ABSTRACT
Randall Collins names his approach a theory of 'Interaction Ritual Chains', a label that he acknowledges may be a misnomer. For Collins, ritual works in several ways to support domination by one group in society of another. 'Emotional rituals are a vehicle by which alliances are formed in the struggle against other groups'. This chapter considers Collins's power rituals and after this status rituals. Collins is a conflict theorist and for him power, the other dimension of relational interaction, is the main driver of social life. Thus, status, understood as voluntary compliance, plays a scant role in Collins's theorizing. In sum, when Collins employs status to mean Weberian-type membership or status groups, he means a group that obtains its status through some kind of usurpation, coercion or power. Collins even ventures to hypothesize that order-givers and order-takers participate in Meadian fashion in each other's roles, attitudes and emotions and that this is a necessary component of the successful power ritual.
