ABSTRACT
Randall Collins is one of the leading theorists of the present-day sociology of emotions and he makes no small claim for this field: 'The sociology of emotions bears upon the central questions of sociology. What holds a society together the 'glue' of solidarity and what mobilizes conflict, the energy of mobilized groups, are emotions'. The status-power theory of emotions begins with 'structural' emotions. The status-power approach to what Collins refers to as background tone or mood thus offers a more elaborated set of hypotheses about the way emotional energy or structural emotions-cum-optimism/confidence operate than does interaction ritual theory. By contrast with Collins's multiple kinds of anger and their link by one means or another to emotional energy and/or sacred symbols, the status-power theory of anger takes a single stance toward this emotion. Guilt is a conventional emotion, but one that finds only a scant place in Collins's theory.
