Durkheimian symbols

I am considering the role of symbols in the Chinese classroom and the extent to which these symbols might be shifting. Collins discusses symbols in his book "Interaction Ritual Chains" and he draws heavily on Durkheimian notions of solidarity.

solidary requires "bodily assembly" but also mutual focus of attention which can be generated through shared symbols which become "Durkheimian sacred objects"...Collins, IRC, p. 83

pp. 97-99 Collins lists a series of questions to assist us in deconstructing prexisting symbols for example: "Is it treated as an item of more than personal value, proclaimed as a value that is or ought to be widely shared? Is it regarded as incommensurate with merely utilitarian values?...etc."

"next reconstruct as best as possible what IRs have surrounded that emblem. who assembled, in what numbers, with what frequency or schedule? what emotions were expressed, what activities brought a focus of attention, what intensity of collective effervesence was generated? to what degree were individual participants charge with emotional energy; and what did it motivate them to do? what were the barriers to participation: who was divided by the ritual from whom? who ws thereby ranked over whom?" p. 98

secondary circulation of symbols...

I am thinking that traditionally in chinese classrooms the most potent symbols have been the exam, the text, the teacher, the top student and the ranking of students, the one right and perfect answer...and there are efforts to dissipate or modulate the power of all of these symbols as a result of the new curriculum reforms. but are there other symbols to replace them? there is the vision of the well-rounded individual, capable of creative thinking, capable of eloquent self-expression, the image of the cooperating team members...nationalistic symbols were there before and still remain...educate yourselves to contribute to the motherland to the great renaissance of the chinese people in the 21st century. but these symbols lack immediacy somehow, they are a little abstract, somehow unable to generate the mutual focus of attention that an all out effort to pass the examination once held. so the old symbols die hard. parents at least insist that students do well on exams and and are ranked, for example...

Erving Goffman "Forms of Talk"

In my analysis of classroom interactions I am honing in on three characteristics of classrooms that I consider to be differentiating factors between "traditional" classrooms and "progressive classrooms". These three dimensions are as follows:

1) symbols and sources of knowledge
2) questioning types
3) reward and punishment

I have just read Erving Goffman's article "Replies and Responses" in his book "Forms of Talk" in an effort to stimulate my thinking specifically related to dimension 2.

much of the article is devoted to a kind of taxonomy of dialogic pairs and focused also on anatomy and details of conversation. I am not quite sure what i am looking for i suppose in my effort to connect these three dimension to interaction theories. i suppose i am looking for ways in which questioning type situations might differ and what implications this might have for outcomes of the interactions. if we are talking about interactions constructing individuals we are ultimately talking about outcomes.

another thing that i feel about the article is that it does appear to be largely dealing with what Collins refers to as "natural interaction rituals" and perhaps all the rituals that i am interested in looking at in the classroom are formal rituals even in the context of a more open classroom environment.

Nevertheless there are a few excerpts from the article that i find interesting:

"Whenever persons talk there are very likely to be questions and answers." p. 5 i feel that this is even more so the case in the context of the classroom environment. in the context of the traditional classroom the questions almost always originate from the teacher and the correct answer is clear in the mind of the teacher. it only remains for the student to supply the one right and perfect answer for the teacher's ratification. the questions and answers are another means for students to master the content of the lesson, another tool in the chief task of the education to transmit knowledge from the texts and teachers into the minds of the students.

here is another point that is interesting: "the constraining influence of the question-answer format is somewhat independent of what is being talked about, and whether, for example, the matter is of great moment to those involved in the exchange or of no moment at all." p. 6

this gets at the ritualistic part of questions and answers or face to face talk. Goffman terms them "ritual interchanges" p. 17. there are rules involved and i would argue that these rules and the expected possible answers in the two types of ideal-type classrooms might be different.

"in making an assertion about facts, the maker must count on not being considered hopelessly wrong headed; if a greeting, that contact is wanted; if an excuse, that it will be acceptable; if an avowal of feeling and attitude, that these will be credited; if a summons, that it will be deferred to; if a serious offer, that it won't be considered presumptuous or mean; if an overgenerous one, that it will be declined; if an inquiry, that it will be denied." p. 16-17

this uncovers the expectations that parties have in engaging in interaction and exchange as such exchanges can be hazardous. much anger that arises on the part of teachers perhaps comes from student responses that the teacher deems inappropriate or unacceptable. for an open classroom environment students must also feel safe to respond to teachers questions in certain ways. in the traditional classrooms there are very fixed question and answer "ritual exchanges". students know inherently when to respond in chorus to the teachers questions and they seem to be able to answer as an entirety even if the question appears to be one that could have more than one answer.

question types in chinese classrooms: questions that elicit a choral response, questions that call for the one right and perfect answer and students raise their hands and wait for teacher to call on them...very rarely are open ended questions posed in the traditional classroom whereas in more open classrooms the possibility for multiple acceptable answers is more frequent.

then there are those questions that students can ask of teachers.

"may i add that a feature of face-to-face interaction is not only that it provides a scene for playing out of ritually relevant expressions, but also that it is the location of a special class of quite conventionalized utterances, lexicalizations whose controlling purpose is to give praise, blame, thanks, support, affection, or show gratitude, diapproval, dislike, sympathy, or greet, say farewell, adn so forth. part of the force of these speech acts comes from the feelings that they directly index; little of the force derives from the semantic content of the words. We can refer here to interpersonal rituals. these rituals often serve a bracketing function, celebratively marking a perceived change in the physical and social accessibility of two individuals to each other as well as beginnings and endings of a days activity, a social occasion, a speech, an encounter, an interchange." p. 21

there are many of these types of spcecifically ritual interchanges in the highly ritualized context of the traditional classroom. the good morning teacher and again the rhythms of the ritualized conversation between the teacher and the entire class.

"Interaction Ritual Chains" by Randall Collins

I am endeavoring to use theories of social interaction as an analytical lens in my study of classroom interactions ranging from the traditional to the progressive.

In Randall Collins book "interaction ritual chains" there are several concepts that stimulate my thinking along these lines.

p. 3 "if we develop a suffficiently powerful theory on the micro-level, it will unlock some secrets of large-scale macrosociological changes as well."

he emphasizes the primacy of the "situation" in his analytical framework "a theory of interaction ritual (IR) and interaction ritual chains is above all a theory of situations. It is a theory of momentary encounters among human bodies charged up with emotions and consciousness because they have gone through chains of previous encounters."

both Collins and Goffman see the individual as largely a construct of a chain of situations
Goffman: "not men and their moments but moments and their men"

Collins: "incidents shape their incumbents , however momentary they may be, encounters shape their encountees."

it is precisely this type of notion from social interaction theory that intrigues me...how many seminal moments are there in students lives that they spend in the classroom...in these moments they can be either included in the classroom social interactions or excluded from the classroom social interactions. and these social interactions can have varying effects on them.

Collins does not really like the use of the term agency seeing it really as arising out of the situation rather than out of the individual. i still feel i tend to disagree with him here, nevertheless the concept of emotional energy that arises out of successful encounters is an intriguing one and especially in the context of student participation in the classroom. does a progressive classroom offer more opportunities for students to experience social interactions that result in an increase in levels of emotional energy. Collins posits that rituals can fail or they can succeed to different degrees of intensity in the extent to which they generate ritual solidarity.

Collins reviews the historical meanings of the term ritual. he draws heavily on both goffman and durkheim in developing a definition of ritual.

"Goffman is a social constructionist, except that he sees individuals as having little or no leeway in what they must construct; the situation itself makes its demands and they must follow."

p. 31 "In Durkheim's formulation, rituals create culture, and sometimes reproduce existing culture. In either case, culture is socially alive only when rituals are successful, that is, when the situational ingredients exist to make rituals emotionally intense and cognitively focused."

p. 44 "we are constantly being socialized by our interactional experiences throughout our lives. but not in a unidirectional and homogenous way; it is intense interaction rituals that generate the most powerful emotional energy adn the most vivid symbols, and it is these that are internalized...IR theory is not a model of a wind-up doll, programmed early in life, which ever after walks through a pattern once laid down. It is a theory of moment-to-moment motivation, situation by situation."

the components of Collins' interaction ritual theory are:

group assembly
barrier to outsiders
mutual focus of attention/shared mood

the outcomes are then:

group solidarity
emotional energy in the individual
symbols of social relationship
standards of morality

based on these ritual components it is hard to distinguish between traditional and progressive classrooms. Collins has the concept of the failed ritual and the successful ritual but there are occasions for both of these in traditional and in progressive classrooms. perhaps one measure of weighing a succesful class vs. a relatively unsuccessful class would be the number of students who have a heightened sense of emotional energy. does a class that has a large number of students with heightened emotional energy tend to be more difficult to control? perhaps only if students are engaging in other interactions that are outside the main classroom interaction ritual that is occurring.

in Collins' idea of a rational actor model in which individuals are attracted to situations in which they have the opportunity to gain high EE and repulsed from situations in which they will lose EE this may have implications for student engagement.

emotions are central to Collins' theory. interaction rituals produce emotions in the form of moral solidarity and perhaps anger...

"this puts us in the position to use the flow of emotions across situations as the crucial item in the micro-to-micro linkage that concatenates into macro patterns. the most important of these patterns of IR chains is what from a macro view point apperas as stratification." (p. 105)

collins focuses on two main emotions happiness and sadness which are expressed in a variety of emotions (joy, elation, enthusiasm, effervesence--disappointment, dreariness, listlessness, depression) physiologically he states that these two emotions have no specific location in the brain..."they are distinctively human blends of emotion adn cognition, implicating the entire workings of the cognitive regions of the brain)

"EE gives energy, not just for physical activity...but above all for taking the initiative in social interaction, putting enthusiasm into it, taking the lead in setting the level of emotional entrainment. Similarly, sadness or depression is a motivational force when it is a long-term mood, reducing the level of activity, not only bringing physical listlessness and withdrawal...but making social interaction passive, foot-dragging and perfunctory." p. 107

and emotional energy continuum: "low emotional energy is a lack of durkheimian solidarity. one is not attracted to the group; one is drained or depressed by it; one wants to avoid it. one does not have a good self in the group. and one is not attached to the group's purposes and symbols, but alienated from them." p. 108

"for Scheff, intact social bonds...give participants a feeling of pride; broken social bonds results in a feeling of shame." p. 110

collins then discusses the repercussions of lack of attunement...it sets up a cycle of failed interactions...

"Scheff shows that Durkheimian solidarity, operating on the micro level of situatoinal encounters, is highly attractive to individuals, and is experienced as pride, a favorable social self. the failure of solidarity, down to the minute aspects of coordinating mutual participation in a conversation, is felt as a deep uneasiness or affront, which scheff refers to as a feeling of shame"

p. 373
"I have put the central formula as follows: human beings are emotional energy seekers, thereby linked to those interactions and their derivative symbols that give the greatest EE in the opportunities presented by each person's social networks. If not EE seekers what else could we be? Are we simply pain avoiders...? the image is too inert, passive; human beings are active, excitement seeking, magnetically attracted to where things are happening."

"we are deeply socially constituted beings, from the moments as babies when we begin to make noises and gestures in rhythm with our parents, through the adult networks that induct us into cults of experience that we elaborate in our inner lives. Symbols make up the very structure of our consciousness. symbols are the lenses through which we see."