Micro-sociology analyzes very short expanses of time and space, macro-sociology long expanses. There is no historical trend from micro to macro techniques of violence or vice versa; but changes ...result from stalemates of older technique, shifting to either a faster or a longer sequence of violent moves; advantage goes to the side which catches their opponent emotionally off balance. Prolonged stalemated struggles are destructive wars of attrition. Successful revolutions concentrate masses of people on a dramatic showdown in a central place, and can result in a rapid, low-casualty transfer of power. Comparing failed and successful revolutions, the more micro-concentration in time and place, the more likely a rapid tipping point will occur through a shift in emotional domination. But where revolutionary struggle becomes spread out, it turns into civil war, which become especially destructive when outside allies supply weapons to keep it going. Moving along the continuum towards the macro end de-emphasizes emotional turning points and motivates opponents to win by attrition. Moving towards the micro end allows the possibility of a quick and less destructive resolution.
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.
Micro and Macro Causes of Violence Collins, Randall
International journal of conflict and violence,
01/2009, Letnik:
3, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The dominant emotion in violence-threatening situations is confrontational tension/fear (ct/f), which causes most violence to abort, or to be carried out inaccurately and incompetently. For violence ...to be successful, there must be a pathway around the barrier of ct/f. These pathways include: attacking the weak; audience-oriented staged and controlled fair fights; confrontation-avoiding remote violence; confrontation-avoiding by deception; confrontation-avoiding by absorption in technique. Successfully violent persons, on both sides of the law, are those who have developed these skilled interactional techniques. Since successful violence involves dominating the emotional attention space, only a small proportion of persons can belong to the elite which does most of each type of violence. Macro-violence, including victory and defeat in war, and in struggles of paramilitaries and social movements, is shaped by both material resources and social/emotional resources for maintaining violent organizations and forcing their opponents into organizational breakdown. Social and emotional destruction generally precedes physical destruction. Adapted from the source document.
This interview was conducted between the Spring and the Summer 2020 by means of an interactive email exchange. Our conversation with Randall Collins had been planned a few months before the global ...pandemic as part of ongoing conversations inspired by the creation of an interdisciplinary study group on emotions at the University of Florence, and was eventually boosted by some of the recent developments in global politics and in the pandemic itself. The starting point, is Collins' original ability to reconcile-through his emotion-based theoretical model (2004)-two significant and allegedly clashing aspects of social life: conflict and solidarity. We then move on to discuss the ways in which current theories of emotions can be reconsidered in light of recent emerging phenomena (such as rightwing populism and nationalism) at an international level. In addition, we introduce the theme of the global health emergency and discuss the role of different emotional cultures in dealing with the pandemic, in Italy and the USA. Finally, we consider whether or not it is possible to talk about ethics of emotions, i.e. whether some emotions can be interpreted as 'more ethically relevant' than others within the context of current social and political scenarios.
Un ouvrage antérieur de Bernard Lahire (2006) arrivait à la conclusion, majeure, que les écrivains exercent pour la plupart un second métier. La grande majorité ne gagne pas sa vie avec ses écrits, ...mais consacre l'essentiel de ses heures de travail à une autre activité. Écrire quelque chose de sérieux – avec attention, réflexion et auto-correction répétées, persévérance soutenue – suppose que l'écrivain adopte des mœurs monacales : auto-discipline et rejet des plaisirs, des loisirs, de la soc...
Modern capitalism is a self-transforming dynamic that proliferates market niches, new products, and techniques. The industrial revolution could take place only in the context of preexisting ...agricultural capitalism; that, in turn, required a breakout from the obstacles constituted by agrarian-coercive societies. Organizational conditions necessary for self-sustaining capitalist growth included markets not only for commodities but for all factors of production (land, labor, and capital), combined under control of entrepreneurs motivated by an economic ethic of future-oriented calculation and investment. Weber was mistaken in holding that the capitalist breakthrough occurred only in Christian Europe. I propose a neo-Weberian model in which the initial breakout from agrarian-coercive obstacles took place within the enclave of religious organizations, with monasteries acting as the first entrepreneurs. The model is illustrated by the case of Buddhism in late medieval Japan. The leading sector of monastic capitalism spread into the surrounding economy through religious movements of mass proselytization which narrowed the gap between clergy and laity. Confiscation of Buddhist property at the transition to the Tokugawa period transferred the capitalist dynamic to the secular economy of an agricultural mass market, opening the way for a distinctive Japanese path through the industrial revolution.
The family is the oldest human institution. Modernity began by replacing family-based organization with bureaucracy. The core of the family has become personal and sexual rather than political and ...economic. What is personal and sexual has become more a matter of individual choice than in the era of kinship politics; at the same time sexual behavior has become subject to state regulation, either restricting or permitting. From the early 20th century onwards, there have been increasingly militant social movements on one side or another of what is sexually permitted, encouraged, or prohibited. This paper reviews the sexual revolution in non-marital sex; the history of abortion struggles; mobilization of homosexual and transgender movements; and the battle of pronouns. Anti-abortion politics today is a counter-movement in identity politics, in response to the perceived threat to the traditional male/female family. Nevertheless, with a growing number of persons living alone and substituting electronic media for embodied social interaction, the family will likely survive as a privileged enclave of emotional solidarity and shared economic success.
The family is the oldest human institution. Modernity began by replacing family-based organization with bureaucracy. The core of the family has become personal and sexual rather than political and ...economic. What is personal and sexual has become more a matter of individual choice than in the era of kinship politics; at the same time sexual behavior has become subject to state regulation, either restricting or permitting. From the early 20th century onwards, there have been increasingly militant social movements on one side or another of what is sexually permitted, encouraged, or prohibited. This paper reviews the sexual revolution in non-marital sex; the history of abortion struggles; mobilization of homosexual and transgender movements; and the battle of pronouns. Anti-abortion politics today is a counter-movement in identity politics, in response to the perceived threat to the traditional male/female family. Nevertheless, with a growing number of persons living alone and substituting electronic media for embodied social interaction, the family will likely survive as a privileged enclave of emotional solidarity and shared economic success.
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