{"title":"Should we study political behaviour as rituals? Towards a general micro theory of politics in everyday life","authors":"P. Marx","doi":"10.1177/1043463119853543","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Political behaviour research is divided into several explanatory approaches. They have in common that they disregard, to varying extents, the social bases of their explanatory concepts. To fill this void, the present article explores the theoretical advantages of applying Randal Collins’s ritual theory to political behaviour. The central claim is that any cognitive factor, such as interests, values, norms or identities has to be infused with emotional resonance in concrete social interaction in order to become a relevant motivation for political behaviour. Based on this argument, the article develops four testable propositions and discusses how they relate to existing approaches. The article concludes that ritual-based emotions are a unified motivational basis for political behaviour, which help understand which cognitive factor becomes politically relevant in a specific situation. The theoretical discussion is complemented with suggestions of how to study political rituals empirically.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":"31 1","pages":"313 - 336"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2019-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1043463119853543","citationCount":"6","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Rationality and Society","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1043463119853543","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 6
Abstract
Political behaviour research is divided into several explanatory approaches. They have in common that they disregard, to varying extents, the social bases of their explanatory concepts. To fill this void, the present article explores the theoretical advantages of applying Randal Collins’s ritual theory to political behaviour. The central claim is that any cognitive factor, such as interests, values, norms or identities has to be infused with emotional resonance in concrete social interaction in order to become a relevant motivation for political behaviour. Based on this argument, the article develops four testable propositions and discusses how they relate to existing approaches. The article concludes that ritual-based emotions are a unified motivational basis for political behaviour, which help understand which cognitive factor becomes politically relevant in a specific situation. The theoretical discussion is complemented with suggestions of how to study political rituals empirically.
期刊介绍：
Rationality & Society focuses on the growing contributions of rational-action based theory, and the questions and controversies surrounding this growth. Why Choose Rationality and Society? The trend toward ever-greater specialization in many areas of intellectual life has lead to fragmentation that deprives scholars of the ability to communicate even in closely adjoining fields. The emergence of the rational action paradigm as the inter-lingua of the social sciences is a remarkable exception to this trend. It is the one paradigm that offers the promise of bringing greater theoretical unity across disciplines such as economics, sociology, political science, cognitive psychology, moral philosophy and law.
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