ethnographic publishing

The question of preserving anonymity in data presentation is more complicated than has usually been assumed. While the standard rule has been to disguise the names and identity of one’s research subjects in order to protect them from potential blame by associates and strangers, such a strategy also prevents them from receiving credit. Circumstances may exist in which the disguise of research subjects is undesirable, particularly with their informed consent.