Here are some highlights from this 2010 book by Randall Collins:
* humans have intrinsically limited cognitive capabilities, and that they construct mundane social order by consistently using practices to avoid recognizing how arbitrarily social order is actually put together. We keep up conventions, not because we believe in them, but because we studiously avoid questioning them. Garfinkel demonstrated this most dramatically in his breaching experiments, in which he forced people into situations that caused them to recognize indexicality (i.e., that they rely on tacit acceptance of what things mean contextually) and reflexivity (that there are infinite regresses of justifying one’s interpretations). Interestingly enough, the reactions of his subjects were always intensely emotional. Usually it was an emotional outburst: becoming nervous and jittery, shaken, displaying anxiety and sometimes shock (Garfinkel 1967, 44, 221–26) Sometimes it was depression, bewilderment, or anger at having been put in a situation where they constructed a reality they later discovered to be false. In short, when people have to recognize that they are tacitly constructing their social worlds, and in an arbitrary and conventional way, rather than simply reacting to a world that is objectively there, they show intense negative emotions.
…conventional social reality is a sacred object. Garfinkel’s experiments, violating the sacred object, call forth the same effects as violating a ritual taboo would have for a tribal member, desecrating the Bible for a Christian, or defaming the flag for a patriot. In Durkheim’s theory, moral sentiments attach to sacred objects. When they are violated, this positive sentiment of moral solidarity turns negative, into righteous anger directed against the culprit. Just so in Garfinkel’s experiments: there is outrage against the violator of everyday cognitive conventions. Garfinkel’s strategy parallels Durkheim’s: to show the conditions that uphold a social fact by revealing the opposition that occurs when it is broken.
* Interaction ritual produces pockets of moral solidarity, but variably and discontinuously throughout a population.
* Persons who are full of emotional energy feel like good persons; they feel righteous about what they are doing. Persons with low emotional energy feel bad; though they do not necessarily interpret this feeling as guilt or evil (that would depend on the religious or other cultural cognitions available for labeling their feelings), at a minimum they lack the feeling of being morally good persons that comes from enthusiastic participation in group rituals.
* Feelings of moral solidarity generate specific acts of altruism and love; but there is also a negative side. As Durkheim pointed out, group solidarity makes individuals feel a desire to defend and honor the group. This solidarity feeling is typically focused on symbols, sacred objects (like a tribal totemic emblem, a holy scripture, a flag, a wedding ring). One shows respect for the group by participating in rituals venerating these symbolic objects; conversely, failure to respect them is a quick test of nonmembership in the group. Members of the ritual group are under especially strong pressure to continue to respect its sacred symbols. If they do not, the loyal group members feel shock and outrage: their righteousness turns automatically into righteous anger. In this way, ritual violations lead to persecution of heretics, scapegoats, and other outcasts. Such events bring out clearly yet another transformation of emotion by rituals: from specific initiating emotions to their intensification in collective effervescence; from collective effervescence to emotional energy carried in individuals’ attachment to symbols; and from symbol-respect to righteous anger.
* Insofar as there is successful role-taking on both sides (and that is at the core of any successful ritual), the order-giver feels both his / her own sentiment of mastery, and the order-taker’s feeling of weakness. On the other side, the order-taker has a mixture both of his / her own negative emotions—weakness/depression, fear—and the mood of the dominator, which is strong emotional energy, dominance, anger. This explains why persons who are severely coerced (concentration camp inmates, marine corps recruits, beaten children) tend on one level to identify with the aggressor, and will enact the aggressor’s role when possible in the future: they have an emotional complex of fear and anger, although situationally the fear side is dominant when they are taking orders. Conversely, order-givers who use extreme coercion acquire sado-masochistic personalities, because of the role-taking that goes on, thus blending anger / dominant feelings with a sense of the fear and passivity that they invoke in their subordinates. Thus the experience of momentary, situationally dominant emotions gives rise to long-term emotional styles, which is a large part of what is meant by the term “personality.”
* Pride is the social attunement emotion, the feeling that one’s self fits naturally into the flow of interaction, indeed that one’s personal sense epitomizes the leading mood of the group. High solidarity is smooth-flowing rhythmic coordination in the micro-rhythms of conversational interaction; it gives the feeling of confidence that what one is doing, the rewarding experience that one’s freely expressed impulses are being followed, are resonated and amplified by the other people present.
* Chambliss (1989) has studied this interaction in the case of athletic contests (competitive swimmers), and has found that there is a major difference in outlook between high-level performers (consistent winners) and lesser performers (losers). The difference is manifested in the details of behavior: winners are meticulous in performing their routines in ways that they have deliberately developed; they have built up their own rhythms and stick to them in the face of competitive opposition. The winners make themselves the focus of attention; they set the expectations around themselves. Losers, however, let the winners become the focus, and adapt their micro-behavior toward them. This implies that a winner (perhaps dominant persons generally, in dominance contests more widely as well as in athletics) has a sense of control throughout the situation: winners maintain and build up their own rhythmic coordination, their anticipation of what they will do, setting the micro-rhythmic pace. Losers (and persons who are subordinated in dominance contests) allow someone else to break their own flow of anticipation of what will happen in their own activities. These dominated persons can cope with the situation, can maintain some anticipation about what will happen only by focusing on the other person as the lead, rather than by projecting their own volitional future. In effect, such a person can recoup some emotional energy from the situation by becoming a follower, attaching themself to someone else’s lead. 15 The more they resist such attachment, the less emotional energy they will have.
* In terms of the IR model, one could also say that the dominant person makes oneself the focus of the interaction. He or she becomes, in some sense, a Durkheimian sacred object. Microsociologically, that is just what a “sacred object” means—it is the object upon which attention of the group is focused, and which becomes a symbolic repository of the group’s emotional energies. When someone feels oneself in this position, they have a store of emotional energy for their own use; it makes that person “charismatic.” For others, the person who is a “sacred object” compels attention.
* Persons inside the social realm of winning / dominance experience a mere routine, in which they have smooth anticipated control of situations—that is, a great store of “emotional energy” available to them in contest situations. But persons on the outside looking in see a mystifying difference, a gulf to greatness that they feel they cannot cross.
* Further, the group itself by a successful emotional contagion can generate its own enthusiasm (which is what the flow of conversation at a party does).
These kinds of positive emotional outbursts are relatively short and temporary in their effects. They happen upon a baseline of previous emotional energy: for a group to establish this kind of rapport, its members need to have previously charged up some symbols with positive attraction, so that these symbols can be used as ingredients in carrying out a successful ritual. A previous cumulation of emotional energy is thus one of the ingredients in making possible the situational buildup of positive emotion. Frequently, the positive emotions (joy, enthusiasm, humor) are generated by a group leader, an individual who takes the focus, who is able to propagate such a mood from his or her own stores of emotional energy. This individual thus serves very much like an electric battery for group emotional expressiveness. Persons who occupy this position in IR chains are what we think of as “charismatic.” In general, “personality” traits are just these results of experiencing particular kinds of IR chains. (This is true at the negative end as well, resulting in persons who are depressed, angry, etc.)
* Psychologically, anger is often regarded as the capacity to mobilize energy to overcome a barrier to one’s ongoing efforts (Frijda 1986, 19, 77). This means that the amount of anger should be proportional to the amount of underlying effort; and that is the amount of emotional energy one has for that particular project. High emotional energy may also be called “aggressiveness,” the strong taking of initiative. This can have the social effect of dominating other people, of lowering their emotional energy, of making them passive followers. This implies that there is a connection between the generic quality of high emotional energy—especially the EE generated in power situations—and the expression of the specific emotion of anger.
* The disruptive form of anger, however, is more complicated. That is because anger in its intense forms is an explosive reaction against frustrations. Truly powerful persons do not become angry in this sense, because they do not need to; they get their way without it. To express anger is thus to some extent an expression of weakness.
* One can predict that righteous anger is proportional to the amount of emotional charge of membership feelings around particular symbols.
* Righteous anger is a particularly intense emotion because it is expressed with a strong sense of security: the individual feels that they have the community’s support, and not merely in a loose sense. Righteous anger is an emotion that is an evocation of the organized network that has been previously established to use violence. Persons who feel righteous anger are evoking their feeling of membership in an enforcement coalition.
* In the case of negative emotions, there is a long-standing clinical tradition that sees traumatic situations as the major determinant of longterm social and psychological functioning. Particular experiences of intense anger, fear, or shame are regarded as controlling one’s whole subsequent functioning. This may well be true, to a degree; but it should be seen against the background of the overall level of emotional energy. A person who generally has favorable, if undramatic, experiences on the power and status dimensions of their everyday interactions, will likely get over an episode of extreme anger, fear, or shame. It is only when the individual’s overall “market position” of interactions is on the negative side that particularly intense dramatic experiences are stored up and carried over as “traumas,” especially in highly charged memories of the sort that Freudian therapy is designed to ventilate. Max Weber’s conception of stratification as inequality of life chances in the market thus extends not only to material economic chances but to the realm of emotional health.
* The simplest version of stratification is an energized upper class, lording it over a depressed lower class, with moderately energized middle-class persons in between. Take this pattern as an ideal type; it does yield a crucial point, that stratification generally works because those who dominate have the energy to dominate situations in which they encounter other persons. The winning generals are usually the most energetic ones; so are the richest financiers; in the specialized realm of intellectual domination, the stars of world science, philosophy, and literature generally are what I have called “energy stars” (for evidence on generals, see Keegan 1987; on philosophers, Collins 1998). …My argument is far from holding that the upper classes are uniquely energetic individuals; they are products of processes that affect all of us, and in which all of us (very likely) are pretty much interchangeable.
* Persons with lower amounts of EE are impressed by those who have accumulated a lot of it; such people have an EE-halo that makes them easy to admire. They are persons who get things done; they have an aura of success surrounding them. And since having high EE allows one to focus attention, one can get a certain amount of rise in one’s own EE by following them, becoming part of their entourage, taking orders from them, or even viewing them from afar. Thus high EE gives dominant persons a kind of micro-situational legitimacy.
* Bodily postures and movements . High EE is generally expressed in an erect posture, moving firmly and smoothly, and taking the initiative in relation to other persons. Low EE is indicated in postures and movements that are shrinking, passive, hesitating, or disjointed. Since high EE is social confidence, it is manifested in movements toward other people, especially movements that take the initiative and that lead to establishing a pattern of rhythmic coordination. coordination. Low EE, conversely, is found in movements and postures of withdrawal, and low initiative; low-EE persons in a social situation show a pattern of following others’ nonverbal leads, or a freezing of movement. Conflict at moderate levels of EE may be indicated by a rapid or jerky alternation between orienting toward and away from the others. Scheff and Retzinger (1991) describe this pattern, which they interpret in terms of the self-oriented emotions of pride (turning toward the other person) and shame (turning away).
Eyes . Solidarity is directly expressed in eye contact. As Scheff and Retzinger (1991) show, persons in a situation of high attunement look at each other. This occurs in a rhythmic pattern, viewing the other person’s face, responding with micro-expressions, then periodically looking away (to avoid staring). In moments of intense solidarity (such as group triumph or erotic entrainment) the mutual gaze is longer and more steady. In a situation of low attunement, persons lower their eyes and turn away for prolonged periods. These are measures of high or low attunement or collective effervescence, and they tend to be symmetrical across participants. EE is seen in the eyes, as in the case of bodily postures and movements, as a temporal pattern for each individual as they approach the situation. Initiative or lack of initiative can be seen in establishing eye contact; high or low EE is manifested in dominating or avoiding mutual gaze (Mazur et al. 1980; Mazur 1986).
Voice . The amount of enthusiasm, confidence, and initiative (high EE) versus apathy, withdrawal, and depression (low EE) can be measured paralinguistically, that is, in the style rather than the content of talk. (See Scherer 1982, 1985, for studies of the emotional dimensions of recorded speech.) Since the flow of speech in an interaction is also a measure of the amount of attunement or collective solidarity, we must be careful to observe in micro-detail the patterns of the individuals as they approach the vocal interaction, as distinguished from the degree of attunement that is reached collectively.
* Two high-EE persons do not necessarily get along with each other well. Each is used to being in the center of attention, taking the initiative, dominating the conversation, controlling the ritual. In politics, charismatic leaders are not close associates of each other but are usually quite separate; they might even be rivals, each surrounded by their distinct social circles. 6 And so it goes with popular hostesses, leaders of street gangs, ebullient jokers who are the life of the party. There is room in any gathering for only a limited amount of attention space, and for some to be in the center means others must be more passive or peripheral.
The theory of IR chains implies that persons who already have very high EE, and thus are good at charging up a gathering as its emotional leader, will choose gatherings in which they are most likely to be in the center of attention, and to avoid gatherings where they have to share the spotlight with others of equal emotional dominance. At the opposite end of the spectrum, very low-EE persons may be consigned to each other’s company by the IR market, but that does not mean they will seek each other out. One generally observes that low-status, marginal persons at the fringe of a cocktail party do not create countercircles with their own effervescence rivaling those at the center of the party, but remain relatively dispersed.
* An individual whose EE is very high compared to his or her relative symbolic resources in that situation (i.e., the person is used to dominating interactions but is currently overmatched by being unfamiliar with the local membership symbols being used) is unlikely to act humbly enough to learn the new symbols by paying deference to those who can impart them. High-EE persons thus tend to stay within their own orbits of cultural exchange; if the IR market moves away from them, they may have difficulty adjusting, becoming embittered and angry at the loss of their centrality.
* Whether one is most attracted to a church service, a political rally, or an intimate conversation is determined by each individual’s expectations of the magnitude of EE flowing from that situation.
* Religious ceremonial is not the only kind of interaction ritual, although for a period it was the leading sector that organized the most energy and attracted the most material investment. The period of secularization in Europe that began with the Renaissance and Reformation was to a large extent the spilling over of the market for IRs into secular channels, at first through the courts of the nobility, later into a vast middle-class market for entertainment and status display.
