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ABSTRACT Effervescence and Solidarity in Religious ABSTRACT Effervescence and Solidarity in Religious Organizations Scott Draper, Ph.D. Dissertation Chairperson: Paul Froese, Ph.D. This project is an effort to test and extend Randall Collins’ interaction ritual theory in the context of religious organizations. The theory proposes that optimal management of bodily copresence, intersubjectivity, and barriers to outsiders stimulates collective effervescence and social solidarity. I use mixed methods to test the theory. In the quantitative phase of research, I create measures of the ritual dynamics using data from the United States Congregational Life Survey (2001). I find strong support for several of the hypotheses, including the fundamental idea from Durkheim that effervescence stimulates solidarity. The quantitative findings also point to several extensions of the theory, such as the need to account for social density (an element of copresence) and service length (an element of intersubjectivity). In the qualitative phase of research, I observe rituals and talk with focus groups at six different types of religious organizations. Again, I find strong support for major propositions from the theory. For example, the two organizations (Promised Land Baptist and Congregation Shalom) who rally around a perceived need to defend themselves against specific outsiders exhibit the highest levels of effervescence in the sample. The qualitative findings reveal several additional extensions of the theory. As one example, I find that the content of solidarity symbols, whether collectivist (e.g., Promised Land Baptist) or individualist (e.g., First Baptist), conditions organizations’ ritual proficiency. As another example, qualitative analysis confirms the finding from the quantitative analysis that service length positively correlates with effervescence. The findings in this study are applicable to a wide range of research questions in sociology, as interaction ritual theory is a guide for understanding how groups and organizations arrive at shared identities, morals, and ideologies through micro-level interaction. Effervescence and Solidarity in Religious Organizations by Scott Draper, M.A., M.F.A. A Dissertation Approved by the Department of Sociology ___________________________________ Charles M. Tolbert II, Ph.D., Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Dissertation Committee ___________________________________ Paul Froese, Ph.D., Chairperson ___________________________________ Martha Gault-Sherman, Ph.D. ___________________________________ F. Carson Mencken, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Jerry Z. Park, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Jon E. Singletary, Ph.D. Accepted by the Graduate School May 2012 ___________________________________ J. Larry Lyon, Ph.D., Dean Page bearing signatures is kept on file in the Graduate School. Copyright © 2012 by Scott Draper All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures v List of Tables vi Acknowledgments vii Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Quantitative Analysis of Effervescence and Solidarity 26 Chapter Three: Collective Effervescence 59 Chapter Four: Social Solidarity 88 Chapter Five: Bodily Copresence 112 Chapter Six: Intersubjectivity 146 Chapter Seven: Barriers to Outsiders 165 Chapter Eight: Conclusion 193 Appendix A: Propositions for a Model of Internal Solidarity 215 Appendix B: Set Questions for Focus Groups 224 Appendix C: Demographic Characteristics of Focus Groups 225 References 226 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Interaction Ritual Model 27 Figure 2: Conceptual Model and Indicators 44 Figure 3: Effect of Social Density on Collective Effervescence at Different Levels of SES 49 Figure 4: Effect of Collective Effervescence on Commitment to Group Goals at Different Rates of Group-Level Attendance 57 Figure 5: Collective Emotional Intensity in Congregation Shalom’s Ritual 63 Figure 6: Collective Emotional Intensity in The Islamic Center’s Ritual 63 Figure 7: Comparison of Effervescence and Solidarity Symbols 91 Figure 8: Intersubjectivity 149 Figure 9: Structure of Promised Land’s Ritual 164 Figure 10: Structure of First Baptist’s Ritual 164 Figure 11: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Atrocities-Polarization Feedback Loop 191 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: USCLS Sample Characteristics 45 Table 2: Correlations with Key Variables 46 Table 3: OLS Regression of Collective Effervescence 48 Table 4: OLS Regression of Social Solidarity 51 Table 5: Entry Times for Jum’ah Latecomers at the Islamic Center, 1:30 – 2:12 pm 82 Table 6: Order of Worship at Promised Land and First Baptist 162 Table 7: Barrier-Work at the Islamic Center and Congregation Shalom 170 Table 8: Steps Involved in Wudhu 173 Table 9: Some Forbidden Activities During Shabbat as Identified in the Talmud 183 Table C.1: Demographic Characteristics of the Focus Groups 225 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to Paul Froese for giving me astonishingly good advice throughout all phases of this project. Thank you also to Joseph Baker, Peter Berger, Stephen Boyes, Randall Collins, Kevin Dougherty, Martha Gault-Sherman, Carson Mencken, Jerry Park, Larisa Ryabokon, Jon Singletary, Samuel Stroope, Stephen Warner, and Andrew Whitehead for talking with me about these ideas. Many others, especially graduate students in Baylor’s Department of Sociology, have helped me immensely. I also am grateful for the participation and assistance of the six religious organizations that allowed me to visit. vii CHAPTER ONE Introduction When [the aborigines] are once come together, a sort of electricity is formed by their collecting which quickly transports them to an extraordinary degree of exaltation. —Durkheim (1912: 247) The What and Why of This Project This project is an effort to test and extend Randall Collins’ interaction ritual (IR) theory. Pieces of IR theory can be found throughout Collins’ body of work, but I mainly draw on two of his books because of the sustained attention they give to IRs. Conflict Sociology (1975) expresses IR theory with a set of testable propositions within Collins’ general conflict theory. Interaction Ritual Chains (2004) also offers testable propositions, adding a number of new twists. Interaction ritual theory is worth testing and extending because it addresses in a comprehensive manner some of the most important issues that concern sociologists. What drives people into each other’s company? Why is it that some interactions are a great deal of fun but others are embarrassing disasters? What processes lead a group of individuals to feel that “we are the same”? How do groups develop their moral codes? How is it that group x and group y both come to know with equal certainty that their contradictory ideologies are true? What makes a particular idea resonate with members of an organization? Why are some organizations so much more committed to their causes than others? These are just a few of the questions that Collins’ theory addresses and that I investigate further in this project. 1 Interaction ritual theory has the added value of integrating the accumulated knowledge of foundational perspectives from the history of the discipline. Durkheim’s work on ritual, Mead’s work on symbolic exchange, and Goffman’s work on interaction rituals provide the micro-level starting points. Building up to higher levels of analysis, Collins argues that organizations are groups of people who engage in certain kinds of rituals with each other, and that their ability to conduct intensely emotional rituals directs their degree of success in accomplishing their organizational goals. Weber’s work on organizational conflict, stratification, and power is integrated into the theory at this higher level of analysis. Along with these classic works, important contemporary work from exchange theorists, sociologists of emotions, and ethnographers is also carefully integrated in the theory. The result is a cohesive body of concepts that serves the scientific purpose of establishing general explanations for a large range of particular phenomena. An ambitious general theory such as this should not be taken on faith. The danger of such a theory is that by attempting to explain everything it explains nothing. Fortunately, Collins’ formal hypotheses suggest clear directions for empirical tests that either support the propositions or point to needed revisions. I test these existing hypotheses, as well as a number of new and related hypotheses, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data from religious organizations. The quantitative data allow a broad assessment of patterns in a large number of organizations, and the qualitative data allow a more focused assessment of how IR dynamics operate in particular organizational settings. These two approaches inform each other, especially 2 insofar as the qualitative analysis helps address new questions posed by the quantitative findings. Because of the broad scope of the theory, virtually any area of social life could provide empirical data. I have chosen to focus on religious rituals because they are the focus of Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life ([1912] 1995), the key work upon which IR theory is based. As I will discuss in Chapter 3, Durkheim considered religious rituals to have a unique capability to generate shared notions of identity, morality, and truth—outcomes that I want to highlight in this work. Despite Durkheim’s emphasis, religion has been surprisingly scarce in IR research. Fortunately,
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