Contesting Dominance and Performing Badness: A Micro‐Sociological Analysis of the Forms,Situational Asymmetry,and Severity of Street Violence

This article proposes two ideal types of street violence: contesting dominance and performing badness. These ideal types were used as heuristic devices in qualitative analyses of 159 violent interactions among Dutch youth, taken from judicial case files. These analyses revealed that over half of the interactions resembled the contesting dominance type. Here, opponents engage in sequences of challenges and provocations to aggressively establish a domineering self; attackers purposively looked for or arranged confrontations that revolved around the issue of who is superior per se. The performing badness type was found in 30% of the cases. This is one‐sided violence in which attackers humiliate and toy with their victims to display their power and meanness. The relationships between these forms of violence, situational asymmetry (weak victims and supportive groups) and severity of the violence were analyzed statistically. Contesting dominance was associated with more severe violence, resulting from the greater amount of confrontational tension. Situational asymmetry was the rule in both forms of violence. The difference between the size of the attackers’ supportive group and that of the victims turned out to be especially important. The larger the difference, the more severe the violence in general, but especially in contesting dominance.     

Broken Interaction Rituals,Struggles for Membership,and Violence among Young Children in Two Danish Schools

Children's conflicts, understood as disagreements involving negative emotional energy, constitute a particularly intense type of social interaction. In this paper, we show that children's conflictual interactions in school differ with regard to interactional dynamics and levels of confrontational tension, which together potentially lead to violence. We discuss how these differences relate to issues of inclusion and exclusion, to levels of interactional resources, and to neighborhood differences. Our conclusions are based on analysis of fieldwork data on children aged five to eight in two Danish schools. The analysis applies Goffman's and Collins's perspectives on interaction rituals and violence and the concept of emotional capital based on Bourdieu's theory of practice.     

On the Elementary Neural Forms of Micro‐Interactional Rituals: Integrating Autonomic Nervous System Functioning Into Interaction Ritual Theory

Randall Collins's interaction ritual (IR) theory suggests social solidarity as hardwired in the human neurological capacity for rhythmic entrainment. Yet, this article suggests that IR theory 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, IR theory 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 challenges IR theory 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.     

“You Never Know Who's Looking at Your Page!”: African American Male Adolescents’ Perceptions of Emotional Display Rules Online

Social network sites (SNSs) are a powerful new context for adolescent development. We qualitatively investigate African American adolescent boys’ (N = 50, mean age = 15.8) perceptions of emotional display rules on SNSs. We present and discuss a taxonomy of display rules for anger, sadness, embarrassment, and excitement. Perceived display rules around anger and sadness were most notable. Participants’ understandings of display rules around anger were complex and varied, with many describing threats of violence as marking the line between acceptable and unacceptable expressions. Although youth stated that expressing sadness via SNS could garner emotional support, this was understood somewhat consistently as unacceptable. Overall, our findings suggest that perceptions of emotional display rules on SNSs are varied, complicated, and can be difficult to navigate.     

Cognition in Situations

The symbolic interactionist tradition can contribute to advancing sociological studies of cognition by setting dual process models on more solid ground. I draw on Blumer's epistemological statements and the interactionist tradition more broadly to consider how dual process models of cognition could be applied to naturally occurring situations. I suggest that attending to the ways the past and the future are handled and modified within social interaction provides a usable inroad for the sociology of cognition to engage with situational analysis. I identify “resonance” and “iterative reprocessing” as concepts that are suitable to this end.     

Rituals of Solidarity and Security in the Wake of Terrorist Attack

Conflict produces group solidarity in four phases: (1) an initial few days of shock and idiosyncratic individual reactions to attack; (2) one to two weeks of establishing standardized displays of solidarity symbols; (3) two to three months of high solidarity plateau; and (4) gradual decline toward normalcy in six to nine months. Solidarity is not uniform but is clustered in local groups supporting each other's symbolic behavior. Actual solidarity behaviors are performed by minorities of the population, while vague verbal claims to performance are made by large majorities. Commemorative rituals intermittently revive high emotional peaks; participants become ranked according to their closeness to a center of ritual attention. Events, places, and organizations claim importance by associating themselves with national solidarity rituals and especially by surrounding themselves with pragmatically ineffective security ritual. Conflicts arise over access to centers of ritual attention; clashes occur between pragmatists deritualizing security and security zealots attempting to keep up the level of emotional intensity. The solidarity plateau is also a hysteria zone; as a center of emotional attention, it attracts ancillary attacks unrelated to the original terrorists as well as alarms and hoaxes. In particular historical circumstances, it becomes a period of atrocities .     

“SUPPORTING OUR BLACK MEN”: REPRODUCING MALE PRIVILEGE IN A BLACK STUDENT POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

Data collected from participant observation and interviews show how a predominately female Black student political organization privileged male members to increase the group's prestige and ensure turnout at public events. The group accepted the men immediately, forgave their failures, and assigned them high profile tasks. While the women worked behind the scenes, they often chose men to represent the public face of the organization. These seemingly minor privileges allowed the men to outpace the women in accruing cultural and social capital. This analysis relies on Patricia Hill Collins' intersectional view of race and gender to identify conditions that encourage male privilege in oppressed groups and inhibit gender solidarity across racial lines.     

Lifting the Veil: African American Images and the European American Gaze

Patricia Hill Collins presents and discusses gender and gender role norms, behaviors, and ideologies among African Americans in an interdisciplinary diagnostic endeavor that calls attention to health, economic, behavioral, and psychosocial patterns related to social injustice and inequality. Collins presents several popular culture, mass media, and social science literature topics that call for a progressive Black sexual politics necessary for African American empowerment. A most crucial and apparent point of Collins's discussion is that improvement in the lives of African Americans requires inspection and analysis of gender and sexuality related intragroup variation and diversity. I situate this discussion primarily within a post-civil rights ideological revolution related to the European American “gaze,” multiculturalism, and European American emotional ambivalence toward the Black body. It is proposed that Collins's analysis of the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality among African Americans occurs within an American context that reciprocally impacts African American intragroup dynamics.     

1992 MSSA presidential address: Structural paradoxes and leisure

This article examines the suspension of activity in two different contexts—private and public social isolation. Drawing on Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's theory of “flow” and Randall Collins' theory of emotional energy, we explore the link between the absence of social exchanges and the capacity to acquire emotional energy. Qualitative reports drawn from 248 participants reveal a distinct architecture to the experiences of both private and public isolation.     

Patricia Hill Collins's Black Sexual Politics and the Genealogy of the Strong Black Woman

Increasingly, as Black Sexual Politics nears its ending, a shift in tone and level of intensity makes a reader aware that Collins's analysis of interlocking social institutions and media representations is aimed not just at informing, but at liberating, individual African American readers—that she wishes to give African American men and women the tools to resist the internalization of racist sexual ideology and denigrating gender roles. The texts that I examine here—by young Black feminist writers Veronica Chambers, Joan Morgan, and Kimberley Springer, along with a response to their work from Sheila Radford-Hill—continue Collins's deconstructive work on Black gender stereotypes by focusing on the Strong Black Woman role. These autobiographical/theoretical texts not only provide a historical context for the role's origins and development, but also add a psychological and emotional dimension: they tell us what it means to individual African American women to live up to the gender role requirements of Strong Black Woman. Juxtaposed through my analysis, these texts provide a kind of dialogue that moves, in the spirit of Collins' earlier pioneering work on standpoint theory, toward a collective standpoint on the Strong Black Woman gender role and its psychic and emotional costs.     

Intra‐ and Interracial Best Friendships During Middle School: Links to Social and Emotional Well‐being

This study examined patterns of intra‐ and interracial best friendships during middle school and their associations with social and emotional well‐being. We hypothesized that intraracial friendships would be beneficial for racial or ethnic minority youth because such relationships provide protection and solidarity in a discriminatory society. Results revealed that most youth had only intraracial best friends during middle school, but 38% had at least one interracial best friend. Associations between interracial best friendships and well‐being varied by racial group; Black and Asian American youth with only interracial best friends reported lower emotional well‐being than those with only intraracial best friends. Additionally, intraracial best friendships were associated with higher conflict than interracial best friendships, especially for Black and Latino youth.     

The Ecology of Ethnic Violence: Attacks on Muslims of Ahmedabad in 2002

Ethnic violence killed at least a thousand Muslims in Gujarat (western India) in 2002. The role of political elites in orchestrating attacks against Muslims for electoral gains was a conspicuous characteristic of the violence. Yet, as this article demonstrates, the political thesis was insufficient in explaining why neighborhoods, often contiguous, experienced different levels of violence. Alternative explanations, such as interethnic contact, were also found wanting. A unique research design allowing the comparison of neighborhoods in the same electoral ward in the city of Ahmedabad demonstrates the critical role of ecology in explaining microspatial variation in the violence. Even when attacks were politically orchestrated, attackers still acted with some regard to self-preservation in selecting which location to attack. Observational and testimonial evidence based on 22 months of ethnographic fieldwork reveals the importance of two ecological factors: the built environment and the population distribution of potential targets. Together, the two factors heavily shaped crowds’ decisions to attack or escape, thus influencing the subsequent success or failure of the attack. Muslims were most vulnerable where they were concentrated in small numbers and on routes that afforded the attackers obstacle-free entry and retreat. Where the potential targets had an obstacle-free escape route to a large concentration of fellow Muslims, the outcome was looting and arson rather than killing. By implication, the course of politically orchestrated violence was complicated by the ecology of the targeted space.     

Status Compatibility,Physical Violence,and Emotional Abuse in Intimate Relationships

This article analyzing national data (N = 7,408) examines the connection between men's and women's relative economic contributions in families and the risk of husband‐to‐wife physical violence and emotional abuse. Family violence researchers have conceptualized the association between economic variables and the risk of intimate partner violence with respect to the structural dimensions of sociodemographic factors, whereas feminist researchers connect economic power to family dynamics. Marital dependency and stress frustration theories treat income, education, and employment as socioeconomic resources, whereas some feminist research points to the need for research that treats these economic variables as symbolic resources. Although income and educational attainment reduce women's risk of physical violence and emotional abuse by husbands, I find that status incompatibilities between partners that favor women increase the likelihood of emotional abuse.     

Academic resilience and caring adults: The experiences of former foster youth

As a result of being removed from their homes and moving between different placements and schools, foster youth can experience high levels of stress and challenges as they struggle to cope with such extreme emotional turbulence. The experience of trauma and instability in turn, can have consequences on foster students' academic progress. As it is seemingly uncommon for foster youth to matriculate to postsecondary education, this study examines how successful foster youth transitioned out of care and furthered their education at an academically rigorous institution. From high-achieving former foster students, this study uncovers their experiences while in out-of-home care that helped them enroll in a university, including how adult supporters provided guidance, emotional support, and stability, which allowed students to move out of their negative past experiences. Adults' willingness to assist youth and be a part of their lives provided students with a transformative academic and social emotional environment, furthering their ability to persist through high school and gain acceptance to a top-tier university.     

It's Not as Simple as It Seems: Ambiguous Culpability and Ambivalent Affect In News Representations of Violent Youth

While violence problems are a staple of both the mass media and work by constructionist social problems theorists, most of the latter has focused on violent adults. Constructionist research suggests that the media depict violent persons as evil victimizers, deserving of fear and condemnation, and their victims as deserving of sympathy. This article extends the constructionist literature on violence problems by examining news stories that construct youth violence as a social problem. My findings suggest that these media constructions are considerably more complex than previous work has claimed. Specifically, I find that the media (a) contextualize youth violence by casting extant, familiar social problems as its origins and (b) engender an ambiguous sense of culpability and ambivalent emotional orientations toward violent youth. This complexity is shaped, in part, by the media's appropriation of two seemingly contradictory cultural discourses—the evil, violent predator and the innocent child. I suggest that although aspects of these findings may be specific to the problem of violent youth, the contextualization, ambiguity, and ambivalence may well be found in social constructions of a variety of other problems.     

“The First Mark of Pain”: Toward a child-centered methodological reorientation of social theory,race and corporal punishment in American life

The current white supremacist racial order in America fundamentally relies on fear and pain to shape the subjectivities of Black people in childhood. This violence is most visible when enacted by police officers against unarmed Black youth. A less visible yet more pernicious form of racist violence against Black children is exercised by community proxies such as Black teachers and parents. Annual government reports reveal that Black children are more likely to be injured or killed by their parents than by police. In this paper we inquire as to why, despite the many Black writers who have described parental violence as an intergenerational re-enactment of the violence of slavery, and despite decades of research on the harms of hitting children, social theorists have not analyzed how Black parents can serve as proxies for white supremacist violence. We argue that Black parenting culture has in many ways internalized the white supremacist view that corporal punishment is required to instill the discipline necessary to spare Black youth from police violence and incarceration. We conclude that until social scientists foreground the voices of Black youth in their studies, rather than adults, our ability to understand and confront the reproduction of white supremacist violence will be impeded. We argue that the physical punishment of children in Black families is an aspect of the legacy or “afterlife” of slavery. We contend that this omission persists because Black youth voices are absent from social analysis on the issue of physical punishment, existing only in clinical studies divorced from macro-sociological analysis, and we discuss how this omission occurred as a matter of scholarly history.     

The Batterer's View of the Self and Others in Domestic Violence

Researchers estimate that 3-4 million women are abused by intimate partners each year, and the United States Surgeon General reports physical abuse as the leading cause of injury to women in the U.S. Although numerous studies have examined survivors'perceptions of domestic violence, few have examined battery from the perpetrator's perspective. We use a symbolic interactionist perspective to examine in-depth interviews with thirty-three male batterers and a demographically matched comparison group of twenty-five nonviolent male subjects. Our findings indicate that batterers minimize others'negative views of themselves, and they dissociate themselves from their partners'physical and emotional injuries. The comparison subjects, on the other hand, consider others'negative views of themselves, and they describe a deeper understanding of their intimate others'problems. We argue that an understanding of the batterer's perception of himself and others in domestic violence will help counselors develop techniques to stop male violence against women.     

The Self as Self‐Fulfilling Prophecy

Using a combination of psychoanalytic and symbolic interactionist ideas, this article portrays the development of the self as a self‐fulfilling prophecy (SFP). A prominent psychoanalytic version of this idea is presented by Lacan's two mirror theories of the self. A prominent and more familiar symbolic interactionist account of the self as self‐fulfilling prophecy is the formulation by William I. Thomas and Dorothy Thomas, which suggests that once situations are defined as real, they are real in their consequences. The aim of this article is to show that these two perspectives can be reconciled in interesting ways, because both recognize that emotions are part of the world “out there” of external goals and the world “in here” of the person's inner life. Emotions are therefore “bilevel.” The SFP creates a fault line in the self and a consequent emotional vulnerability when that line is engaged or disturbed. This article explains how this self‐fulfilling prophecy works and explores the weaknesses it inflicts on the self.     

A figurational approach to understanding school climate and peer harassment: Possibilities from Norbert Elias’s work

Although psychological approaches have been the mainstay of scholarly research on school climate, offering state-of-the-art measurements and methodologies, sociological perspectives remain essential perspectives because violence is essentially a social phenomenon. This paper offers a theoretical consideration of contributions to this field, focusing specifically on those that provide a critical historical lens. I suggest that while Foucault's approach to the disciplining of docile bodies and self-restraint offers crucial conceptual tools, Norbert Elias's work—which is scarce in scholarly research on school climate—provides a complementary but necessary framework for understanding emotional and relational aspects of peer harassment.     

Shame and the city – ‘looting’, emotions and social structure

The sociology of violence is an emerging field but one in which there remains a tension between structural explanations and phenomenological‐situational ones that focus on the micro conditions of violence. This article proposes an analytical framework for connecting these levels through a critical appropriation of Scheff's theory of the shame‐rage cycle. It argues that while shame is a significant condition for violent action, Scheff does not have a theory of violence in itself but treats the connections between shame‐rage and violence as largely self‐evident. While emotions such as shame have agental properties, as Scheff and others argue, these need to be situated within structural and cultural conditions that are likely to evoke shame. Moreover, to develop Scheff's approach further, violence needs to be understood as being communicative and invoking normative justifications, which mediate the effects of shame‐rage. This analysis is developed with reference to recent instances of collective disorder, especially the English riots in August 2011, which is based on published research and media accounts from participants. The acquisition of consumer goods through ‘looting’ was public performance in spaces where a ‘moral holiday’ permitted a brief revaluation of the social order. Through this example the article shows how an underlying configuration of inequality, exclusion and shame coalesced into events in which the violence was a form of performative communication. This articulated ‘ugly feelings’ that invoked normative justification for participation, at least at the time of the disturbances. The discussion provides an integrated account of structural‐emotional conditions for violence combined with the dynamics of situated actions within particular spaces. It aims to do two things – to provide a framework for analysing the structural and affective bases for violence and to offer a nuanced understanding of ‘violence’ with reference to public disorder.