University of Chicago Press
Joy to the World
Über dieses Buch
A celebration and exploration of the idea of pleasure and the unique role it serves in bringing individuals and communities together.
There are innumerable ways to take pleasure in life: a bite of cake in the late afternoon, a walk in the warm springtime air after a long winter, a listen to the opening chords of your favorite song. But each of these pleasures is transformed by the presence of others. In Joy to the World, sociologist Gary Alan Fine takes up one of the major themes of his lifetime of work: pleasure. Fine gives us the conceptual basis for a sociology of pleasure: a joyous view of the world that, at times, inspires us, through expectations of interaction, shared cultures, and routine practices that make life worth living in community.
Fine focuses on the impact of group relations as the platform for satisfaction, emphasizing the power of communities of practice. While pleasures may be enjoyed alone, the pleasure that occurs in social spaces performs a unique function in our personal and social lives; they help us understand ourselves as individuals who are part of a group. What is pleasurably transgressive in one context might seem inappropriate, cruel, or just plain nonsensical in another, and these shades of difference serve to solidify the bonds of the group.
Joy to the World urges us to understand what draws us together as well as to appreciate what drives us apart. Our joys, as well as our challenges, help us to be a part of a caring, conscientious, committed community.
Rezensionen
Over the course of a celebrated career, Gary Alan Fine has analyzed the seemingly mundane to reveal the crucial patterns, processes, and forms that produce social life in all its richness and complexity. In Joy to the World, hecontinues advancing this ambitious line of research by developing a comprehensive sociological account of pleasure. Challenging the all-too-common tendency to focus on conflict and social problems, Fine deftly investigates the ways in which joy, happiness, and fun depend on sociability, shared allegiance, and group cultures. The book is a delight, nimbly navigating fascinating sociological territory, and it will serve as crucial reading for those interested in understanding how pleasure emerges from the interaction order.
— John Nathaniel Parker, University of OsloGary Alan Fine, master chronicler of small group interaction, expands his focus to theorize how macro-cultures engender and structure human pleasure, exploring its sociality. This is not a case study, but rather a powerful and original exercise of grand theory that will attract broad and well-deserved attention.
Joy to the World invites us to take pleasure seriously—not as a private indulgence, but as a fundamentally social achievement. Without denying pleasure’s sharper edges, Fine offers a profound corrective to sociology’s longstanding preoccupation with suffering and constraint, illuminating how even the most seemingly mundane encounters, from workplace banter to the rhythms of leisure, can generate the electric charge of collective experience. In a lively ethnographic romp through small group cultures, Fine draws on his own decades of fieldwork and that of fellow scholars to show how sociality produces joy—the animating force that makes life worth living.
— Hannah Wohl, author of 'Bound by Creativity How Contemporary Art Is Created and Judged'