Group Pleasures: Collaborative Commitments, Narrative Gratification, and the Sociology of Fun

Group Pleasures: Collaborative Commitments, Narrative Gratification, and the Sociology of Fun

Gary Alan Fine
Séminaire scientifique de l'OSC - 15 avril 2016
  • Photo Beth Darbyshire, Hippy Hug (CC BY-NC-ND)Photo Beth Darbyshire, Hippy Hug (CC BY-NC-ND)

Séminaire scientifique de l'OSC 2015-2016

98 rue de l'Université 75007 Paris - salle Annick Percheron

vendredi 15 avril 2016 de 11h30 à 13h

Group Pleasures:
Collaborative Commitments, Narrative Gratification, and the Sociology of Fun

As a consequence of their size and fragility, small groups depend on cohesion. Central to the continuation of groups are occasions of hedonic pleasure that encourage attachment. These times are popularly labeled “fun.” While groupness can be seen as the cause of fun, we emphasize the effects of fun on group life, while recognizing that on occasion group leaders strategically generate fun. Shared pleasure, located in temporal and spatial affordances, creates the conditions for communal identification. Such moments serve as commitment devices building affiliation, modeling positive relations, and moderating interpersonal tension. Further, they encourage retrospective narration, providing an appealing past, an assumed future, and boundaries between the group and those outside. The rhetoric of fun produces interactional smoothness in the face of potential ruptures. Building on the authors’ field observations and on other ethnographies of group activity, we argue that the experience and recall of fun bolsters group formation, maintenance, and reproduction.

 

Gary Alan Fine
Gary Alan Fine
, John Evans Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, Department of Sociology, Chicago (USA).

 

Contact et inscription (registration): Marie Ferrazzini.

Gary Alan Fine animera un workshop pour les doctorants de Sciences Po le mercredi 20 avril (contact Juliette Galonnier). Professeur de renom aux Etats-Unis, Gary Fine a bâti sa réputation sur sa maîtrise de l'ethnographie. Il a travaillé sur des sujets de recherche très divers (les logiques de réputation, les rumeurs raciales en Amérique, le métier de météorologue, la profession de restaurateur, les équipes de Baseball, les collectionneurs de champignons, etc). Il sait se saisir de "petits" objets pour éclairer des processus sociaux plus larges, sans jamais se départir d'un certain sens de l'humour. Il a également siégé dans les editorial boards de plusieurs revues américaines.

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