Gary Alan Fine

Prof. Fine's major mark has been on ethnography, where he has articulate a symbolic interactionist approach in twelve different studies of occupational (e.g. meteorologists, chefs, artists) and avocational (Little League teams, mushroom hunters) social worlds, in the process articulating an influential theory of cultural production, use and change in small groups. In his social psychological work, he has contributed significantly to the study of historical reputation and collective memory (studies of John Brown, Henry Ford, Warren Harding, Strom Thurmond) and to the study of rumor and gossip (focusing on the impact of racially segregated networks on rumor transmission and on the transnational circulation of rumors.