Introduction

In its more radical forms, microsociology proposed that all the larger aggregates typically studied by social scientists could and should be decomposed—both analytically and empirically—into their constitutive moments. Randall Collins' reconceptualization of micro-level phenomena is motivated by an engagement with Goffman's work, and specifically, the latter's insistence on the ritualized nature of quotidian, everyday social interaction—itself drawing on Durkheim's famous argument in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life concerning the ritual foundations of religious solidarity. Collins has put the theory of interaction ritual chains to work in several seemingly divergent arenas. Perhaps most influential, in a masterly volume published in 2008 entitled Violence, Collins seeks to analyze the social dynamics that give rise to interpersonal violence in numerous settings, ranging from the domestic sphere to the battlefield. Collins' theory offers the key prediction that the field of philosophy will exhibit a distinctive network structure cocontaining both "horizontal" and "vertical" ties.