Randall Collins

Seit Mitte der er Jahre stehen situationistische Ansätze in der Gewaltforschung hoch im Kurs. Das gilt in ganz besonderem Maße für die deutsche Soziologie. Die verstärkte Hinwendung zur genauen Analyse von Gewaltsituationen und ihrer inneren Dynamik hat zu Erkenntnissen geführt, die durch eine noch so gekonnte Kombinatorik statistisch erfassbarer Faktoren undenkbar gewesen wären. Die vorliegende Intervention in die laufende Debatte zum situationistischen Paradigma speist sich derweilen aus der Beobachtung, dass sich dieses in jüngerer Zeit vermehrt zu Vereinseitigungen und Verzerrungen hat hinreißen lassen. Die entsprechenden Entwicklungen in der Gewaltforschung möchte ich hier einer kritischen Betrachtung unterziehen. Ich gehe in drei Schritten vor. Zunächst werde ich mich in begri sklärender Absicht der Frage zuwenden, was überhaupt eine situationistische Erklärung von Gewalt ist. Sodann möchte ich unter Rekurs auf Gewaltphänomene, mit denen ich mich in der eigenen Forschung beschä igt habe, einige Hinweise dazu geben, weshalb situationistische Ansätze zwar unverzichtbar, aber auch unvollständig sind. Schließlich gehe ich anhand einiger prominenter Theorieansätze der neueren Gewaltforschung näher auf die Verkürzungen und Irrwege des Situationismus ein. Was ist eine situationistische Erklärung von Gewalt? Situationistische Ansätze befassen sich mit dem physischen Gewalthandeln selbst, nicht oder zumindest nicht primär mit Gewaltursachen, die häufig weit außerhalb des Gewaltgeschehens liegen. Solche Gewaltursachen wären etwa solche, die in der Sozialisation der Akteure begründet liegen, auf strukturelle Spannungen im System sozialer Ungleichheiten zurückgehen oder in gewalta nen kulturellen Orientierungen ihren Ursprung haben. Als weitere Bestimmung lässt sich angeben, dass der Gegenstand situationistischer Erklärungen Gewalthandlungen sind, nicht quantitative Verteilungen solcher Handlungen oder gewalt

Das Familienleben ist immer noch von hohen Gewaltraten gekennzeichnet, obwohl Gewalt nun gesellschaftlich weitgehend geächtet und rechtlich sanktioniert wird. Wie sich elterliche Gewalt gegen ihre Kinder sowie Gewalt zwischen Partnern und Partnerinnen durch strukturelle Bedingungen und interaktive Dynamiken in der Familie erklären lassen, wird vor dem Hintergrund der existierenden, meist hochspezifischen und nur deskriptiven Literatur erörtert. Insbesondere soll aufgezeigt werden, warum es durchaus zutreffend ist, von einem "strukturell angelegten Gewaltpotential in Familien" zu sprechen; es wurzelt in ihrer Generationen- und Geschlechterordnung.

Family life is still characterized by a high rate of violence, although violent behavior has largely become socially despised and legally sanctioned. How parental violence against their children and violence between partners can be explained by structural conditions and interactive dynamics in the family is discussed against the backdrop of existing literature that tends to be only descriptive and to specialize in quite insulated aspects. In particular, it will be shown why the notion of a "structural potential for violence in families" is justified; this potentially violent structure of the family is rooted in its generational and gender orders.

Short-term mission trips (STMs) are service trips, typically lasting from one week to a few months, which entails an individual travelling to a distant place to engage in a type of voluntary social service, often in tandem with proselytization. Given the rapid increase of STMs since the 1980s, they have arguably become a rite of passage for devout evangelicals. In an age where conservative congregations are looking to stave off the threat of secularism for its next generation, STMs have been regarded one of the most compelling religious experiences available to its laity.

While many have studied second-generation Chinese Christians in North America, few have examined this population from a transnational frame. My multi- sited ethnography follows four STM teams deployed to China by Chinese evangelical churches from across Canada in 2015. One STM sending congregation in the Greater Toronto Area was also observed for almost two years. The research participants are highly religious Chinese Canadians, most being second-generation children of Cantonese Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. Many have limited mastery of the Chinese language and little knowledge of their ethnic homeland. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted before the STM, immediately after the STM, and a year after the STM.

This paper examines the STM’s impact upon the short-term missionaries’ (STMers) sense of social solidarity, broadly defined. I specifically interrogate the intersections of their religious (i.e. evangelicalism), ethnic (i.e. “Chinese”), and national (i.e. “Canadian”) identities by examining how they give meaning to their STM experiences. I accomplish this by applying the theoretical tools from the sociology of emotion’s interaction ritual chains theory by Randall Collins that follows the microsociological lineage of Durkheim and Goffman.

My findings reveal that the second generation negotiate complex meanings to their transnational STM experiences. Several interconnected contradictions emerge. First, being in China, the participants are forced to negotiate their Chinese and Canadian identities; that is, to come to decide the extent they are Chinese or not- Chinese. This is relevant given previous scholarship has identified ethnic identification to be an important variable to one’s religiosity. Second, while claiming solidarity with local Chinese Christians under the global umbrella of Christendom, they struggle to come to terms with their Canadian socioeconomic privilege when juxtaposed with the people they seek to serve abroad. Third, despite the STMers’ desire to ‘experience God’ to strengthen their faith, this motivation is inherently based on modern Enlightenment values of empirical verification.

While fun is linked to positive engagement and inclusive community, we explore the connection between fun and cruelty, arguing that acts of aggression and humiliation can also provide pleasurable hedonic experience. In this, we extend the sociological analysis of emotions, emphasizing that emotion work that is broadly rejected can be accepted and desired within the boundaries of local culture as long as interactional commitments exist. These acts, requiring the social support that groups provide, rely on a commitment to cohesion. By examining descriptive accounts of gang activity, bullying, hooliganism, political violence, and military brutality, different in degree of hostility, but similar in rejecting norms of acceptable behavior, we formulate the concept of "dark fun." In these cases that reveal the establishment of hierarchies of power, the ability to make victims suffer establishes the authority of the group, coupled with the low probability that victims will respond in the situation. However, this rejection of consensual norms occurs in sites of emotional heating. What is deviant in the wider society reveals group belonging. To this end, we advance a meso-level theory of hedonic cruelty that draws on features of group affiliation based on collective effervescence, local commitments, and moral ordering.

"Imaginative constructionism" - in many ways this concept is similar to that proposed by Mills “sociological imagination”, also to “sociological eye” proposed by Collins only without reference to the substantive scope of sociology and therefore somewhat more abstract. Besides, as suggested by constructionists, everything we consider as real and valuable, is a product of social exchange, coordination and interaction. Thus constuctionism focuses not on the individual, but on the interaction and conversational symbolism. I will try to show in this paper how the theory of symbolic interactionism is woven into the imaginative constructionism of Randall Collins, and what are further perspectives of this position.
One of the universal theories, allowing more or less convincingly answer the question
            about what keeps people together and why this mechanism works is the theory of emotional solidarity. About this mechanism in his works speaks Durkheim. His ideas have continued and rethinking in the theories of Randall Collins. According to Randall Collins all society consists of a series of interactive rituals. Thus, he concludes that social communication creates a basic repertoire of ideas and involves emotions, cultural capital and personal reputation. These are micro resources which lead to macro consequences because they affect the way repetitive encounters are organized. 
According to the existential theory of Heidegger the basic human’s emotion is anxiety – an intuitive concern about the extent of a man’s involvement into society that leads to imaginatively generated images and ideas of others. Imagined communities, which include music and football fans, Internet communities etc, produce emotional group solidarity. And at the same time they are a kind of cure for doubt in the society existence. The process of marking its own presence in virtual networks, or the permanent holding of the mobile phones, from the perspective of symbolic interactionism is a visual representation of self in a "standby call." In this way imagined communities are visual symbols of belonging to society and the denial of social inattention by the demonstration of the permanent inclusion. Participation in social networks is a modern way of ritual interaction without the physical presence of people. It is similar with vicarious intellectual rituals such as reading, thinking, writing, listening which lead intellectuals to a specific kind of emotional energy – creativity. 
The main feature of the imaginative constructionism of Randall Collins is the emphasis on the emotional component of the interactive ritual chains occurring on the micro level that shape the social structure on the macro and are represented by repetitive microsituations. And if we want go further in developing social theory we have to investigate the dynamics of the situations including its timing and rhythm.

Chapter 13: Emotions in Sports Stadia1 Mike S. Schäfer and Jochen Roose The ball changed possession, moving fast from one end of the field to the other. The tension mounted; it became almost unbearable. People forgot where they were standing. They were pushed, and ...

جاء كتاب بونغيه في أغلبه جدليا وأحيانا متفردا بالرأي، لكن بونغيه قدم فيه بوضوح رؤية عقلانية ومعتدلة حول صناعة المعرفة العلمية، وبالمقابل تصوره أين صُنع التطور الأمثل للعلم الاجتماعي، وأين تقع عوائقه، بطريقة إقناعية، وفي كل الأحوال جاء الكتاب مغازلا لعلماء الاجتماع، وهو سبب كاف لتحقيق أفضل تلق لكتابه.

This introduction to a special issue outlines the significance of Randall Collins’s contribution to sociology. The first section briefly reviews Collins’s main books and assesses their impact on social science. The second section offers a summary overview of the papers that comprise the special issue.

В работе исследуется теория ритуалов интеракций с точки зрения её внутренней (теоретической) и внешней (эмпирической) непротиворечивости. Рассматриваются эмпирические исследования, подтверждающие достоверность и применимость в социологических исследованиях теории ритуалов интеракций Р. Коллинза.
Также был проведен линейный эксперимент с целью изучения феномена сплетен как нерешенной социологической проблемы. Эксперимент проектировался в соответствии с постулатами теории ритуалов интеракций, поэтому его результаты позволяют оценить эмпирическую непротиворечивость теории. Демонстрируется возможность использования метода спектрального анализа аудиозаписей, разработанного Стэнфордом Грегори для измерения уровня речевой синхронии, для интерпретации качества взаимодействия. Полученные результаты полностью согласуются с теорией ритуалов интеракций. Таким образом, автор приходит к заключению об эмпирической непротиворечивости теории ритуалов интеракций.

Violence was a key element of the interwar radical habitus and was particularly affirmed in far-right movements, which found fertile ground for their ideas among students. However, the influence of the systems of ideas advocated by ideologues on student masses seems limited and indirect. Student support for antisemitism and extremism cannot be explained only by cultural conditions, ideology or political engineering. What is needed here are intermediate stages, linking radical ideology with the actions of social actors. I argue that the intermediary function was performed by the symbol of Stanisław Wacławski, a student and member of the Camp of Great Poland (Obóz Wielkiej Polski) who was killed during the antisemitic riots in Vilnius in 1931. The figure of Wacławski was a key element of antisemitic discourse in far-right press and was used by academic societies to construct the annual ritual of violence in the 1930s. I employ the micro-sociological approach and draw on Randall Collins’ theory of “interaction ritual chains” to show that the factors behind the mobilization of ordinary students for collective violence and a chauvinistic agenda included also emotions and personal relations, and not only political identification and advertising.

¿Qué son las Teorías de la Reproducción? La investigación parte de una pregunta a la que se pretende dar respuesta con el primer capítulo teórico, "De las Teorías de la Reproducción a las de la Resistencia". Este, como su propio nombre indica, se subdivide a su vez en dos grandes segmentos: "Teorías de la Reproducción" y "El paso a la resistencia".

A lo largo del primero, se desarrollará la línea de pensamiento sostenida por los autores más relevantes de las Teorías de la Reproducción. Será, así, revisada la obra de Louis Althusser, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron, Christian Baudelot, Roger Establet, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis y Randall Collins. De igual forma, se estudiará el nexo común a todos ellos: el concepto de reproducción planteado por Karl Marx.

Seguidamente, en "El paso a la resistencia" se recogen las principales propuestas que argumentan las Teorías de la Resistencia. Estas son sintetizadas en el discurso de Henry Giroux y Paulo Freire, quienes ejercen, a su vez, como portavoces del discurso de las Pedagogías Críticas. Para concluir este apartado, que es también el cierre del primer capítulo de la investigación, se expone el proyecto "Pedagogías Invisibles" como muestra ilustrativa del giro artístico tomado por las Pedagogías Críticas en la actualidad.

El segundo capítulo, "Propuesta didáctica", supone la aplicación práctica del marco teórico desarrollado hasta el momento. Se trata de una actividad que, bajo el título They Live, propone cubrir los contenidos del segundo bloque de la asignatura Cultura Audiovisual I del Bachillerato por la modalidad de Arte. Esta desarrolla su labor desde los planteamientos de la educación expandida, por lo que herramientas como el porfolio web y dispositivos tipo smartphone jugarán un papel fundamental en su aplicación. Dicha metodología se une a un proceder que no se limita a las paredes del aula, sino que prevé varias salidas del centro y que culmina, finalmente, con la organización por parte de los alumnos de su propia exposición; muestra que será planteada para la Sala 5 del centro de arte contemporáneo de Salamanca Da2 Domus Artium.

The study of sport spectatorship has an increasing focus on the importance of fandom beyond fan violence. Fundamental to understanding fan behavior are the meaningful rituals and emotions experienced by fans. In this paper, I use the theoretical work of Randall Collins to examine the ritualistic outcomes of collective effervescence, emotional energy, and group symbols and solidarity among sport fans. I illustrate these concepts using case study data from participant observation of fans of a U.S. football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and content analysis of news articles. I extend Collins’ interaction ritual (IR) theory by taking the group as the unit of analysis and analyzing group solidarity beyond situational interactions and typical sport settings, including the significant life events of weddings and funerals. While critiquing Collins’ (2004) a priori portrayal of sports fans, the analysis advances IR theory, improving its utility for understanding sports fan behavior.

The paper tries to go beyond Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of ‘habitus’ toward a reconstruction of the theory of practice based on the concepts of repetition and exercise taken from the work of the German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk. We first sketch the main contours of Bourdieu’s conception of habitus and look beyond theoretical critiques to a diverse ensemble of empirical studies employing his ideas in different, albeit creative, ways. We then illustrate the basic elements of an alternative point of view on practice starting from Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life, with two brief detours on the work of Thomas Aquinas and Randall Collins. It is our conviction that our proposal not only incorporates some of the recurring critiques to ‘orthodox’ habitus theory, but it also (a) admits the possibility of losing one’s dispositions should they not be exercised on a regular basis, (b) incorporates temporality as as a crucial variable, and (c) makes room for individual (and maybe collective) reflexivity. While this paper is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to make sociological sense of Sloterdijk’s philosophy of askesis, in its fourth section we survey some pieces of empirical research in psychology, history, and sociology which adumbrate his suggestions, and conclude drawing some lines of theoretical and empirical development.

This paper analyzes Ortega's contributions to the sociology of philosophy. It begins by explaining the historical circumstances in which our author wrote. Subsequently, his innovations are presented in relation to problems dealt with by Althusser, Skinner, Collins, or Bourdieu. Thus, it is proposed that Ortega produces innovations in the conception of careers in philosophy, in how ideas are articulated in local contexts, in the vision of the temporality of philosophy and in the critical vision of scholasticism.

In search of a way of living sustainably, the sharing economy is seen as a promising route. This new phenomenon can be perceived as an increasingly popular group of practices that is not so much characterised by old and familiar ways of sharing, but by the exchange of goods and services between individuals and businesses via online WEB 2.0 platforms. Even though the sharing economy is regarded as promising for sustainability, many of the practices that are grouped under it (e.g. AirBnB and Uber) also seem to have negative impacts on people, planet and profit – the triple bottom line of sustainability. Furthermore, it is unclear how these practices will develop in the near future. In order to address these issues, this study proposes a more detailed study of participation in practices of the sharing economy. Drawing on theories of practice, it analyses how the relationship between practices of the sharing economy and the people engaging in them evolves over time. Two cases are addressed in particular: car sharing via MyWheels, and lending and borrowing items via Peerby. The analysis of those practices is based on in-depth interviews and the researcher’s participation. Conclusions address the trajectory of the interplay between these two practices and their practitioners, which provides new insights into the sharing economy as a whole.

This thesis explores how a pragmatic theory of violence can be developed within Luc Boltanski’s sociology of regimes of action positioned in the overall framework of French pragmatic sociology. The thesis takes its outset in Boltanski’s approximate outline of a regime of violence presented in Love and Justice as Competences (2012) and points out a number of conceptual ambiguities in Boltanski’s regime of violence. The conceptual ambiguities are then discussed and clarified through an integration of Jan Philip Reemtsma’s phenomenological distinction between locative-, raptive-, and autotelic violence. This distinction denotes violence as a non-consensual, primarily, physical assault on another’s body (2012). Overall, the thesis combines French pragmatic sociology with German sociology of violence in order to emphasize our shared understandings and ways of evaluating forms, things and persons in violence. In this relation, the thesis introduces two basic human competences of violence: ‘the competence of evaluating force potentials’ and ‘the competence of evaluating vulnerability of the body’. Methodologically, the thesis mirrors elements of Boltanski’s methodological strategies used to develop the regime of justice and love in order to formalize the principles that can be said to structure a model of a regime of violence based on the distinction between locative-, raptive-, and autotelic violence. The thesis then centers on the important twilight between violence and justice by emphasizing an understanding of different forms, elements and zones of violence in relation to Boltanski’s theoretical model in On Justification and to the concept of the state monopoly on violence. Finally, the thesis presents four empirical case studies of violence as presented in different records of judgement from recent Danish trials, which are then “confronted” with the (extended) regime of violence, after which the “fitness” of the theory and the ambiguity of some of the concepts are discussed.

Randall Collins is coming to the theory of conflict as a model that describes the diversity of the social world and, at the same time includes all of its variety. I’m going to show how conflict theory is applicable to different levels of social interaction in everyday life. In particular, I will focus on mediated kinds of conflicts that occur on-line and off-line. Given the wide distribution of mediated interaction, it is necessary to compare the mechanisms of interaction face to face in everyday life and the mechanisms of solidarity and emotional energy production while communicating through electronic media. Speaking about the interaction at the micro level, we are faced with a number of similar patterns. Solidarity, produced by making "friendship" on social networks can easily lead to conflicts of dominance similar to those that occur in small groups. Analyzing the features of the mediated network interaction, Randall Collins finds that such communication is not a substitute for bodily face-to-face interaction, but only supplements it. In addition, he notes that the degree of emotional solidarity that arises in this kind of interaction is much lower than those constitutes the social movements that have in its core bodily interaction. Separating these types of conflicts as a ‘virtual’ and ‘violent’ in this paper, we’ll try to pay attention to the similarities and differences in the effects of these kinds of conflicts.

Key words: virtual conflict, Randall Collins, solidarity, emotional energy, mediated interactions

The present article develops a new approach to intellectual history and sociology of knowledge. Its point of departure is to investigate the conditions under which social thinkers assume the iconic reputation. What does it take to become ‘a founding father’ of a humanistic discipline? How do social thinkers achieve the status of a trans-disciplinary star? Why some intellectuals attract tremendous attention and ‘go down in history’ despite personal and professional failures, while others enjoy only limited recognition or simply sink into oblivion, even if they have met all the standards of their day? Quite a few sociologists have tackled this elusive issue. Pierre Bourdieu, Michele Lamont and Randall Collins are among those who fleshed out strong explanatory frameworks. This project adds to this body of knowledge by emphasizing cultural factors that these authors downplayed in their seminal accounts, despite being aware of their significance. By showing why these underdeveloped aspects of their works need to be incorporated into the debate and how this can be achieved, this article introduces a new theorization of the iconic, lasting intellectual reputation substantiated by evidence from the lifeworks of Bronislaw Malinowski and Michel Foucault. As such, it aims, minimally, to make sociology of knowledge decisively ‘cultural’. Maximally, it seeks to demonstrate that the iconic success of intellectual intervention in social theory depends on carefully performed and contingently mediated engagement with the binary systems of symbolic classification.

Платонистская установка, столь привычная и, вероятно, по-своему полезная для практикующих математику, должна быть поставлена под вопрос в философии математики по следующей причине. Математический платонизм заслоняет сложнейшую онтологическую проблему специфики математических объектов и специфики их пресловутого "упрямства", заставляющего отвергнуть их рядоположенность другим объектам воображения, с которыми мы можем обращаться произвольно. Если платонистский мир математики существует так же, как мир частиц, волн и полей для физика, мир веществ для химика и мир животных для зоолога, то проблем нет — просто учись входить в этот мир (читай: учись математике) и исследуй выбранную область.
Другой сомнительной стороной математического платонизма является его плохая совместимость с историей математики. В последней более или менее хорошо осознаны большие этапы создания крупных частей математического знания. Платонизм же подразумевает только обнаружение предсуществующего.
Проблема состоит в том, как вырваться из крепких объятий платонизма, не утеряв при этом неоспоримую реальность "упрямства" математических объектов.

This paper explores the ways nationalism has been theorised in classical and contemporary sociology. More specifically, the author analyses the relevance of Randall Collins’s contribution to theories of nationalism. Since Collins’s work is firmly rooted in the classical tradition, including the reinterpretation and synthesis of Weber, Durkheim and Goffman, the first part of this paper zooms in on the classics of sociology and their treatment of nations and nationalism. The second part of the paper outlines the key features of Collins’s approach and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of this position. The final part builds on the footsteps of Collins and others to articulate an alternative approach focused on the coercive organisational, ideological and microinteractional grounding of nationalisms.

Collaborative circles theory explains how innovative small groups develop and win acceptance of their creative work but assumes a single type of circle and would benefit from considering how circles are affected by the strategic action fields in which they operate. We do so by synthesizing research on art, science, philosophy, and social movements to identify five field characteristics that influence circles and their creative potentials (i.e., attention space, consensus, social control, resources, and organizational and geographical contexts). We then use primary and secondary data on science circles (the Resilience Alliance and Phage Group), combined with previous research on circles and group creativity, to show how field-level differences explain systematic variations in the structure and dynamics of art and science circles. We close by arguing that there exists of a family of circles operating in different fields, formulating a refined definition of circles, and postulating four propositions informing future research. Small groups, such as collaborative circles, float at the " meso " level of social life, and they are often ignored by sociologists who theorize at the macro level of class, culture, and social movements, as well as by those who theorize at the micro level of the individual. —Michael P. Farrell (2008:3)

When is small talk big talk? That is to say, what does our everyday microlevel experience tell us about macrolevel causal variables that form a part of the traditional ‘sociological agenda’—such as race, class, or gender? My view is that our everyday experience, and the microelements that constitute the orderliness of everyday encounters, can tell us quite a lot about whatever is represented by the otherwise abstract terms race, class, or gender. In fact, I argue that all these terms represent is a whole host of patterned encounters located in a situation, somewhere, between persons.

This paper focuses primarily on talk. I aim to show that talk, even small talk, can provide a plausible link between everyday interactional encounters and the traditional macrovariables that sociologists have traditionally been interested in.

I draw upon Randall Collins’s concept of microtranslation (Collins 1987) and Emanuel Schegloff’s orientation-to principle (Schegloff 1999) to make my case. First, I claim that Collins’s concept of microtranslation of macrostructures to the their everyday situational concepts is key to understanding the link between the micro and macro world. If macrolevel phenomena like gender, race, and class exist, then we can show (empirically) that they exist through their display in the production of local social reality in which people engage in during everyday experience. Microtranslation cashes out macrolevel phenomena by translating them into what Collins refers to as the real macrovariables: numbers, time, and space. How many encounters take place? How long are they for, and what patterns emerge through repeated encounters (if any)? Finally, where do they take place physically? Notions of race, class, or gender are metaphors until we can precisely map out their microconstitutive elements. From this microtranslational view, the empirically demonstrable aggregation of these local interactions simply is race, class, or gender.

In this paper we consider two approaches to the understanding of intellectual creativity. The first one is based on N. Berdyaev’s  view on  philosophical creativity  as an object of personal mental production of ideas, which requires independence from the social environment, but includes a universal phenomenon as a part of the personal. As a second approach, there is a proposed by Randall Collins theory of interactive rituals.

How are boundaries between sexual identities constructed and maintained through interaction? I draw on ethnographic observation in Philadelphia gay bars popular among heterosexual patrons and supplemental interviews with young gay-identifying club-goers to illuminate how men make situational claims to gay space by drawing distinctions between who ‘belongs’ in gay bars and who does not through interaction. Conceptualizing gay space as a collectively accomplished ‘mesh’ of particular interaction rituals, I find that men activated membership boundaries when presumably straight women's nightlife rituals were perceived to threaten the continued production of gay space by ‘straightening’ it. Men did not enact boundaries when straight women energized men's rituals with positive emotional energy and contributed to a bar's collective ‘gay’ feeling. Broadly, these findings suggest that the generation of shared emotions across groups in spaces with contested meaning or function helps determine the salience of boundaries.

Does the experience of cultural consumption have its own sui generis attraction and
value in itself, or is it an index of external social ranking? Four criteria are proposed
that are observable in microsociological detail: (1) bodily self-absorption in the cultural
experience, creating an intense internal interaction ritual; (2) collective effervescence
among the audience; (3) Goffmanian front-stage self-presentation in settings of cultural
consumption; and (4) verbal discourse during and around the cultural experience. Data
from highly committed opera fanatics in Buenos Aires are used to document the extreme
pole of cultural consumption that rejects external social hierarchies in favor of pure musical
experience. This individualized and internal style of music consumption resembles religious
mysticism, and what Weber in his typology of orientations to religious experience called
virtuoso religiosity, as distinct from typical social class orientations to religion and to music.

W artykule porównuję trzy koncepcje dotyczące dystrybuowania idei – memetyczną, autorstwa Richarda Brodiego; antropologiczną, stworzoną przez Dana Sperbera i socjologiczną, rozwijaną przez Randalla Collinsa. Moim celem jest wskazanie podobieństw i różnic w wyjaśnianiu funkcjonowania dystrybucji idei w kilku wyróżnionych aspektach. Porównanie to będzie pomocne w ocenie nośności każdej z koncepcji, w zakresie analizy procesu kolektywnego zapamiętywania i zapominania oraz przechodzenie idei zarówno pomiędzy członkami społeczeństwa, jak i w sferze transferu międzypokoleniowego.

In this article, I compare three concepts concerning the distribution of ideas - memetic, by Richard Brodie; anthropological, created by Dan Sperber and sociological, developed by Randall Collins. My goal is to point out the similarities and differences in explaining the distribution of ideas in several distinct aspects. This comparison will be helpful in assessing the viability of each concept, in the analysis of the process of collective memory and forgetting, and the transition of ideas between members of society as well as in the sphere of intergenerational transfer.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the (collective) performance of identities in an event context. During events, the participants not only engage in face-to-face performances, but also in the collective performances of crowds and audiences. This study analyses collective performance using Collins’ framework of Interaction Ritual Chains, which combines Goffman’s performance metaphor with Durkheim’s work on rituals and collective effervescence. This provides a more complete analysis of the ways identities are performed and (re)constructed during an event. This qualitative studypresentsthecaseoftheRedheadDays,theworld’slargestgathering of redheads. Visitor interviews and participant observation over four editions of the event show how a temporary majority of redheads is created, which greatly impacts both face-to-face and collective performance. Social practices that facilitate performance include photographing and storytelling. The data reveal that collective performance is inherently different from face-to-face performance, and that the combination of the two contributes to a change in narrative identities of the event attendees.

While there is extensive literature on both the expansion of human rights and solidarity movements, and on micro-solidarity and violent actions, here I ask what is the relationship between human rights, micro-solidarity and social action? Based on a case study of structured, face-to-face dialogue group encounters in the Israeli/Palestinian context, I draw on Randall Collins's interaction ritual chain theory to demonstrate why emotional energy and the ritualization of historical narratives have very limited potential to translate into human rights-based moral actions. Instead, I suggest, these encounters produce micro-solidarity that ascribes additional weight to ethnic categories, serving to polarize and homogenize groups along ethnic lines.

This article reevaluates the debate on “scientific communities”, using the phrase as placeholder for any scientific collective, which are today often discussed also under different names. The focus is laid particularly on the close nexus between concepts of scientific communities and normative claims to epistemic authority. The article provides, therefore, a historical survey of the arguments of the debate so far: beginning with the then influential Mertonian concept of scientific communities (Merton, Hagstrom), it evaluates the criticism of theories, which have to a large degree replaced it (Collins, Latour, Woolgar, Knorr-Cetina). It then considers how concepts of scientific communities were developed by explicitly non-Mertonian scholars (Fleck, Kuhn, Polanyi, et al.) and examines two influential theoretical alternatives to the concept of scientific communities (Foucault, Bourdieu). Three key issues are analyzed: (1) the different types of integrating mechanisms, responsible for creating scientific associations, proposed in this debate; (2) if scientific communities are founded exclusively on the collaboration of scientists or if the important role of certain groups of non-scientists should also be reconsidered; and, finally, (3) if these concepts of social associations are able to support or to undermine scientific claims to epistemic authority.

While there is extensive literature on both the expansion of human rights and solidarity movements, and on micro-solidarity and violent actions, here I ask what is the relationship between human rights, micro-solidarity and social action? Based on a case study of structured, face-to-face dialogue group encounters in the Israeli/Palestinian context, I draw on Randall Collins’s interaction ritual chain theory to demonstrate why emotional energy and the ritualization of historical narratives have very limited potential to translate into human rights-based moral actions. Instead, I suggest, these encounters produce micro-solidarity that ascribes additional weight to ethnic categories, serving to polarize and homogenize groups along ethnic lines.

In questo paper affronto il tema della religione al tempo del Covid-19, in particolare la prospettiva “Ridefinire credenze e riti”. L’oggetto di ricerca è il cambiamento delle azioni tipiche del rituale religioso cattolico come scambiarsi il segno della pace, il funerale, la messa e la comunione. Questo cambiamento è avvenuto in seguito al decreto entrato in vigore il 4 maggio 2020 che nega l’accesso al pubblico alle chiese. La messa domenicale è un rituale formale, un evento prestabilito con una certa periodicità, che gode di procedure ripetitive e standardizzate con un grado di istituzionalità elevato. L’impossibilità di svolgere questi riti in compresenza, tutti uniti, vicini, costringono la Chiesa cattolica a ridefinirli.

Religious Interaction Ritual is a microsociological study of religious practice, based on fieldwork with Conservative Jews, Bible Belt Muslims, white Baptists, black Baptists, Buddhist meditators, and Latino Catholics. In each case, the author scrutinizes how a congregation’s ritual strategies help or hinder their efforts to achieve a transformative spiritual encounter, an intense feeling that becomes the basis of their most fundamental understandings of reality.


This book shows how these transformative spiritual encounters routinely depend on issues that can seem rather mundane by comparison, such as where the sanctuary’s entrance is located, how many misprints end up in the church bulletin, or how long the preacher continues to preach beyond lunchtime. The spirit responds to other dynamics as well, such as how congregations collectively imagine outsiders, or how they talk about ideas like individualism and patriarchy.


Building on provocative theories from sociologists such as Émile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, Randall Collins, and Anne Warfield Rawls, this book shows how “interaction ritual theory” opens compelling new pathways for sociological scholarship on religion. Micro-level specifics from fieldwork in Texas are supplemented with large-scale survey analysis of a wide array of religious organizations from across the United States.

The article engages with the relationship between feminist scholarship and the discipline of International Relations. Taking a step back from the recurrent concerns with marginality and those with the absent feminist revolution in IR, we recast the problem of the complicated ménage between feminism and the field of IR as a case of a failure to love. Drawing on the sociology of thinking of Randall Collins and his theory of interaction ritual chains, we read the logic of practice in intellectual fields as one rooted in emotion. In this framework, we theorize citation practices as bearing the trace of intellectuals' emotion-loaded coalitions of the mind. The article maps out the intellectual coalitions in IR with respect to the feminist question by reconstructing the citation networks emerging from the special issue of Millennium, published in 1988 on 'Women in IR'. The maps we put together are read as snapshots of the emotional economy of IR, allowing further reflection about the status of feminist scholarship in IR, about intellectual creativity and about change and stasis in our discipline. We conclude that it is IR which is in trouble, not feminists, with regard to creative potential. Feminists are not marginal in or to IR; instead they are part of a ring of creativity connecting the emotional energies of different disciplinary fields.