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The sociology of the local: action and its publics.
Abstract
Sociology requires a robust theory of how local circumstances create social order. When we analyze social structures not recognizing that they depend on groups with collective pasts and futures that are spatially situated and that are based on personal relations, we avoid a core sociological dimension: the importance of local context in constituting social worlds. Too often this has been the sociological stance, both in micro-sociological studies that examine interaction as untethered from local traditions and in research that treats culture as autonomous from action and choice. Building on theories of action, group dynamics, and micro-cultures, I argue that a sociology of the local solves critical theoretical problems. The local is a stage on which social order gets produced and a lens for understanding how particular forms of action are selected. Treating ethnographic studies as readings of ongoing cultures, I examine how the continuing and referential features of group life (spatial arenas, relations, shared pasts) generate action and argue that local practices provide the basis for cultural extension, influencing societal expectations through the linkages among groups.
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“Groups of all sizes have cultures, and these cultures are shared – within reason – providing individual members with a sense of who they are, what they are supposed to feel, think, and do under various conditions, and what it means to belong to that group (Fine, 2010).”
From The Social Roots of Suicide: Theorizing How the External Social World Matters to Suicide and Suicide Prevention (2021) · cites this paper as Fine, 2010
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Metadata
- Authors
- Fine, G. A.
- Affiliations
- Northwestern University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Fine, Gary Alan
- ORCID
- Fine, Gary Alan
- Venue
- Sociological Theory
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-11-17
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 355-376
- ISSN
- 0735-2751 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9558
- OpenAlex
- W2081793073
- Cited by
- 181
- References
- 162
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 28.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Sociological Theory (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
- Keywords
- local context, social order, collective action, group dynamics, microculture, spatiality, interpersonal relationships, shared past, cultural extension, social structure, ethnography, philosophy of action
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