Table of Contents

Introduction: A Mesoworld

1. Coordination: The Dynamics of Collaboration and Commitment

2. Relations: Friendship and the Politics of Sociability

3. Association: Bonding, Banding, and Bridging

4. Place: Performance and Solidarity

5. Conflict: Scratching Consensus’s Veneer

6. Control: Patrolling Civil Society

7. Extensions: Tiny Publics and Distant Worlds

Conclusion: Circuits of Action

Afterword: The COVID Hinge
  Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Gary Alan Fine is the James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. He has written many books, including, most recently Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture and Players and Pawns: How Chess Builds Community and Culture, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
 

Reviews

"Fine’s new book… offers a theoretically informed research agenda for thinking about the local in a social media saturated global world. It is compelling [and] well written, and [it] opens up a range of new possibilities for research."
*Symbolic Interactions*

"The Hinge takes up an ambitious task and delivers a formidable response; it successfully situates the mesolevel at the center of the classic macro-micro puzzle of sociology. . . With The Hinge, Fine has equipped the platoon of small group scholars with a powerful set of tools that will serve them well as they continue to advance the front line."
*Contemporary Sociology*

"Gary Alan Fine’s The Hinge: Civil Society, Group Cultures, and the Power of Local Commitments develops a set of analytical tools for meso-level analysis of collective behavior. The work registers the constitutive nature of micro and macro phenomena via group dynamics—what he terms 'the hinge.' While not dismissing earlier approaches, Fine successfully substantiates the importance of the unique interactive processes that occur when individuals come together."
*Mobilization*