Interaction Rituals at Odds Yet in Concert: Sketches of a Research Program
A talk with professor Anders Vassenden, University of Stavanger.
When sociologists engage with the concept of Interaction Ritual, they routinely draw from the works of Erving Goffman and Randall Collins. While Goffman’s and Collins’ theories stem from the same microsociological tradition and are both indebted to Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life, it has been neglected by sociologists that their formulations of interaction ritual are actually markedly at odds.
In theorizing the totemic selfhood, Goffman highlights interaction ritual as protection of our projected self-images (face) and sustaining the interaction order. Collins’ version, in contrast, emphasizes collective effervescence and emotional entrainment. With respect to emotions, Goffman’s social actor is an anxious creature, whereas Collins’ actor searches for elation through interactions and charging of emotional energy.
A certain theoretical conflation is mirrored in the fact the same term is applied to interactions as contrasting as: (a) a university professor who suppresses her elite status in first-time introductions by answering a question about what she does for a living, with “I work at the University”; (b) the collective mood of Liverpool supporters chanting “You’ll never walk alone” at the end of home matches at Anfield Stadium.
In this talk, Anders Vassenden presents and extends theoretical interventions from work recently published in American Sociological Review. In this work, the authors distinguish said formulations of interaction ritual and connect them in ways that open new questions for empirical research. The ASR article uses data from two very different empirical studies. The first is on ethnoracial stigmatization, where an “audience segregation” is found among minority actors: Talking about stigmatization with white audiences echoes Goffmanian nervousness and facework, whereas minority-to-minority conversations involve recognition and moments of effervescence.
The other study is on collective songwriting, where Goffmanian facework and Collins-type effervescence are recursively intertwined, that is, one may serve as condition for the other. For such movements across ritual moments, the authors coin the concept ritual trajectories, which allow for new theorizing of the collective social consequences of micro interactions. Building on this, Vassenden presents sketches of a research program.
Here, he presents early analyses from an ethnography of dog-walking, where the dominant pattern is Goffmanian ritual, but where successful rituals of face can segue to moments of effervescence. Then, time permitting, he presents readings of studies of musical audiences, where he argues that whereas collective effervescence can facilitate experiences of resonance (cf. Hartmut Rosa), a more neglected dimension is how such experience also rests on fine-tuned Goffmanian interactional alignment.
Anders’ research spans topics like social status, cultural taste, ethnic relations, housing, and stigma. He has a particular interest in the theories of Erving Goffman, which he has engaged in a number of publications in journals such as The Sociological Review; Cultural Sociology; Symbolic Interaction; Sociological Methods & Research; Acta Sociologica; Ethnic and Racial Studies; European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology.
The ASR piece is co-authored with Nicholas Hoynes, Taylor Price and Iddo Tavory. Access the article "Between Two Rituals: Face and Effervescence as Moments of Social Life"
Bio
At this department seminar we warmly welcome Professor Anders Vassenden from University of Stavanger, Department of Media, and Social Sciences. Anders holds a doctorate from the University of Oslo (2008). His research interests include cultural sociology, social class, ethnic relations, ethno-racial stigmatization, national identities, qualitative methods, child welfare, and housing studies. His research on these topics is inspired by micro sociological theory, particularly the work of Erving Goffman.
