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Kemper, Theodore D., Status, Power and Ritual Interaction: A Relational Reading of Durkheim, Goffman and Collins. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011, 305 pp. $104.95 hardcover (978-1-4094-2736-0)
The question of what influences our behaviours the most, individual factors, the social and structural conditions of the environment, or the interaction of both, is still a current sociological debate. Kemper proposes a theoretical model from a radical standpoint: our behaviours, choices, and motives are status-power relational products and the self is irrelevant for sociological analyses. This book has the potential to ignite passionate and constructive theoretical debates in the fields of social psychology and social inequality.
Kemper considers that ritual as conceptualized by Durkheim, Goffman, and Collins, is incomplete since status-power dynamics are neglected. Using an axiomatic theoretical model, he suggests that all our actions, including the altruistic and compassionate ones, aim to enhance status and/or power.
Our status and/or power motivated behavioural patterns are mediated through reference groups that determine our values, beliefs, and decisions. A reference group is defined as any individual or group with whom we have a real or imagined relationship (p. 34.). By abiding to the values, norms and expectations of a reference group, we aim 1) to claim, confer, or consume status and/or, 2) to acquire and manage power for others or ourselves while avoiding sanctions or negative consequences from this reference group. The reference group seeks to civilize what Kemper calls the organism: the locus of our drives, passions, and desires (p. 49), but this organism is not the self as defined by previous social scientists.
Indeed, Kemper suggests that the...