FINE, Robert (David) 1948(?)-

(Bob Fine)

PERSONAL:

Born 1948 (one source says 1945); divorced. Education: Queen's College, Oxford, B.A. (first-class honors), 1967; Warwick University, Ph.D., 1990.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Warwick University, Department of Sociology, Coventry, West Midlands CV4 7AL, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Columbia University, New York, NY, research assistant in sociology, 1967-71; Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, New York, lecturer in sociology, 1971-73; Warwick University, Coventry, England, faculty member, 1973—, co-director and then director of Centre for Social Theory, 1996-2001, convener of the master's program in social and political thought, 1998—, chair of sociology department, 2002—.

MEMBER:

International Sociological Association, Amnesty International.

AWARDS, HONORS:

ESRC Research Seminar Award, 1997-98; ESRC Award, 2003-04.

WRITINGS:

Capitalism and the Rule of Law, Hutchinson (London, England), 1979.

(Editor, with Robert Millar; under name Bob Fine) Policing the Miners' Strike, Cobden Press (London, England), 1985.

(With Dennis Davis) Beyond Apartheid: Labour and Liberation in South Africa, Pluto Press (Concord, MA), 1990.

(Editor, with Shirin Rai) Civil Society: Democratic Perspectives, F. Cass (Portland, OR), 1997.

Being Stalked: A Memoir, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1997.

(Editor, with Edward Mortimer, and contributor) People, Nation, and State: The Meaning of Ethnicity and Nationalism, I. B. Tauris (London, England), 1999.

(Editor, with Charles Turner) Social Theory after the Holocaust, Liverpool University Press (Liverpool, England), 2000.

Political Investigations: Hegel, Marx, Arendt, Routledge (New York, NY), 2001.

Democracy and the Rule of Law: Marx's Critique of the Legal Form, Blackburn Press (Caldwell, NJ), 2002.

Member of editorial board, "European Social Theory" series for Liverpool University Press. Editor, Capital and Class, 1983-86, and Workers Liberty, 1983-91; associate editor, History Workshop Journal, 1986-90, Law Democracy and Development Journal, 1997-2001, and Historical Materialism, 1998—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sociologist Robert Fine has written and edited a number of books covering political philosophy, labor issues, and the law. He has also written a personal account of his experiences in being stalked by one of his students. Being Stalked: A Memoir dispels the general perception that only celebrities are stalked by potentially dangerous and delusional people. When one of Fine's own students inexplicably charged him with sexual misconduct, an investigation by his university revealed the complaint was unfounded. However, that was not the end of Fine's ordeal; the woman, called only "Mrs. M" in the book, pursued him relentlessly, stole his car, poisoned his dog, and continually accused him of destroying her life. Finally, in frustration, Fine had to resort to recording all of her actions and then turned to the courts, where he got an injunction to keep her away from him, ending two years of misery.

Being Stalked, noted critics, is a refreshing analysis of the stalking phenomenon in that it reads less "drily and dispassionately" than other books on the subject, according to Anthony Clare in a Times Literary Supplement review. After relating the facts behind his personal experience, Fine goes on to offer an analysis of why Mrs. M may have pursued him so relentlessly, although, in the end, he remains baffled as to why he was chosen as the victim. Clare concluded that Fine's is "an absorbing, informative and provocative analysis."

More typical of Fine's output, however, are books such as People, Nation, and State: The Meaning of Ethnicity and Nationalism, which he edited with Edward Mortimer, and Political Investigations: Hegel, Marx, Arendt. In the former, the editors organize the contributors' essays according to the topics of "ethnicity, nation, national identity, national self-determination and civic nationalism," according to Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies contributor Adeel Khan. Offering a balanced selection of differing points of view, the "result is an exciting intellectual exercise that will certainly force many to rethink their opinions on these issues," asserted Khan, with Fine's own essay being "the crown of this rewarding selection." In Political Investigations, Fine readdresses the writings of the renowned thinkers of the subtitle to argue for "a continuing dialectic which must be rooted in an understanding of the real rather than an ideal," according to Ian Craib in Capital & Class. Craib was especially impressed with Fine's analysis of Hegel's The Philosophy of Right, saying that the author offers "intriguing and provoking insights."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Capital & Class, autumn, 2002, Ian Craib, review of Political Investigations: Hegel, Marx, Arendt, p. 170.

Journal of Ethnic and Migrations Studies, April, 2001, Adeel Khan, review of People, Nation, and State: The Meaning of Ethnicity and Nationalism, p. 363.

Times Literary Supplement, October 30, 1998, Anthony Clare, "Pursued by Mrs. M," p. 13.*