Randall Collins is one of the most important present-day sociologists. He teaches Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. As is fitting with complex, high-brow works, it is difficult to sum up his works in a few introductory lines.
His approach tends to bring together two concepts: the idea that society is organized around conflicts between different social groups, with regard to domination, clashes or negotiation; the Durkheimian idea of moral solidarity as a foundation for the cohesion inside single groups thanks to the social ritual which allows the participation of common ideals and feelings. Even every individual interaction takes on, for Collins, the forms of a ritual, in which emotions play a fundamental role. Every individual brings with himself his cultural capital (in common with his own social groups) and he confronts himself with his interlocutor's and his group's. Society is similar to an infinite interaction rituals chain, through which ideas, the symbols of various cultural capitals are transmitted according to a mechanism which generally tends to re-enforce the domination of the upper classes, although we cannot exclude upheavals. Social stratification, for Collins, is a multi-dimensional structure, and so social inequality is due not only to differences in power but also to the different cultural and social networks to which we belong. Among his works published in Italy we have Sociologia (Conflict Sociology. Toward an Explanatory Science, 1975), Teorie sociologiche (Theoretical Sociology), Quattro tradizioni sociologiche (Four Sociological Traditions, 1985), and recently L'intelligenza sociologica (Sociological Insight. An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology, 1992). 

In your last book, Violence. A Micro-sociological Theory, 2008 – still not translated in Italian – you examine carefully the wide range of situations of physical violence that we can live through, from the simple quarrel to domestic abuse, from armed conflicts to violence occurring in sports, from terrorism to mugging and so on. Your assumptions try to go beyond the common idea that social, cultural, ideological, racial conditions or individual pathologies are the main foundations of violence. You assert that human beings don’t usually act violently, that they can use violence only thanks to some specific conditions allowing people to get over those emotional barriers that naturally inhibit violent conduct. Can you explain in more depth the most important features of your interesting “compact theory” about violence, and its possible link with your idea about the ritual shape of everyday interactions?
Almost all theories of violence assume that it is sufficient for people to have a motive, and then violence will be easily carried out. There are many kinds of theories, positing that people are violent because of poverty, honour, resistance, childhood experiences, cultural beliefs, masculinity, etc. But in fact, when we look closely at situations of violence, of every kind, the main pattern is that violence does not happen. Most soldiers in combat do not fire their guns; most persons in a crowd of rioters stay back; most angry quarrels go no further than shouting. Furthermore, in the small number of cases where violence does proceed forward, people show themselves usually to be very incompetent at fighting. Most bullets that are fired miss, or they hit the wrong targets – this is true for soldiers, police, criminals alike. My conclusion is that humans encounter a barrier of confrontational tension and fear, when they are faced with committing violence against another person; and this emotional barrier either prevents the violence from happening, or makes people perform very badly. We can see this because the same policemen or soldiers who can shoot well at targets on a firing range, will miss their targets, fire far more bullets than necessary, and show others signs of being under great emotional pressure when it is a real situation of violence. 
Where does this emotional barrier come from? It cannot be merely that it is part of modern culture which inhibits violence. We see people in tribal combat, from anthropological films, behaving much the same way: a few men from a large crowd of armed tribesmen will run forward toward the enemy, throw a spear – usually very inaccurately, and quickly run away, while the rest do no more than shouting. Yet these are the same people who culturally express great satisfaction when one of their enemies happens to be killed. I conclude that the barrier of confrontational tension is deeper, and comes from basic characteristics of how humans interact with each other. 
In my previous book, Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), I show from micro-detailed evidence that when persons are bodily near each other and focus their attention on the same thing, they tend to fall into a shared rhythm. They will take on the same micro details of the rhythm of speech and body movement; the emotional mood between them becomes stronger. They become mutually entrained in each other’s emotional and bodily rhythms. I call this the mutual-focus/emotional entrainment model. It is a development of a theory – now supported by modern micro-empirical evidence – that was formulated by classic sociologists such as Emile Durkheim in his theory of religious ritual, and Erving Goffman in his theory of the rituals of everyday life. Successful interaction rituals bring social solidarity, and are very attractive to individuals because they give them emotional energy – confidence, enthusiasm, feelings of strength. 
Thus we can see that the two forms of interaction – interaction rituals producing solidarity, and violent confrontations – are antithetical to each other. Of course people can have many motives to conflict with someone else, and they may be very angry and intend to cause violence. But when they come closely into the confrontation, they become caught up in the human tendency for entrainment with the other person. So they are in a situation of conflicting emotions, and quite literally, conflicting tendencies within their own bodies. It is this bodily self-conflict which causes the tension. Because persons on both sides of the conflict usually are feeling approximately the same amount of tension, most of the time they find some way to avoid fighting, or to bring the conflict to an end very soon. If we look at videos of fighting – which are now posted on the Internet – we see that fights are almost always very short, and people soon find an excuse to end. For more serious fights with guns, in a large percentage of the time the shots miss their target, even if fired from very close. It is the strong tension which is causing them to miss.
In order for violence to be successful, the situation must allow a pathway around the barrier of confrontational tension. In the book, I describe several of these pathways. The most important of these is finding a weak victim – and that means an emotionally weak victim, in that immediate situation. 

You suggest, also in an article published in Foreign Policy, that Islamic suicide bombers belong to the middle class, whose members are socialized to behaviours and dispositions (such as self control, a physical aspect over and above suspicion, etc.) that are more suitable for committing violent suicide acts. Can you explain in more depth the correlation between this type of violence and middle class culture? Are the motivations of a suicide bomber independent of class interests? If they are, to what extent?
One of the most unusual ways of circumventing the barrier of confrontational tension is to pretend that there is no conflict, until the very last instant when the violence is unleashed. Most violence starts with gestures, threats, angry noises, or other ways of signalling danger. In fact, this signalling is mainly a way to try to intimidate one’s enemy, so that they will not fight. Suicide bombers take a very different pathway. They pretend they are normal citizens in a very routine situation. This is an unusually effective mode of violence, since a suicide bomber gets right up to the target, and does not miss – as most other kinds of violence usually do miss. In this respect, a suicide bomber is like a professional hitman – a contract killer, who uses the same technique of maintaining a clandestine style of normalcy, until he can put his gun a few inches from his victim’s head. 
In this sense, the clandestine approach is not so much an intrinsic part of middle-class culture, but rather a sophisticated technique that was invented and spread through social networks. We see that the professional hitman has a similar technique, although he is usually not middle-class; but he is much better at his job than the usual working class gang member, who engages in noisy bluster and thus is not really very effective, except in scaring others. But once the technique is recognized by political groups, it becomes recognized that middle-class persons are the best at this, and the more respectable the better. That is why women are particularly good at suicide bombing.
Here it is not a matter of class interests, but merely of class interactional styles. Most middle-class persons are not ideologically oriented towards suicide bombing, or indeed any other kind of violence [except maybe to see a fictional version in films]. Ideological movements are not very closely related to class interests, and the most successful movements – such as militant Islamists – are good at recruiting people across class lines.

James G. Ballard, the science fiction writer, in his books (High-rise, Millennium People, Cocaine Nights) often builds scenarios where, in protected and secure contexts, such as the typical middle-upper class contexts, circumstances causing the wild birth of violence to unleash itself – as a kind of rash caused by the tensions rising in closed, compressed groups based on routines. Do you think that his works can have a sociological dimension going beyond the story-telling needs?
I have not read James Ballard. But it seems that he gives a highly fictionalized view of violence. This is not unusual. Most fictional treatments of violence – and especially violence as depicted in film and TV – is extremely inaccurate. I can’t watch violent films any more – they seem to me ridiculous.

The interaction rituals theory gives us the means to explore the mechanisms generating solidarity among the members of a group. How does this general model feature, in terms of ritual experience, in Islamic terrorist groups?

As I explained above, interaction rituals happen in every aspect of everyday life. But these rituals vary a great deal in intensity. Some of them – which Goffman specialized in studying – are very brief, only minor flickers of entrainment. Some interactions are unsuccessful, producing repulsion on the part of the participants. Some interactions are forced, so that people go through the motions but in the micro-emotional details, hold back from entrainment, or find it coercive and unpleasant. At the other end of the spectrum, some rituals are prolonged, and reach high levels of emotional entrainment. These produce very strong feelings of solidarity. Moreover, it is these kinds of rituals that create and reproduce strong cultural beliefs. If a group can isolate itself and carry on repeated rituals which general strong emotions, the members will feel themselves energized, and also feel very morally righteous about themselves. The most successful ideological groups are those which practice these kinds of ritual techniques.

Are the rituals of solidarity of the groups involved in this hypothetical conflict between East and West both ranked and united thanks to this ideal conflict, somehow similar (in terms of symbols, intensity, density and so on)? Can the mere ideas, maybe artificial, of “East” and “West” be considered as actual symbols by which a common emotional feeling of closeness is produced in the members of the groups, as a driving force in their possible mobilization?
Yes, we could say that any strongly mobilized group is similar to each other, on the underlying level of the social techniques which they use. It is important to remember that the content of a group’s beliefs are carried on the emotional intensity of its rituals. The belief-content becomes what Durkheim referred to as a “sacred object”, a collective symbol which represents membership in the group. That is why highly mobilized groups, although similar on the level of structure and process, nevertheless are sharply divided from each other – they hold different collective symbols, they worship different sacred objects. Sometimes the sacred objects are constructed to be directly antithetical to each other. Each becomes a “negative sacred object” for the other, like God and the Devil. For some persons, East and West becomes these kinds of paired symbols, conflicting dualisms.

You say that there’s a kind of social necessity of crime, since “crime and its punishment are a basic part of the rituals that uphold any social structure”, that crime is useful to legitimate social rules and beliefs, that is rules and ideals legitimating the social hierarchy and the power of dominant groups. Can you explain in more depth your thought? And what could be, in your opinion, the role of fiction (movies, novels and so on) in this kind of “ideological process”?
Actually what is referred to here is Durkheim’s classic theory of crime. He perceived that punishing criminals is a ritual. It usually does very little to control criminals or deter crime, but ordinary citizens feel great satisfaction in punishments being carried out, and feel there is something morally scandalous when a criminal is not punished. 
There has been a lot of criminological research on punishment, and of course complexities have been discovered. But I think it is generally true that there is a strong ritualistic element in punishment. Also, Durkheim’s point about the social necessity of crime, was to say that society is always inventing new crimes, so that it can carry out these punishment rituals. Society always wants somebody to punish. We see this in various kinds of criminal prohibitions – at one time alcohol, now drugs, increasingly now with tobacco; and in some places, sex scandals such as those involving politicians and prostitutes in the Usa. Of course different countries differ in these respects, with different histories of repressiveness or liberalization. 
How does fiction play into this process? This question has not been much examined. My suggestion is that fiction is not so much vicarious experience but rather a socially framed situation of partaking in a reality that its consumers know is not part of everyday life. The very existence of the TV set, the movie screen, and the physical pages of the book are a basic frame of experience, which sets apart its content from what is outside along with ourselves in ordinary life. So crime and punishment [or lack of punishment, getting away with crime, etc.] is chiefly a dramatic action inside the fictional frame. For fiction to be entertaining, it must have some kind of plot tension, some dramatic action, and conflicts are the most dramatic form of action. On a low cultural level, it is simple physical action and violence – as I have said, extremely inaccurate compared to real violence; but then real violence would not be very entertaining if we actually have to watch it. On a higher cultural level, the drama shifts to conflicts on the level of emotions. In important respects, the differences among social classes are in the level of subtlety and sophistication of what kind of dramatic tension they like to consume. 

One of the key aspects of your theory is the assumption of the ritual as the foundation of the solidarity and the unity of the different social groups. The general model of the social rituals assumes that the individuals in the group are assembled in the same place (a church, a political meeting, etc.), that they share the same single focus, a contagious emotion, emblems or symbolic objects. Every individual is charged with the energy and the symbols of the group and he takes them with him into his everyday life. How can this central position of the social ritual, that needs in its general model the physical presence of people, be reconciled with the actuality of a great part of our current experiences, that are “media experiences”, such as medias like TV or Internet produce specific ways of experience and collective participation even if people are distant or separated? Can the impact of medias, producing new social situations, change the formation of the groups, or does it just provide them with subsidiary experiences? And what is, in your opinion, the role of the different properties of the means of symbolic production, referring to the different medias such as the TV or the Internet, also in the making of power and stratification?
This is the aspect of my theory that has received considerable discussion from current researchers. We are living in a technological revolution just now which mediates experiences, away from direct physical contact. Richard Ling has just published a book, on Mediated Ritual Experience based on research on how young people use mobile phones. Ling concludes that ritual solidarity is possible through these media, although cell phone users also want to meet each other personally, and use their phones chiefly to arrange meetings. Thus the mediated and physically copresent forms of interaction tend to form a chain, each supporting the other. This research also tends to show that mediated rituals are not as intense as close physical interactions; it is a matter of degree, not an absolute difference. In one of my previous books, The Sociology of Philosophies (1998) I showed that important intellectuals, throughout world history, have always been closely connected to each other in social networks. And these network structures have not changed, from ancient times when intellectual life was personal debate, through the development of books and printing. I concluded that even with the rise of the Internet, intellectuals who are connected only by internet are at a disadvantage to those who also know each other personally. Personal interaction is a much stronger way of conveying emotion; and that has an effect on how individuals internalize ideas, since the ideas come across most strongly when they are carried by emotions. Famous teachers will continue to have famous students who hear them personally, even though many other persons could find out about their ideas over the internet.

In your analysis of genders and social stratification you seem to affirm that the more a woman can obtain sexual equality in the job market, the higher condition of actual equality she will obtain her in family. Is this equal involvement in the productive system the only variable having an effect on the power relationships within a couple? Can your model of rituals be useful in understanding the rise of a feminist consciousness? And what could be the role of technologies, such as – for example – the electrical household appliances freeing the woman from a part of her household labour, or the TV allowing the woman to share in culture and identities which are usually exclusively male?
Yes, there are multiple conditions operating here. The most important effect of women finding good-paying jobs in the labor force has been that, compared to past historical conditions, many women do not directly depend upon a man – husband or father – for economic support, and hence are freed from the enclosure of a household. This means also becoming freed from the rituals which took place in the household, and which tended to have an ideological effect even on women’s consciousness – traditionally this was mainly the ritualistic identity of women with their families, social status of their households, and religion. The mobilization of young women to carry out their own rituals, outside the family [often in educational settings, or in the context of social movement meetings] was at the center of the waves of feminism in the 20^th century. As to technology – household appliances themselves had an ambiguous effect, since these tended to make women raise their standards of what a socially respectable household should be, so that they tended to increase the amount of household labor in many respects during the middle of the 20^th century – especially in the 1950s. The effects of a new technology is always subordinate to the social interactions that it is embedded in. I notice that today the most liberated young people – at least this is true in the Usa – tend to have jettisoned the idea of having a nice household; the technology is available for them to keep it clean and neat, but the cultural ideal goes in the opposite direction. It is a kind of cultural antinomianism against the traditional appearance of the household.

In Italy, as in all probability in the Usa, the controversy about the abortion is always up to date. In your book Sociological Insight, now translated in Italy (L’intelligenza sociologica), you give an interesting analysis of the antiabortion movement, the ritual and symbolic features of this group, its need to regain its power as an elite in decline, its antimodernism, etc. Can you provide us with a synthetic explanation of your deep insights about that?
The anti-abortion movement seems to have passed its peak in the Usa. It has had strong symbolic resonances, on one side representing the defense of the family and of traditional morality; on the other side, “choice” was a slogan of the woman’s movement, which achieved its successes by mobilizing women against the traditional household. Choice in matters of sexual behavior means not only the possibility to choose abortion, but also in the larger symbolic and practical context, the choice of women to control their own sexuality. It implies that women could do what men had traditionally done, have sex apart from marriage and apart from the intention of having children. In many respects this battle has been won in the Usa, and the anti-abortion movement is a kind of rear guard of traditionalism. The new battleline has moved on to other symbolic issues such as gay marriage. From a Durkheimian perspective, as I have discussed above, this will not be the last controversy. Ritual conflicts over symbols will continue in the future, probably as long as human societies exist.