Organ theft from unwitting tourists, elaborate conspiracy theories about the government, contaminated food from the third world, volatile viruses spread by immigrants--these are the sorts of reports that flow swiftly through the rumour mills of contemporary Western society, and are the subject of The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter by Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis.
One would be hard pressed to think of two scholars who are better suited to have written a book on this topic. Fine’s numerous books and articles in rumor studies have established him as a significant voice in the field. And Ellis’ extensive work on rumor (and its related form legend) serves him extremely well here. A reader knowing the earlier work of these scholars could easily ascertain who is penning which section, but the volume does not suffer from a jarring unevenness that is typical of so many co-authored books. That is to say, Global Grapevine is collaboratively well-edited, with a unity of style and tone that effectively ties together its various sub-topics.
There is no question that the world is becoming a smaller place through the process of globalization, but, as the authors demonstrate forcefully, there still exits a nagging and profound fear of anything perceived as foreign. That sense of “stranger danger,” as it has been termed, is the driving force of many rumors about terrorism, immigration, international trade, and tourism.
The authors effectively situate their exemplary texts historically and culturally. For instance, Fine and Ellis explore a rumor complex known as “the Grateful Terrorist,” told retrospectively about a woman who had been warned by her Arab boyfriend to avoid air travel on September 11--or told about an Arab man who repays a good Samaritan’s small kindness with a cryptic bit of cautionary advice (like avoiding shopping malls on Halloween or warning the Samaritan not to drink Coca-Cola products after July 3rd). As poignant (and widespread) as these stories may have been in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the authors show that variants had circulated years earlier in Great Britain and concerned forewarnings about attacks of the Irish Republican Army. In this sense, Fine and Ellis demonstrate how some older rumor types and motifs are re-packaged and updated to fit current events.
Moreover, rumor-mongering at the municipal level can galvanize the social fears of a community. Fine and Ellis explore the case of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, whose population had declined for years, until the opening of a meat processing plant there in 2002 initiated a significant influx of Latino immigrants looking for work. Long time residents saw it as something of an invasion; rumors (regarding the supposed criminal activity of the recent immigrants) soon began to spread and fuelled ethnic tension in the community. The rumors became “scripts for violence” (103) when the apprehensions erupted into a street brawl that left an undocumented Latino youth dead. This kind of contextualization of rumor is illuminating--and to their credit, Fine and Ellis provide lots of it. Their study extends to other rumor cycles on sensational topics like white slavery, human organ theft, child abduction, and spider-infested houseplants.
Many American rumor cycles, Fine and Ellis claim, emanate from ignorance and fear about foreigners (exacerbated in recent years with the economic anxieties resulting from the widespread relocation of U.S. manufacturing to the third world). Rumors about department store snakes, spiders in bananas, and urine in imported Mexican beer all attest to the apprehensions that emerge when commercial interests collide with cultural difference. Like oil and water, the exotic and domestic do not always mix easily--and the rumors give expression to that fact. The authors offer ample analysis in this arena, much of it insightful, but the book falls into a kind of cultural near-sightedness in its fixation on rumor dynamics solely in the U.S.
Attempting perhaps to mitigate such criticism pre-emptively, the authors stipulate early in their introduction: “In this book, we often speak of Americans, although some of the examples are from European sources and much of the analysis applies to Western nations generally” (2). But readers interested in the relationship between rumor and globalization may well wonder how rumors about trade, immigration, and terrorism function in other Western nations like Canada and Mexico, or in places farther afield like China, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or India, for example. For all its strengths, Global Grapevine remains limited in this aspect: it is, on the whole, a book of American material reflecting American sensibilities.
That said, Global Grapevine is well-couched in classic rumor scholarship (Allport and Postman, Shibutani, e.g.) and in the work of current theorists like Campion-Vincent, although the book does not appreciably advance rumor theory. To be fair, establishing a new definitive theory for rumor study never appears to be a goal of the authors. Where Fine and Ellis truly shine is in their rigorous application of the existing theory, with salient contemporary case studies that interrogate the social uses of rumor in a world whose borders are dissolving because of interconnected global commerce and advanced technology.
The authors certainly substantiate their premise that “spreading rumors and legends is a fundamentally political act with the power to alter social structures.” National security in the face of global terrorism, immigration reform, and international trade policies is a current hot-button political issue in the American election year--bearing out what Fine and Ellis have set forth, that rumors on these subjects do indeed matter.
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[Review length: 905 words • Review posted on October 3, 2012]