Status, Power and Ritual Interaction: A Relational Reading of Durkheim, Goffman and Collins, (Hardcover)

Numerous sociologists suppose that ritual is foundational for social life. Kemper, however, argues that status and power structure social relations, determine emotions and link individuals to the reference groups that deliver culture and administer preferences, actions, beliefs and ideas. An important contention is that allegiance to fundamental ideas is primarily faithfulness to the reference groups that foster them, not to the ideas themselves. This triggers the counter-intuitive deduction that the concept of the self is both feckless and irrelevant.