The Chessworld and Its Tiny Publics

Abstract

Chess, as a game and principle of organized social activity, has existed for nearly 1300 years. In Players and Pawns: How Chess Builds Community and Culture, Gary Alan Fine provides an ethnographic account of chess as a soft and sticky cultural activity that "drips with tradition and is laminated with meaning" (66). The theoretical backbone of this book explains community and culture by leaning heavily on metaphors of touch. Communities are "soft" when pure and simple devotion is the main requirement for entry and sustained membership. On the other hand, culture is "sticky" when devoted members share detailed understandings about styles of interaction, formal constraints, legendary moments, communal rankings or hierarchies, icons, and broad historical narratives (102-3; see also Fine 2013). A soft community with a sticky culture is cozy; through intense practice and study, individual devotees nestle themselves into a particular social activity and find comfort in their collectively shared values and experiences. Fine explores and substantiates his abstract concepts with rich references to organized chess competitions-though the theoretical concepts he introduces are still in need of further exploration and demarcation across leisurely and professional cultural practices. Through the use of tactile metaphors, communities can be conceived along a continuum of hardness and softness while cultures can be conceived similarly as stickier or slipperier.Fine's study draws upon 5 years of ethnographic observations within domains of chessic activity in New York City and Chicago, ranging from international competitions to those between scholastic players. These ethnographic observations are supplemented by 50 interviews with chess players from the United States and Canada, as well as an extensive review of the literature on chess. As a seasoned ethnographer and self-described outsider in this community, Fine unpacks local patterns of interaction unique to the "chessworld" while paying serious attention to the intersections of chess with other communities and institutions. The book's trajectory moves from considering the body of the player at the board to the institutional atmosphere that surrounds and impinges upon the chess community. More specifically, the chapters Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 41, Issue 3, pp. 418-420, ISSN: 0195-6086 print/1533-8665 online.