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An '''Interaction Ritual''' is, in Randall Collins's theory, the general mechanism by which bodily co-presence, barriers to outsiders, mutual focus of attention, and shared mood combine to produce moments of compelling emotional experience, whose outcomes are group solidarity, Emotional Energy, symbols of group membership, and moral standards. "We could call it, more generically,..."
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Created page with "{{navmenu}} <h1 class="customtitle">{{FULLPAGENAME}}</h1> <blockquote class="definition">An '''Interaction Ritual''' is, in Randall Collins's theory, the general mechanism by which bodily co-presence, barriers to outsiders, mutual focus of attention, and shared mood combine to produce moments of compelling emotional experience, whose outcomes are group solidarity, Emotional Energy, symbols of group membership, and moral standards. "We could call it, more generically,..."

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<blockquote class="definition">An '''Interaction Ritual''' is, in Randall Collins's theory, the general mechanism by which bodily co-presence, barriers to outsiders, mutual focus of attention, and shared mood combine to produce moments of compelling emotional experience, whose outcomes are group solidarity, [[Emotional Energy]], symbols of group membership, and moral standards. "We could call it, more generically, the mutual-focus / emotional-entrainment mechanism": a model of interactional situations varying along two dimensions — how much mutual focus of attention occurs, and how much emotional entrainment builds up among participants.<ref>Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), xi–xii, 47–56.</ref> In the Lightning Path framework, the interaction ritual is the general engine beneath the three functional ritual types — [[Identity Ritual]], [[Governance Ritual]], and [[Exchange Ritual]] — and the proximate site where [[Collective Effervescence]] is generated or suppressed.</blockquote>

==Concept Map==

=== Key Terms ===

[[World System]] > {{#ask:[[Is a key term::World System]]|format=ul}}

[[Comprehensive Framework]] > {{#ask:[[Is a key term::Comprehensive Framework]]|format=ul}}

[[Ritual]] > {{#ask:[[Is a key term::Ritual]]|format=ul}}

[[Collective Effervescence]] > {{#ask:[[Is a key term::Collective Effervescence]]|format=ul}}

===Syncretic Terms===

[[Interaction Ritual]] > {{#ask:[[Is a syncretic term::Interaction Ritual]]}}

=== Related LP Terms ===
[[Interaction Ritual]] > {{#ask:[[Is a related LP term::Interaction Ritual]]|format=ul}}

===Non-LP Related Terms===

[[Interaction Ritual]] > {{#ask:[[Is a related term::Interaction Ritual]]|format=ul}}

==Notes==

=== The Model ===

Collins's starting point is the situation, not the individual: "not men and their moments, but moments and their men." Rituals succeed or fail depending on their ingredients, and the outcomes scale with the intensity of mutual focus and entrainment: group solidarity, [[Emotional Energy]], symbols of membership, and moral standards — including the righteous anger aroused when symbols are violated.<ref>Ibid., 3–5, 47–56.</ref> Formal rituals (ceremonies, services) and natural rituals (conversations, gatherings, audiences) run on the same mechanism; rituals can also fail, empty out, or be forced, and failed rituals drain participants rather than charge them.<ref>Ibid., 49–53.</ref> The theory is Durkheim's mechanism radicalized and micro-situationalized: rituals are "the nodes of social structure," the places where symbols are created, and "if the ritual is not carried out for a time, the sacredness fades away."<ref>Ibid., 17, 26.</ref>

=== Examples ===

Collins's illustrations run from the trivial to the historic: conversational turn-taking as rhythmic entrainment; the victory pile-on of championship teams; the crowds of 9/11, where shared fear and focus forged new national symbols in real time; and, on the negative side, the failed meeting, the compulsory ceremony, and the interaction ritual that excludes — being "emotionally battered by someone else's interaction ritual that does not allow one inside."<ref>Ibid., 56–58, 66–81, 88–95, xii.</ref> "It is games that make sports heroes, politics that makes politicians into charismatic leaders" — the chain of rituals, not the solitary individual, is the unit of analysis.<ref>Ibid., 5.</ref>

=== Relation to the LP Typology ===

The interaction ritual is the general mechanism; the LP ritual types are its functional destinations. A given interaction ritual can perform an identity function (recharging solidarity frames), a governance function (staging authority), an exchange function (creating obligation), or several at once — the same mechanism, different work. Power and status dynamics run through all of them as micro-stratification processes: see [[Power Ritual]] and [[Status Ritual]]. Where the energy goes, and who benefits, is the question of [[The Harvest]].

=== Interaction Rituals Generate Power ===
Interaction rituals are designed to generate [[Emotional Energy]], and EE is not only the foundation of motivation but the foundation of power. "Durkheim noted that a successful social ritual makes the individual participant feel strong, confident, full of impulses to take the initiative."<ref>Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains, xii.</ref> That felt capacity to act is personal power — and because power is created in the interaction, it can be given. "Social dominance — whether it takes the form of leadership, popularity, intellectual innovativeness, or physical aggressiveness — is often acceded to by others who encounter such a person, because it occurs through emotional processes that pump some individuals up while depressing others."<ref>Ibid., xiii.</ref> "It is games that make sports heroes, politics that makes politicians into charismatic leaders."<ref>Ibid., 5.</ref> The mechanism is belief. Power flows to whoever the group's rituals have charged, and the charge consists in the convergence of the individual's own belief and the belief others enact toward them in ritual.

The clearest training ground is the schoolyard, where the K-12 system drills children in social positioning long before it teaches them anything else. Who is the "cool" kid in the smoking group? How did that person become the strong, confident center of attention? Not by decree and not by force, but by ritual accumulation: repeated encounters in which others oriented to them, deferred, laughed, echoed — until their centrality became a fact of the group's shared belief, and therefore a fact of power. The group built the power it now obeys. Political rallies perform the same operation at scale: the assembled crowd raises energy and transfers it to the individual at the podium, who leaves the stage enlarged — stronger, more confident, more initiative-laden than the people who charged him. The group creates the power that then rules it. And this transfer — energy raised by the many and deposited in the one — is what they call democracy.

== Quotes ==
<blockquote>In the strong sense, the individual is the interactional ritual chain. The individual is the precipitate of past interactional situations and an ingredient of each new situation. An ingredient, not the determinant, because a situation is an emergent property. A situation is not merely the result of the individual who comes into it, nor even of a combination of individuals (although it is that, too). Situations have laws or processes of their own; and that is what IR theory is about.<ref>Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 5.</ref></blockquote>{{endstuff}}

[[category:terms]]
[[category:lightningpath]]
[[Is a key term::Ritual| ]]

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