Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Action and Culture

Notes

179 Notes Chapter 1 1. The extent of virtual communication has expanded greatly since Bales’s definition , leaving open whether “face-to-face” presence is a necessary feature of the definition or whether “virtual” communication suffices. Certainly cyber-communities have some features similar to those of interactional spaces (Boellstorff 2008), but in many of these communities there is a push to meet in a physical arena to bolster the reality of the community. 2. Although I use the term “association,” I contrast this discussion of associations with how the concept of association is frequently used in discussions of democratic theory, social capital, and civil society, which typically ignore the size of the interest group and combine interacting groups with large organizations . Any perspective that combines the National Rifle Association with a bowling team ignores critical aspects of allegiance and shared identity. Chapter 2 1. Attention has been paid to the dynamics of culture within what used to be described as tribal societies, but typically these tribes are larger and more like quasi-states than face-to-face groups. 2. The cultural elements disseminated by mass media organizations (television , radio, newspapers) or in mass settings (rock concerts, rallies, sporting events) are apparent exceptions. However, even in these isolated or mass settings, audiences are composed not of discrete individuals but of a collection of small groups that structure the meaning of the event for participants. Printed matter is notable for the non-interactional acquisition of cultural knowledge, although even here the material is often the basis for discourse —as Jürgen Habermas (1991) points out for the creation of a public sphere in salon society or coffeehouses. 3. I coined the new term “idioculture” because the most local term, “group culture ,” had been used previously with several distinct meanings (Thelen 1954; Rossel 1976; McFeat 1974). 4. This observation was made during the 1970s; surely reactions would be stronger today. Chapter 3 1. Collins’s (2004) most influential concept is that of “interaction ritual chains”: the creation of social structure through the accretion of predictable behaviors. However, Collins assumes that the existence and motivating quality of microresources are presuppositions of a macrosociological perspective . He uses these resources (such as emotional resources and local cultures) to connect the individual to the production of shared social meanings . Collins’s “linkage” perspective has not been fully accepted by either macro- or microsociologists: each discovers disreputable images of themselves . Microsociologists claim that Collins writes as a macrosociologist seeking to understand how social order transcends the individuals’ actions that it builds upon (Denzin 1987) and that he ignores the negotiated and contingent character of meaning. His emphasis on ritual and collective action is taken as a structural bow in the direction of behavior, but one that ignores the negotiated and phenomenological character of that behavior. Others, noting his presentation of a strong individual actor, his belief in the efficacy of interaction (“ritual chains”), and his heavier emphasis on agency than structure, deem him a microsociologist (Ritzer 1985). Still, Collins makes microsociology primary and preliminary to the doing of macrosociology and lays down this challenge: “The dynamics as well as the inertia in any causal explanation of social structure must be microsituational; all macroconditions have their effects by impinging upon actors’ situational motivations” (Collins 1981, 990). 2. Meso-theory has several potential points of reference. Some scholars use it to explore extended organizations, drawing a distinction between organizations and the society (or world-system). Drawing on the understandings of meso-level analysis in interaction, I focus on interaction realms. 3. To Collins’s credit, his analysis extends beyond the commonplace conceit that the world is divided into micro and macro. His division of the person, the small group, the crowd/organization, the community, and the territorial society , based on population size and spatial territory, relaxes the macro/micro division. Levels smaller in population and size nest within larger ones. Within each increasingly macro level are numerous smaller ones. This distinction could be made finer still, as groups nest in groups (for example, the nuclear family in the extended family or the clique in the classroom) or communities in communities (neighborhoods in a town). Persons often participate in several small groups, just as the small group must have two or more persons. Levels of organization are always cross-cutting. 4. Durkheim in The Rules of Sociological Method (1964, 2–3) argued: “If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not...