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.For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin, I can get to the heart of all cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal. (James Joyce)In his provocative, transformative fashion, emphasizing the power of the local, James Joyce posed a challenge for thinking about society. For insights to be universal, they must be local first. This, of course, is the novelist's creed. Each story describes a scene, but each must brim with insight, convincing audiences that the act of reading is not voyeurism, but education. The places, the actions, and the persons depicted stand for more than themselves.In arguing for a sociology built on the local, I embrace the Joycean challenge: How does attention to the local create the conditions for general theoretical analysis? In some regards this confronts much of sociology, a discipline committed to examining how broad and unseen structural realities ("social facts") overwhelm or even erase the specific characteristics of place, identity, and apparent idiosyncrasies of group life. This is not to deny the presence of micro-sociology, but often micro-sociologists, just as macrosociologists, strive to discover transcendent forces or generic processes (Couch 1984;Prus 1987), relying on methodological individualism. Yet, the group represents a distinctive sociological meso-level of analysis, a level that too often

Small Groups as Context for Institutional Entrepreneurship: An Exploration of the Emergence of Commercial Microfinance in Bolivia

“…Building on this coincidence, the paper argues both for an inhabited conceptualization of institutional entrepreneurship as a group-instead of individual-bounded process and for the adoption of the small group (Fine, 1979), the prototype meso-level unit of analysis (Fine, 2010), when exploring individual engagement in institutional entrepreneurship. The adoption of an inhabited group-bounded conceptualization advances research in institutional entrepreneurship in at least two relevant ways.…”

“…interpersonal bonds) and distance (e.g. social status) their members (see also Fine, 2010). Groups can be of any size -a dyad qualifies and so does a baseball team (Fine, 2010; but they are small enough so that the individuals involved know each other as distinct individuals (Fine & Harrington, 2004).…”

“…social status) their members (see also Fine, 2010). Groups can be of any size -a dyad qualifies and so does a baseball team (Fine, 2010; but they are small enough so that the individuals involved know each other as distinct individuals (Fine & Harrington, 2004). Their boundaries and membership are fuzzy, but they have enough permanency so that, much like a "stage" (Fine, 2010, p. 356), groups provide a context which motivates, inspires, and enables engagement in institutional entrepreneurship.…”

Linking Group Theory to Social Science Game Theory: Interaction Grammars, Group Subcultures and Games for Comparative Analysis

“…Involvement concerns motivation, emotion, identification with the group and its agential, rule regime, and social structural features. The number in a group is not critically important except for the small numbers (2, 3, or 5) discussed by Simmel (1898) (but also, see Fine (2010Fine ( , 2012 concerning face-to-face interaction). More important is the varying frequency and qualities (for instance, multi-modal) of interaction which occur even in sizeable communities.…”

“…(b) Groups function in networks and larger organizations as nodes in clusters (Fine 2010). Moreover, these are segments of networks in which weak ties (secondary ties) may be replaced with a set of strong (and intimate) ties (primary).…”