Status, Power and Ritual Interaction

Status, Power and Ritual Interaction PDF Author: Theodore D. Kemper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131705010X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sociologists Émile Durkheim, Erving Goffman and Randall Collins broadly suppose that ritual is foundational for social life. By contrast, this book argues that ritual is merely surface, beneath which lie status and power, the behavioral dimensions that drive all social interaction. Status, Power and Ritual Interaction identifies status and power as the twin forces that structure social relations, determine emotions and link individuals to the reference groups that deliver culture and administer preferences, actions, beliefs and ideas. An especially important contention is that allegiance to ideas, even those as fundamental as the belief that 1 + 1 = 2, is primarily faithfulness to the reference groups that foster the ideas and not to the ideas themselves. This triggers the counter-intuitive deduction that the self, a concept many sociologists, social psychologists and therapists prize so highly, is feckless and irrelevant. Status-power theory leads also to derivations about motivation, play, humor, sacred symbols, social bonding, creative thought, love and sex and other social involvements now either obscure or misunderstood. Engaging with Durkheim (on collective effervescence), Goffman (on ritual-cum-public order) and Collins (on interaction ritual), this book is richly illustrated with instances of how to examine many central questions about society and social interaction from the status-power perspective. It speaks not only to sociologists, but also to anthropologists, behavioral economists and social and clinical psychologists - to all disciplines that examine or treat of social life.

Status, Power and Ritual Interaction

Status, Power and Ritual Interaction PDF Author: Theodore D. Kemper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131705010X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sociologists Émile Durkheim, Erving Goffman and Randall Collins broadly suppose that ritual is foundational for social life. By contrast, this book argues that ritual is merely surface, beneath which lie status and power, the behavioral dimensions that drive all social interaction. Status, Power and Ritual Interaction identifies status and power as the twin forces that structure social relations, determine emotions and link individuals to the reference groups that deliver culture and administer preferences, actions, beliefs and ideas. An especially important contention is that allegiance to ideas, even those as fundamental as the belief that 1 + 1 = 2, is primarily faithfulness to the reference groups that foster the ideas and not to the ideas themselves. This triggers the counter-intuitive deduction that the self, a concept many sociologists, social psychologists and therapists prize so highly, is feckless and irrelevant. Status-power theory leads also to derivations about motivation, play, humor, sacred symbols, social bonding, creative thought, love and sex and other social involvements now either obscure or misunderstood. Engaging with Durkheim (on collective effervescence), Goffman (on ritual-cum-public order) and Collins (on interaction ritual), this book is richly illustrated with instances of how to examine many central questions about society and social interaction from the status-power perspective. It speaks not only to sociologists, but also to anthropologists, behavioral economists and social and clinical psychologists - to all disciplines that examine or treat of social life.

Interaction Ritual Chains

Interaction Ritual Chains PDF Author: Randall Collins
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400851742
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sex, smoking, and social stratification are three very different social phenomena. And yet, argues sociologist Randall Collins, they and much else in our social lives are driven by a common force: interaction rituals. Interaction Ritual Chains is a major work of sociological theory that attempts to develop a "radical microsociology." It proposes that successful rituals create symbols of group membership and pump up individuals with emotional energy, while failed rituals drain emotional energy. Each person flows from situation to situation, drawn to those interactions where their cultural capital gives them the best emotional energy payoff. Thinking, too, can be explained by the internalization of conversations within the flow of situations; individual selves are thoroughly and continually social, constructed from the outside in. The first half of Interaction Ritual Chains is based on the classic analyses of Durkheim, Mead, and Goffman and draws on micro-sociological research on conversation, bodily rhythms, emotions, and intellectual creativity. The second half discusses how such activities as sex, smoking, and social stratification are shaped by interaction ritual chains. For example, the book addresses the emotional and symbolic nature of sexual exchanges of all sorts--from hand-holding to masturbation to sexual relationships with prostitutes--while describing the interaction rituals they involve. This book will appeal not only to psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists, but to those in fields as diverse as human sexuality, religious studies, and literary theory.

Interaction Ritual

Interaction Ritual PDF Author: Erving Goffman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351512072
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Not then, men and their moments. Rather, moment and their men," writes Erving Goffman in the introduction to his groundbreaking 1967 Interaction Ritual, a study of face-to-face interaction in natural settings, that class of events which occurs during co-presence and by virtue of co-presence. The ultimate behavioral materials are the glances, gestures, positionings, and verbal statements that people continuously feed into situations, whether intended or not. A sociology of occasions is here advocated. Social organization is the central theme, but what is organized is the co-mingling of persons and the temporary interactional enterprises that can arise therefrom. A normatively stabilized structure is at issue, a "social gathering," but this is a shifting entity, necessarily evanescent, created by arrivals and killed by departures. The major section of the book is the essay "Where the Action Is," drawing on Goffman's last major ethnographic project observation of Nevada casinos. Tom Burns says of Goffman's work "The eleven books form a singularly compact body of writing. All his published work was devoted to topics and themes which were closely connected, and the methodology, angles of approach and of course style of writing remained characteristically his own throughout. Interaction Ritual in particular is an interesting account of daily social interaction viewed with a new perspective for the logic of our behavior in such ordinary circumstances as entering a crowded elevator or bus." In his new introduction, Joel Best considers Goffman's work in toto and places Interaction Ritual in that total context as one of Goffman's pivotal works: "His subject matter was unique. In sharp contrast to the natural tendency of many scholars to tackle big, important topics, Goffman was a minimalist, working on a small scale, and concentrating on the most mundane, ordinary social contacts, on everyday life.'"

Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions

Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions PDF Author: Theodore D. Kemper
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791402702
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book leading sociologists of emotions present their research agendas for work that promises to shape the study of emotions well into the next decade. The essays represent the full range of ideas, issues, and directions in the field. From diverse theoretical positions — symbolic interactionist, social constructionist, feminist, positivist, linguistic, phenomenologist, Marxist, and evolutionist — the authors set forth their current understandings, as well as the directions of future work, with a discussion of the most significant problems in emotions research.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life PDF Author: Erving Goffman
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0593468295
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and cotnrol the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

Gathering Hopewell

Gathering Hopewell PDF Author: Christopher Carr
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780306484780
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 836

Get Book Here

Book Description
Among the most socially and personally vocal archaeological remains on the North American continent are the massive and often complexly designed earthen architecture of Hopewellian peoples of two thousand years ago, their elaborately embellished works of art made of glistening metals and stones from faraway places, and their highly formalized mortuaries. In this book, twenty-one researchers in interwoven efforts immerse themselves and the reader in this vibrant archaeological record in order to richly reconstruct the societies, rituals, and ritual interactions of Hopewellian peoples. By finding the faces, actions, and motivations of Hopewellian peoples as individuals who constructed knowable social roles, the authors explore, in a personalized and locally contextualized manner, the details of Hopewellian life: leadership, its sacred and secular power bases, recruitment, and formalization over time; systems of social ranking and prestige; animal-totemic clan organization, kinship structures, and sodalities; gender roles, prestige, work load, and health; community organization in its tri-scalar residential, symbolic, and demographic forms; intercommunity alliances and changes in their strategies and expanses over time; and interregional travels for power questing, pilgrimage, healing, tutelage, and acquiring ritual knowledge. This book is useful to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in the workings and development of social complexity at local and interregional scales, recent theoretical developments in the anthropology of the topics listed above, the prehistory of eastern North America, its history of intellectual development, and Native American ritual, symbolism, and belief.

Research Handbook on Law and Emotion

Research Handbook on Law and Emotion PDF Author: Susan A. Bandes
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1788119088
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 635

Get Book Here

Book Description
This illuminating Research Handbook analyses the role that emotions play and ought to play in legal reasoning and practice, rejecting the simplistic distinction between reason and emotion.

Strategic Interaction

Strategic Interaction PDF Author: Erving Goffman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812210115
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Get Book Here

Book Description
The two essays in this classic work by sociologist Erving Goffman deal with the calculative, gamelike aspects of human interaction. Goffman examines the strategy of words and deeds; he uses the term "strategic interaction" to describe gamelike events in which an individual's situation is fully dependent on the move of one's opponent and in which both players know this and have the wit to use this awareness for advantage. Goffman aims to show that strategic interaction can be isolated analytically from the general study of communication and face-to-face interaction. The first essay addresses expression games, in which a participant spars to discover the value of information given openly or unwittingly by another. The author uses vivid examples from espionage literature and high-level political intrigue to show how people mislead one another in the information game. Both observer and observed create evidence that is false and uncover evidence that is real. In "Strategic Interaction," the book's second essay, action is the central concern, and expression games are secondary. Goffman makes clear that often, when it seems that an opponent sets off a course of action through verbal communication, he really has a finger on your trigger, your chips on the table, or your check in his bank. Communication may reinforce conduct, but in the end, action speaks louder. Those who gamble with their wits, and those who study those who do, will find this analysis important and stimulating.

Critical and Cultural Interactionism

Critical and Cultural Interactionism PDF Author: Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351394053
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the longest standing traditions in sociology, interactionism is concerned with studying human interaction and showing how society to a large part is constituted by patterns of interaction. In spite of the work of figures such as Robert E. Park, Everett C. Hughes, Erving Goffman, Herbert Blumer, Norman K. Denzin and Gary Alan Fine, interactionism – perhaps owing to its association with the perspective of symbolic interactionism – remains something of an odd man out in mainstream sociology. This book seeks to rectify this apparent neglect by bringing together critical social theories and microsociological approaches to research, thus revealing the critical and cultural potentials in interactionism – the chapters arguing that far from being oriented towards the status quo, interactionism in fact contains a critical and cultural edge. Presenting the latest work from some of the leading figures in interactionist thought to show recent developments in the field and offer an overview of some of the most potent and prominent ideas within critical and cultural criminology, Critical and Cultural Interactionism will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in interactionism, social theory research methods and criminology.

Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice

Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice PDF Author: Catherine Bell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199760381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ritual studies today figures as a central element of religious discourse for many scholars around the world. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, Catherine Bell's sweeping and seminal work on the subject, helped legitimize the field. In this volume, Bell re-examines the issues, methods, and ramifications of our interest in ritual by concentrating on anthropology, sociology, and the history of religions. Now with a new foreword by Diane Jonte-Pace, Bell's work is a must-read for understanding the evolution of the field of ritual studies and its current state.