Interaction rituals and technology: A review essay

Mobility scholars have long been interested in challenging the automobile’s hegemony in the street, particularly by highlighting how to develop urban cycling. The article contributes to this task by explaining how one type of conflict between the bike and the car, exemplified notably by the critical mass, fosters cycling. The characteristics of this type of conflict need to be deciphered. The paper uses the interaction ritual (IR) theory to tackle this challenge. The IR theory hypothesizes that extraordinary IRs foster identification with a group, and motivate individual action. Moreover, these special IRs, often conflictual and taking place after crises, are the basis of lasting groups. This article connects IR theory to the act of riding a bike and identifying as a biker. We apply these hypotheses to two French bike workshops active in the cycling subculture. In these workshops, I observed the organization of extraordinary IRs in conflict with the car -e.g. critical masses and other mobilizations- and daily IRs around emblems created during extraordinary IRs. I also conducted interviews about the germinal role of IRs during crises in the history of each workshop. The empirical findings show that in successful conflicts against the car, bike activists are present in high numbers to stop car traffic. Simultaneously, these special IRs are non-violent, playful, and temporary. Three forms of cycling IRs correspond to this definition: oppositional, iconoclastic, and alternative IRs. These forms of IRs seem to be more efficient during small or large-scale crises.

Though a considerable amount of education research has examined the various factors that shape student engagement, much of it is focused on individual characteristics. To examine the social aspect of classroom student engagement, this study uses the sociological concept of interaction rituals to consider whether the four elements (bodily co-presence, barriers to outsiders, mutual focus, and shared mood) that are claimed to make such rituals successful may also foster student engagement. To study this possibility, eighteen hours of systematic classroom observations (supplemented by a student questionnaire and discussions with facilitators) of 101 students in ten problem-based learning (PBL) classes in a British medical course were conducted. Thematic analysis of the data, guided by interaction ritual theory, shows that a number of PBL lessons resembled interaction rituals. Furthermore, results suggest that sessions with the four elements Collins states are essential to interaction rituals were more likely to have engaged students. Lastly, classes with ‘energy stars’ had a greater shared mood than those with ‘energy drains.’ These results not only extend interaction ritual theory to the experience of higher education, but suggest that designing in-class lessons to encourage interaction rituals may help foster classroom engagement among university students.

Emotions, Cognition, and Collective Alignment: A Response to Collins

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.

This paper provides insight into interaction ritual theory, by devoting special attention to the interface between interaction ritual and (im)politeness. We focus on several key pragmatic features of interaction ritual, illustrating their operation. We also describe different research approaches for systematically studying interaction rituals. Finally, we present a case-study of Chinese university military trainings to illustrate the operation of ritual in a morally loaded aggressive scenario. Our study shows that interaction ritual theory provides an analytic focus on recurrent and as such replicable aspects of language use. This sense of replicability is indispensable if we want to model language use across linguacultures.

Randall Collins's interaction ritual (IR) theory suggests social solidarity as hardwired in the human neurological capacity for rhythmic entrainment. Yet, this article suggests thatIRtheory may benefit from being tied more firmly to recent neurobiological research, specifically Stephen W. Porges's polyvagal theory that proposes autonomic nervous system functioning as a basis for emotions and social behavior. In this perspective,IRtheory does not sufficiently acknowledge the human nervous system as a system involving a phylogenetically ordered response hierarchy, of which only one subsystem supports prosocial behavior. The ritual ingredients of mutual attention and shared mood may, moreover, be specified as part of a social engagement system, neurally regulating attention and emotional arousal via a face–heart connection. The article suggests that this social engagement system provides part of the neural basis for rhythmic entrainment. The polyvagal theory furthermore challengesIRtheory to reconsider the importance of individual biological differences—ritual success may not merely be ascribed to interactional effects, but also to reciprocal causality between situations and neurobiological properties of ritual participants.

This interview with Randall Collins explores the role of interaction rituals (IR) in our increasingly digital world. For Collins, IR is a micro-sociological mechanism that provides both the glue that holds social groups together and the energy that fuels disputes and domination. Crucially, Collins posits that IRs are most effective under face-to-face or “bodily copresent” conditions. The pivotal question of this interview is how well this proposition holds in an age where interaction increasingly takes place through and with technologies. The interview begins with Collins explaining how he became interested in IR, before moving on to consider topics such as whether bodily copresence is as important today as it was when he wrote Interaction Ritual Chains (2004); the relative importance of online and offline IRs; how AI might change our ritual landscape; the role of materiality in the ritual process; and whether IR theory will continue to be as relevant in the future.

The article explores the relationship between individualism and group affiliation in the context of self-tracking technology. Prior research establishes that self-tracking fosters both self-focus and collective interactions. The article proposes that Durkheim’s notion of the cult of the individual offers a lens to understand the interplay of individualism and group formation in self-tracking. The notion of the cult of the individual suggests that individualism can be a source of public gatherings. While Durkheim’s notion remained largely untested for over a century, this study aims to build upon Durkheim’s framework by operationalizing it using Collins’s interaction ritual theory. By operationalizing the cult of the individual as a specific form of interaction ritual, we can analyze the collective mechanisms at play within the Quantified Self movement. This group organizes a community of self-trackers who share personal data during public gatherings. The article explores these public gatherings by deciphering their video recordings. Quantified Self-individualist gatherings are constituted by the co-presence of self-focused people, presenting one after the other their personal data following a script, and defending individuals against profaning situations. Quantified Self gatherings formed a transnational interaction ritual chain in approximately 71 cities on four continents, confirming that individualist gatherings can achieve a wide diffusion. Therefore, this original operationalization of Durkheim’s notion of the cult of the individual illustrates its enduring relevance and potential for broader application.

The preservationist John Muir and the railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman developed an unlikely friendship that can be traced to Harriman's Alaska Expedition in 1899. Primary and secondary sources were interpreted through Collins’ (2004) interaction ritual (IR) theory to reconstruct the details and evolution of their relationship. Landscapes, particularly glaciers, emerged as the key ritual outcome of their time together in Alaska. Forged as a result of Muir's announcement of the naming of the first Harriman Glacier onboard the expedition's vessel, glaciers also reflected the zeitgeist of late-nineteenth century American nationalism. Viewing the Muir-Harriman relationship through the IR theory lens provides three unique contributions to the literature: the sacralisation of a topographical element, the value of place-naming to an IR chain, and the connection of two men's IR chain to public policy that impacted the United States’ national park system.

Interaction ritual theory is one of the most important contributions of micro-sociological theory, tying together the production of local order and actors’ ongoing projects. Although Goffman replaced the “social” order of classical anthropology with an endogenous “interaction” order, such theory conceives ritual as reflecting and enacting an existing structure. Drawing on recent interactionist work and developments in ritual theory, we complement this understanding of ritual with an account of potentiality. Interaction rituals undoubtedly sacralize the self that is presented in interaction and defend the interaction order within which such selves are enmeshed, yet they simultaneously open up potential avenues for transformation of selves and relationships. Ritual action is strewn with moments in which the world appears not as it is but as it could be: a subjunctive “what if” of social life. We show how focusing on the interplay between order and potentiality in interaction ritual provides a more precise way to understand interaction and new ways to approach forms of interactional inequality.

Megachurches have been criticized as superficial sources of entertainment that do not produce significant feelings of belonging, moral responsibility, or spirituality. This article challenges popular criticisms of megachurches and, drawing on interaction ritual theory, proposes that megachurches are successful interaction ritual venues and powerful purveyors of emotional religious experience. We predict that these interaction rituals produce positive emotional energy, membership symbols that are charged with emotional significance, feelings of morality, and a heightened sense of spirituality. From a census of 1,250 known megachurches in America, 12 were selected that closely represent the national megachurch profile. At each church, focus groups were conducted and attendees participated in a survey. We combine these data sources to provide a more comprehensive picture of the megachurch interaction ritual. The combined qualitative and quantitative results provide strong support for our predictions.

Memorable tourism experiences and their consequences: An interaction ritual (IR) theory approach

A key orientation of the microsociology of Collins’ interaction rituals is that it is the focused performances of situated interactions, or ‘encounters’, that need to be the centre of analysis, not ‘the individual’. It is in the moment of the encounter that structure and agency coalesce, and are performed and negotiated. As such, it is through encounters that self and collective identities are forged and given meaning, both successful and failed encounters being potential moments of high emotion and real and symbolic import to participants, marking confirmation or refutation of status and social membership. As such, rituals are crucial to understanding solidarity and the social order. Criminology has touched upon ritual theory although sometimes implicitly. Where it has done so explicitly this has most notably been in the context of formal organised rites, such as the degradation ceremony of the court, rather than in the more informal, everyday situated encounters and experiences that are at the heart of interaction ritual theory. This paper sketches the key ideas of interaction ritual theory and locates them within criminological theorising. It then uses interaction ritual theory to revisit and revise thinking on the symbolic dimensions of policing, and to explore the relationship between policing and the reproduction of social order. It argues that understanding police-public encounters as moments of ritualised recognition or denunciation that have serious consequences for citizens and officers raises important questions about police legitimacy. The argument also questions key tenets of interaction ritual theory in problematizing what counts as an ‘encounter’ and a security signifier in a world increasingly characterised by fragmented layers of policing and security, and mediated by and experienced through technologies that reconfigure ‘co-presence’. In doing so it identifies both possibilities in which to rethink police-public encounters and very real risks to the social order and solidarity.

In Erving Goffman's analysis of the encounter, rituals are seen as only one element revolving around stereotypical sequences of talk and other gestures that sustain the smooth flow of the interaction. Goffman's great insight was the recognition that rituals penetrate and punctuate just about every aspect of face-to-face interaction. Rituals open and close the encounter. They keep the interaction on track and on topic. They help focus individuals' attention. They key and re-key the frame. They arouse emotions if directed at a totem marking group membership, and they repair breaches. Thus, for Goffman, encounters cannot be opened, closed, and sustained without the constant flow of ritual sequences of talk and body gesturing. Formal rituals and ceremonies, such as those practiced in collective worship in church or in a graduation ceremony, are only a special case of a much more pervasive phenomenon: interaction ritual. Every interaction at each moment, from its beginning to its end, and even thereafter in people's retrospective and introspective thoughts about an interaction, involve ritual dynamics that influence the flow of emotions. These insights came to Goffman from the work of Emile Durkheim (1912/1965) coupled with his ethnographic observations of people in face-to-face interaction. Interaction ritual theory as developed by Randall Collins (Collins, 1975, 2004) over the last 30 years takes the basic insights of Goffman and Durkheim, but transforms them into a somewhat different view of rituals.

ABSTRACTThe use of rituals to bolster social cohesion is well-established theoretically, but alternative outcomes of rituals—when individuals or groups fail to gain, or actively lose, social capital – have been neglected. This research investigates a rarely studied but common interaction ritual—adult social drinking – to explore how network ties and interaction rituals interact producing variegated outcomes. A framework is introduced that, based on the strength of ties of participants (social network theory) and degree of synchronicity obtained (interaction ritual theory), demonstrates four outcomes of everyday rituals: bonding, bridging, blocking and breaching. The study demonstrates interaction rituals, with their attending norms and patterns, foster group identity and cohesiveness, and reinforce prejudices, distrust, and group isolation, which, in the end, can serve to produce or reproduce inequality.