Players and Pawns: How Chess Builds Community and Culture

Fine, an ethnographer who has previously written about the cultures of restaurant work (Kitchens), Little League baseball (With the Boys), and high school debate (Gifted Tongues), among others, turns his attention to the world of competitive chess in a sociological study that examines people, rules, and techniques. The chess world, he asserts, is “built on clusters of tiny publics, wispy groups that appear for a pleasant weekend and vanish like the snow.” To dissect it, he draws on five years of field studies, conducted from 2006 to 2010, as well as 50 individual interviews. As Fine gets into the psychological tricks, the great personalities (e.g., Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov), and the legendary matches, he shows that chess is both a casual game and a serious business. “Chess reveals the power of a world to build a game and the power of a game to build a host of worlds,” he concludes. While this volume will be of most interest to the serious sociologist or ethnographer, Fine’s insights into the complexities of the game and its practitioners may prove useful to determined strategists and those interested in more deeply understanding the “game of kings.” [em](Aug.) [/em]