Interaction Ritual Theory

Short-term mission trips (STMs) are service trips, typically lasting from one week to a few months, which entails an individual travelling to a distant place to engage in a type of voluntary social service, often in tandem with proselytization. Given the rapid increase of STMs since the 1980s, they have arguably become a rite of passage for devout evangelicals. In an age where conservative congregations are looking to stave off the threat of secularism for its next generation, STMs have been regarded one of the most compelling religious experiences available to its laity.

While many have studied second-generation Chinese Christians in North America, few have examined this population from a transnational frame. My multi- sited ethnography follows four STM teams deployed to China by Chinese evangelical churches from across Canada in 2015. One STM sending congregation in the Greater Toronto Area was also observed for almost two years. The research participants are highly religious Chinese Canadians, most being second-generation children of Cantonese Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. Many have limited mastery of the Chinese language and little knowledge of their ethnic homeland. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted before the STM, immediately after the STM, and a year after the STM.

This paper examines the STM’s impact upon the short-term missionaries’ (STMers) sense of social solidarity, broadly defined. I specifically interrogate the intersections of their religious (i.e. evangelicalism), ethnic (i.e. “Chinese”), and national (i.e. “Canadian”) identities by examining how they give meaning to their STM experiences. I accomplish this by applying the theoretical tools from the sociology of emotion’s interaction ritual chains theory by Randall Collins that follows the microsociological lineage of Durkheim and Goffman.

My findings reveal that the second generation negotiate complex meanings to their transnational STM experiences. Several interconnected contradictions emerge. First, being in China, the participants are forced to negotiate their Chinese and Canadian identities; that is, to come to decide the extent they are Chinese or not- Chinese. This is relevant given previous scholarship has identified ethnic identification to be an important variable to one’s religiosity. Second, while claiming solidarity with local Chinese Christians under the global umbrella of Christendom, they struggle to come to terms with their Canadian socioeconomic privilege when juxtaposed with the people they seek to serve abroad. Third, despite the STMers’ desire to ‘experience God’ to strengthen their faith, this motivation is inherently based on modern Enlightenment values of empirical verification.

Ritual has been studied from a variety of scholarly disciplines; as a result, it has been approached and defined in a myriad of ways. In a widely read encyclopedia article on "Ritual" published in 1968, the anthropologist Edmund Leach offered the somewhat dispiriting observation that "there is the widest possible disagreement as to how the word ritual should be used and how the performance of ritual should be understood." At that time, there was little consensus over what ritual is or what it does, if it does anything at all. 1 Ritueel is vanuit diverse disciplines bestudeerd en op veel manieren benaderd en gedefinieerd. In 1968 publiceerde antropoloog Edmund Leach een artikel waarin hij aangeeft dat er een discussie bestaat over hoe het woord ritueel moet worden gebruikt en hoe de performance van ritueel moet worden begrepen. 2 …, "ritual" is not a particular kind of discrete action, but rather a quality of action potentially available across a spectrum of behavior. Ritual, as a metacategory, includes both religious and nonreligious rites, the traditional and the new, the prescribed and the improvised, the human and nonhuman, and rubs up against a number of other cultural domains, such as play, games, performance, and theater. If ritual is action, it is also an idea, something we think with, and our exploration will move back and forth between these two dimensions. 3

Building on Erving Goffman and Emile Durkheim, Randall Collins has demonstrated that situations have rules, processes, and constraints that are largely independent of more macro-social dynamics—this realm of action is referred to as the interaction order (Collins 2004; Goffrnan 1983). Collins's and Goffman's work on the interaction order illustrates how situations emerge and then shape and constrain action. We suggest this process of emergence and constraint can be further understood by explaining how action manifests as various types of involvement in situations. Specifically, we suggest that the different types of involvement manifest depending on how we focus our attention within situations. To understand how, why, and when we focus our attention, we must consider how cognition and emotion shape perception. Thus, we build on theories of cognition, emotion, and attention to explain how and when various sorts of social involvement emerge.

This conceptual paper re-evaluates the concept of niches in tourism markets. As many regions are now attempting to address niche markets in tourism as a development strategy, understanding of the dynamics of niche markets is crucial. Current approaches are often limited to seeing niche markets as simple subsectors of larger consumer markets. We argue for a broader view of market niches as forms of social rituals involving both consumers and producers with a mutual focus of attention. Based on the work of Randall Collins we examine how interaction rituals are produced and maintained, and how these are also reflected in niche markets, such as backpacking. We illustrate the how backpacking produces a mutual focus of attention and boundaries to outsiders, helping to sustain the niche over the longer term. This analysis has implications for producers hoping to tap into niche markets, as they too need to become part of the niche community.

The present paper explores the phenomenon of 'public ritual apology'. In our definition, this phenomenon covers an apology performed in front of public, and which is ritual in the sense that it is symbolic and expected to restore the moral order of the public, rather than grant actual reconciliation between the apologiser and the offended party. Thus, 'public ritual apology' usually occurs in contexts when someone apologises for acts that are deemed as grave and in the case of which apology is seemingly dysfunctional in the sense that it cannot usually grant forgiveness. Public ritual apology is a regretfully neglected area, in spite of the fact that such apologies are not only frequent but also generate significant public attention in media – thus, this paper fills an important knowledge gap. In our paper we focus on Chinese public ritual apologies, which are noteworthy to explore as Chinese is stereotypically referred to as a culture which disprefers apologising behaviour. Our methodology is predominantly interactional and metaprag-matic, and it combines qualitative research with quantitative elements.

Events are per definition limited in time and space. However, the social interaction taking place during events, can continue virtually. This can result in hybrid communities, existing of an offline and an online dimension (Sechi, Skilters, Borri & De Lucia, 2012). This paper explores the construction of hybrid event communities based on the following research questions: (1) What type of online practices can be identified before, during and after the event? (2) How do online and offline event practices and rituals influence each other? (3) How do combinations of online and offline practices contribute to the creation and maintenance of hybrid event communities? The practices of three events were studied using qualitative methods. 56 interviews were conducted and participant observation took place during 11 editions of the events. This was complemented with an online study. The findings identify different types of online practices around events such as connecting practices, recruiting practices and creative practices. Moreover, the combinations of practices lead to different types of event communities. The paper develops a framework of online/offline interaction processes that result in different types of event communities, contributing to our knowledge about the role that events can play in the contemporary network society (Castells, 2010).

The expanding gaming industry now includes a large group of consumers who watch others play games. On Twitch.tv – the leading platform for gameplay streaming – influencers livestream themselves playing games while viewers watch and interact with them. Previous research suggests that social interaction may be critical for a successful stream but has not studied gameplay streams as Interaction Rituals, a model describing how interaction lead to social motivation. Analysis of four gameplay streams shows how the streamer, through inclusion strategies and active viewer participation, promote viewer engagement in a way that resembles the mechanisms of offline Interaction Rituals. The model, therefore, appears to be useful for understanding how successful gameplay streams draw a returning audience through producing positive social emotions and parasocial attachment to the group.

В работе исследуется теория ритуалов интеракций с точки зрения её внутренней (теоретической) и внешней (эмпирической) непротиворечивости. Рассматриваются эмпирические исследования, подтверждающие достоверность и применимость в социологических исследованиях теории ритуалов интеракций Р. Коллинза.
Также был проведен линейный эксперимент с целью изучения феномена сплетен как нерешенной социологической проблемы. Эксперимент проектировался в соответствии с постулатами теории ритуалов интеракций, поэтому его результаты позволяют оценить эмпирическую непротиворечивость теории. Демонстрируется возможность использования метода спектрального анализа аудиозаписей, разработанного Стэнфордом Грегори для измерения уровня речевой синхронии, для интерпретации качества взаимодействия. Полученные результаты полностью согласуются с теорией ритуалов интеракций. Таким образом, автор приходит к заключению об эмпирической непротиворечивости теории ритуалов интеракций.

This insightful book reappraises how traditional high culture attractions have been supplemented by popular culture events, contemporary creativity and everyday life through inventive styles of tourism. Greg Richards draws on over three decades of research to provide a new approach to the topic, combining practice and interaction ritual theories and developing a model of cultural tourism as a social practice.

"In this work, Greg Richards, the leading exponent of cultural tourism studies, brings together and integrates his many years of research and practical experience in the êeld. In contrast to the prevailing perception of mass tourists as passive consumers of proéered attractions, Richards stresses the active co-creation of cultural products, sites and events between cultural entrepreneurs and active visitors."
Erik Cohen, Emeritus Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Violence was a key element of the interwar radical habitus and was particularly affirmed in far-right movements, which found fertile ground for their ideas among students. However, the influence of the systems of ideas advocated by ideologues on student masses seems limited and indirect. Student support for antisemitism and extremism cannot be explained only by cultural conditions, ideology or political engineering. What is needed here are intermediate stages, linking radical ideology with the actions of social actors. I argue that the intermediary function was performed by the symbol of Stanisław Wacławski, a student and member of the Camp of Great Poland (Obóz Wielkiej Polski) who was killed during the antisemitic riots in Vilnius in 1931. The figure of Wacławski was a key element of antisemitic discourse in far-right press and was used by academic societies to construct the annual ritual of violence in the 1930s. I employ the micro-sociological approach and draw on Randall Collins’ theory of “interaction ritual chains” to show that the factors behind the mobilization of ordinary students for collective violence and a chauvinistic agenda included also emotions and personal relations, and not only political identification and advertising.

The sociological study of religion stretches back to the discipline’s foundation in the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim (Borowik 2011). Durkheim’s (1915) broad conception of collective consciousness and the increasing number of those who do not identify with organized religion in America (Pew Research Center 2008) suggest a re-conceptualization of religion beyond formal, institutional definitions. In expanding definitions of religion, leading sociologists of religion have called for increased consideration of the role of quasi-religious phenomena in order to better understand social meaning and group behavior (Ammerman 2007; Luckmann 1967; McGuire 2008). The lack of attention to quasi-religions is particularly problematic given religion’s proposed importance for sociology, as “religion is inscribed into the entirety of the reflection on the essence of society” (Borowik 2011:177). Understanding religion, as a crystallization of that which a group finds deeply meaningful in all of its forms, including quasi-religions, is fundamental for understanding social life.
To advance our understanding of contemporary quasi-religious phenomena, the current study explores the role of the sacred, ritual, belief, and group meaning among fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a U.S. team within the National Football League (NFL). Participant observation data are used to assess the types of sacred symbols, rituals, beliefs, and overall group meaning implicated in the fan identity. Rituals and their emotional outcomes, necessary components of a quasi-religion, are framed using the microsociological approach of Interaction Ritual (IR) theory (Collins 2004; see also Cottingham 2012).  I also examine the beliefs, emotions, and meanings that Steelers fans hold in an effort to better understand sports fandom as an increasingly popular facet of society. Doing so, this study advances our understanding of religion outside of narrow, “official” definitions and illuminates the contours of a specific fan base.

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 conceptual paper argues for a broader view of the role of events in social systems. When analysed as social phenomena, events can be seen as social actors that have the potential to both sustain and transform social systems. The maintenance of social systems is often reliant on iterative events, regularly occurring celebrations that tend to confirm social structures. In contrast, pulsar events have the potential to transform social structures. In this sense events can be seen as actors that have important influences on social systems, particularly in linking localised small world networks with the global space of flows. These ideas are explored through the case of Barcelona, which illustrates the interplay between these different types of events in their total portfolio, and how the extension of ritual in the sense of Collins (2004) can also contribute to the generation of new relationships and practices in the contemporary network society.  Barcelona is examined as an eventful city in which the alternation of continuity through iterative events and change through pulsar events contributes to increasing the network effects of events.

In polite cultures, praise serves as valuable social currency, yet, some compliments can be counter-productive. A cryptosemic compliment is a message in communication that is routinely exchanged on the virtue of its good intentions, while closer semiotic scrutiny reveals another, obscured dimension of meaning that subverts the implied praise, yet goes unperceived or ignored by all parties involved. Cryptosemic compliments are rooted in reified, taken-for-granted notions of what is ‘normal’ and ‘true’  and serve as a window into the subtle cultural double-standards operating under the veneer of praise. Drawing on Goffman’s concept of ‘face-work’ as well as Brown and Levinson’s framework on politeness, I argue that cryptosemic praise is a ‘face-saving’ discourse strategy that helps appease the cognitive dissonance of internalizing more than one system of cultural beliefs and demonstrate variations of patterns of cultural value ascription involved in the construction and use of these mixed messages.

Dans ce chapitre, je défends que les affects propres aux signes avant-coureurs de la transe de possession dans un culte afro-brésilien, le Xangô de Recife, gagneraient à être appréhendées en tant qu’affordances affectives, c'est-à-dire un type d’affordance qui s’exprime préférentiellement dans le registre des affects. J’y propose une définition du concept d’« affordance affective », née d’une volonté d’associer une approche « néo-jamesienne » des émotions, qui insiste sur leur dimension somatique ou corporelle, et une approche « néo-batesonienne » qui les conçoit d’abord comme le « précipité sensible » (Bonhomme 2008) d’une relation. Le concept d’affordance affective s’avère heuristiquement intéressant dans l’étude du phénomène de possession religieuse car il met en évidence leur nature prescriptive: les affordances affectives de la possession ne se contentent pas de traduire un état émotionnel mais elles régulent l’interaction en cours au sein d’une configuration interactionnelle complexe entre quatre pôles : les orixás (ou divinités africaines), la matéria (le candidat à la possession), les spécialistes rituels et l’assemblée.

W artykule porównuję trzy koncepcje dotyczące dystrybuowania idei – memetyczną, autorstwa Richarda Brodiego; antropologiczną, stworzoną przez Dana Sperbera i socjologiczną, rozwijaną przez Randalla Collinsa. Moim celem jest wskazanie podobieństw i różnic w wyjaśnianiu funkcjonowania dystrybucji idei w kilku wyróżnionych aspektach. Porównanie to będzie pomocne w ocenie nośności każdej z koncepcji, w zakresie analizy procesu kolektywnego zapamiętywania i zapominania oraz przechodzenie idei zarówno pomiędzy członkami społeczeństwa, jak i w sferze transferu międzypokoleniowego.

In this article, I compare three concepts concerning the distribution of ideas - memetic, by Richard Brodie; anthropological, created by Dan Sperber and sociological, developed by Randall Collins. My goal is to point out the similarities and differences in explaining the distribution of ideas in several distinct aspects. This comparison will be helpful in assessing the viability of each concept, in the analysis of the process of collective memory and forgetting, and the transition of ideas between members of society as well as in the sphere of intergenerational transfer.

Research indicates that white middle-class families’ engagement with urban schools in gentrifying localities is often characterised by strategies of dominance and control, which support claims of belonging and identity, as well as securing educational advantage for their children. This is referred as ‘class colonisation’ or ‘school gentrification’. However, there has been a neglect of educators’ perspectives and responses to urban social change and middle-class parental practices. In this paper, I offer an institutionally-focused analysis of class colonisation as a feature of educators’ working lives. I argue that class colonisation produces organisational ‘turmoil’ through parental practices and interactions which unsettle staff’s social and cultural control over key aspects of their work situation and institutional boundary maintenance. This turmoil is experienced as disruptive of the social order, generating staff cynicism, conflict, ambivalence, and alienation. I draw on ethnographic data with teachers and teaching assistants from a gentrifying inner-London primary school to empirically specify these arguments. Theoretically, this paper integrates elements of Bourdieu and micro-sociology, to foreground how agents use their unequal resources to negotiate their interpersonal institutional realities, and in the process, re-produce classed and racialised boundaries and relations within the changing contexts of urban education.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the (collective) performance of identities in an event context. During events, the participants not only engage in face-to-face performances, but also in the collective performances of crowds and audiences. This study analyses collective performance using Collins’ framework of Interaction Ritual Chains, which combines Goffman’s performance metaphor with Durkheim’s work on rituals and collective effervescence. This provides a more complete analysis of the ways identities are performed and (re)constructed during an event. This qualitative studypresentsthecaseoftheRedheadDays,theworld’slargestgathering of redheads. Visitor interviews and participant observation over four editions of the event show how a temporary majority of redheads is created, which greatly impacts both face-to-face and collective performance. Social practices that facilitate performance include photographing and storytelling. The data reveal that collective performance is inherently different from face-to-face performance, and that the combination of the two contributes to a change in narrative identities of the event attendees.

As Coupland and others show, Bauman's account of 'performance' provides a valuable perspective on speech stylisation across a range of public contexts. But this paper explores the limitations of performance as a window on crossing and stylisation in everyday practice, and although recognising other frames as well, it dwells instead on Goffman's interaction ritual, crossreferring to two studies of adolescents in England. In the first, race and ethnicity were controversial, and the performance of other-ethnic styles was risky. But interaction ritual constructed crossing and stylisation as urgent responses to the exigencies of the moment and this made them more acceptable. In the second, performance implies a reflexive composure that is hard to reconcile with informants' experience of social class as an uncomfortable but only halfarticulated issue, whereas interaction ritual provides a sharp lens on how youngsters used stylized posh and Cockney to register their apprehension of ongoing stratification.

This paper presents some preliminary insights into an important yet generally neglected discursive phenomenon which we define as ‘in-group ritual’. In-group ritual refers to ritual practices formed by relational networks. In terms of typology, in-group ritual represents a different type of ritual than ‘social ritual’, i.e. ritual which counts as ‘normative’ on a social level (see more on ritual typology in Kádár, 2013). Examining in-group ritual and, in particular, its relational functions, we endeavour to approach ritual language use from a discursive viewpoint; as we see it, such an approach is long overdue, as rituality is relatively ignored in pragmatics.

Abstract This study adds to research on digital interactions by exploring the role of emoji use patterns in online dating among young adults. Focus group data suggest emojis play a similar role as non-verbal behaviors do in an offline context, where coordination is used to ascertain mutual interest. The data shows how the degree of synchronization in emoji use patterns (such as frequency, types, and style) is used as a feedback tool to assess a chat partner's romantic fit. Attunement of emoji use patterns between the partners is also used to signal and gage interest, for example by using suggestive emojis to “test” the other partner's interest and intentions, or to establish a shared mood. Conversely, a lack of reciprocity is experienced as awkward or wrong and can produce insecurity and doubt. To understand this back-and-forth process of mutual suggestion and attunement, we propose a modified version of Collins’ interaction ritual model. In this model, we highlight the importance of shared interpretative schemas and interaction scripts, which set normative expectations for how emoji patterns can be used to build sexual or romantic chemistry.

Language learners participating in inquiry-based science instruction are often faced with the challenge of interacting in a language they have not yet mastered. With this challenge at the fore, this study uses interaction ritual theory to examine a plurilingual student's participation in inquiry-based science. Interaction ritual analysis of the focal student's interactions with peers during small-group science investigations at the microlevel (tenths of a second) and in real-time revealed that positive interaction rituals failed to form at first. Over a period of 6 months, his persistent use of nonverbal and verbal participation strategies, and opportunities to engage diverse communicative resources, resulted in higher levels of synchrony with his classmates and successful interactions in the language of instruction. The findings present novel information about the nuances of the silent, embodied participation of language learners in inquiry- oriented instruction. Further, the findings elaborate the claim that inquiry-based science pedagogies created space for students to form successful interaction rituals that, in turn, supported the focal stu- dent's science engagement and language development.

There is brilliance of Gregory Bateson in viewing structure as a dance of interacting parts.  In my research I see this in visual ethnography, in Islamic space and time, kinship and in ritual.  I content that this is the way we can include properties of culture in a paradigm that combines holism, emergence and embeddedness.  Viewing the recent eclipse reminds us of the dance between sun, moon and earth.  Thank you Science.

Since the 1960s various currents within social theory have been undermining the functionalist and structuralist conception of the human agent as a passive automaton moved by obscure forces. While the emerging picture emphasizes the part played by cognition, implicit skill and explicit knowledge, much less attention has been paid to the role of emotions in the active production and reproduction of the social world. The specialized sub-field known as the sociology of emotions has brought to sociological attention the topic of emotions but has been mostly preoccupied with how social structures of various kinds determine or constrain situated emotions. The aim of this programmatic article is to demonstrate the theoretical plausibility and the empirical viability of research on emotional mechanisms of social production and reproduction. On the basis of a critical reappropriation of the theory of structuration and interaction ritual theory, face-work and sacred-object establishment (or “enshrinement”) arise as mechanisms of social production and reproduction to which situated emotions are inherently constitutive. The conclusion points to the need for social theory to develop a concept of motivation integrating the “pulling” and “pushing” duality of emotional intentions as expressed in situated action.

This thesis examines how Chinese-Canadian evangelicals (CCEs) maintain social solidarity through short-term missions (STMs) to China. STMs are pilgrimage-like service trips that entails an individual to travel to a distant place to engage in social service for one or two weeks. This research draws on theoretical insights from Randall Collins’ interaction ritual chains (IRC) theory to examine the intersections of ethnicity, religion, and emotions at the macro-, meso-, micro-, and situational levels. This study involved over 131 in-depth interviews with 48 STM participants, observations of four STMs in 2015, and a two-year ethnography of a sending church north of the Greater Toronto Area in 2015-16. My first empirical chapter takes a macro-level perspective to investigating the global missions phenomenon. My findings reveal that the religious discourses that motivate the collective actions of transnational Chinese fundamentalist organizations are unstable, and this unity based on a religious pan-Chinese ethnicity is challenged by linguistic, geographic, generational, and ideological fractures. In my second chapter analyzing the meso-level CCE congregations, I observed how they maintained their organizational focus by operating cyclically and how each congregation’s members actively participated to maintain the pursuit of their mission. In my third chapter, I focus on the micro-level motivations for CCEs to engage in STM action. I connect contemporary neuroscience to IRC theory’s conception of IR “chains,” and suggested the concept be revised to “entangled chains.” I discuss how acknowledging the emotional entanglement of various identities should drive the analytical discussion of the self in modernity. My final chapter examines how situations of putative spiritual conflicts allowed STMers to generate various collective-effervescence outcomes. This thesis contributes to the sociology of religion and emotions and our understanding of communities by uncovering how social solidarity is generated and sustained at multiple levels of social organization.

Picturing the True Form investigates the long-neglected visual culture of Daoism, China's primary indigenous religion, from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries with references to both earlier and later times. In this richly illustrated book, Huang provides a comprehensive mapping of Daoist images in various media, including Dunhuang manuscripts, funerary artifacts, and paintings, as well as other charts, illustrations, and talismans preserved in the fifteenth-century Daoist Canon. True form (zhenxing), the key concept behind Daoist visuality, is not a static picture, but entails an active journey of "seeing" underlying and secret phenomena through a series of metamorphoses.

This book's structure mirrors the two-part Daoist journey from inner to outer. Part I focuses on inner images associated with meditation and visualization practices for self-cultivation and longevity, while Part II investigates the visual and material dimensions of Daoist ritual. Interwoven through these discussions is the idea that the inner and outer mirror each other, and the boundary demarcating the two is fluent. Huang also reveals three central modes of Daoist symbolism--aniconic, immaterial, and ephemeral--and shows how Daoist image-making goes beyond the traditional dichotomy of text and image to incorporate writings in image design. It is these particular features that distinguish Daoist visual culture from its Buddhist counterpart.

The paper focuses on the analysis of the role that microinteractions play in the emergence of network structures in 12-Step self-help fellowships. The fellowships are considered as networks that consist of groups with overlapping memberships, which are linked together and are sustained via intergroup and intragroup interactions. It is suggested that microinteractions are crucial in building the networks in question. However, the interactional factor itself is usually neglected in the studies of 12-step  groups and fellowships. The interaction ritual theory (Randall Collins) served as a conceptual framework in the case-studies of NA and FA groups. Analysis of regular  group meetings revealed that their organization fulfills conditions and contains components that can foster successful interaction ritual. Group meetings (trans)form identity, build common ‘cultural capital’, stimulate ‘emotional energy’ and internalization of program principles thus supporting personal changes. Various interactions rituals (regular group meetings, group anniversaries, world service conferences, informal interactions etc.) sustain solidarity and group bonds, and help to build relations between groups’ members through mutual support and exchange of experience-based information on recovery. As a result, group interaction rituals contribute to network-building at different levels (group, local/city, regional and international), create bridges between members, as well as between groups, and form an international macronetwork of 12-step communities

Numerous sanctuaries in ancient Italy and beyond have yielded small figurative votive objects made of terracotta or bronze. Based on a model of symbolic communication adapted from the work of cultural anthropologist Victor Turner, my contribution explores what exactly can be said about the functions and uses of such objects in the context of ritual (symbolic) interaction, and seeks to reconstruct such ritual action. The study thus contributes to the wider question of the possibilities but also the limits in reconstructing ritual action from objects, a concern central to the study of material religion. Such considerations need to be based on intact and well-documented archaeological find contexts. Tarquinia’s port Gravisca, located on Etruria’s Tyrrhenian coast, offers such a context: There, some of the votive material deposited in the local sanctuaries has come to light in its original location and assembly. A close reading of this original setup combined with iconographic analysis allows me to challenge accepted opinions about seemingly fixed correlations between the votive image and the divinity to which the ritual was presumably addressed. The archaeological analysis of these votive objects – how they were strategically exposed to the view of visitors – with the application of a communication model allows for an exploration of the votives’ function as media of religious communication against the background of competition among sanctuaries.

The present paper explores the phenomenon of 'public ritual apology'. In our definition, this phenomenon covers an apology performed in front of public, and which is ritual in the sense that it is symbolic and expected to restore the moral order of the public, rather than grant actual reconciliation between the apologiser and the offended party. Thus, 'public ritual apology' usually occurs in contexts when someone apologises for acts that are deemed as grave and in the case of which apology is seemingly dysfunctional in the sense that it cannot usually grant forgiveness. Public ritual apology is a regretfully neglected area, in spite of the fact that such apologies are not only frequent but also generate significant public attention in media – thus, this paper fills an important knowledge gap. In our paper we focus on Chinese public ritual apologies, which are noteworthy to explore as Chinese is stereotypically referred to as a culture which disprefers apologising be...

Dans ce chapitre, je défends que les affects propres aux signes avant-coureurs de la transe de possession dans un culte afro-brésilien, le Xangô de Recife, gagneraient à être appréhendées en tant qu’« affordances affectives », c'est-à-dire un type d’affordance qui s’exprime préférentiellement dans le registre des affects. J’y propose une définition du concept d’« affordance affective », née d’une volonté d’associer une approche « néo-jamesienne » des émotions, qui insiste sur leur dimension somatique ou corporelle, et une approche « néo-batesonienne » qui les conçoit d’abord comme le « précipité sensible » (Bonhomme 2008) d’une relation. Le concept d’affordance affective s’avère heuristiquement intéressant dans l’étude du phénomène de possession religieuse car il met en évidence leur nature prescriptive: les affordances affectives de la possession ne se contentent pas de traduire un état émotionnel mais elles régulent l’interaction en cours au sein d’une configuration interactionnelle complexe entre quatre pôles : les orixás (ou divinités africaines), la matéria (le candidat à la possession), les spécialistes rituels et l’assemblée.