The Cult of the Martyr: The Symbol of Stanisław Wacławski and Rituals of Violence in the Warsaw Student Milieu of the 1930s

The Cult of the Martyr: The Symbol of Stanisław Wacławski and Rituals of Violence in the Warsaw Student Milieu of the 1930sViolence was a key element of the interwar radical habitus and was particularly affirmed in far-right movements, which found fertile ground for their ideas among students. However, the influence of the systems of ideas advocated by ideologues on student masses seems limited and indirect. Student support for antisemitism and extremism cannot be explained only by cultural conditions, ideology or political engineering. What is needed here are intermediate stages, linking radical ideology with the actions of social actors. I argue that the intermediary function was performed by the symbol of Stanisław Wacławski, a student and member of the Camp of Great Poland (Obóz Wielkiej Polski) who was killed during the antisemitic riots in Vilnius in 1931. The figure of Wacławski was a key element of antisemitic discourse in far-right press and was used by academic societies to construct the annual ritual of violence in the 1930s. I employ the micro-sociological approach and draw on Randall Collins’ theory of “interaction ritual chains” to show that the factors behind the mobilization of ordinary students for collective violence and a chauvinistic agenda included also emotions and personal relations, and not only political identification and advertising. Kult męczennika. Symbol Stanisława Wacławskiego i rytuały przemocy w warszawskim środowisku studenckim lat trzydziestych XX wiekuW habitusie międzywojennych radykałów przemoc grała kluczową rolę i była szczególnie afirmowana w ruchach skrajnie prawicowych, które znajdowały podatny grunt dla swoich idei w środowiskach studenckich. Jednak wpływ systemów idei głoszonych przez ideologów na masy studenckie wydaje się ograniczony i pośredni. Poparcia studentów dla antysemityzmu i ekstremizmu nie można tłumaczyć jedynie uwarunkowaniami kulturowymi, ideologią czy inżynierią polityczną. Potrzebne są tu etapy pośrednie, łączące radykalną ideologię z działaniami aktorów społecznych. W niniejszym tekście dowodzę, że funkcję taką pełnił w środowisku akademickim symbol w postaci Stanisława Wacławskiego, studenta i członka Obozu Wielkiej Polski, który zginął podczas antysemickich zamieszek w Wilnie w 1931 roku. Jego postać stanowiła kluczowy element antysemickiego dyskursu prasy skrajnej prawicy i była wykorzystywana przez stowarzyszenia akademickie do konstruowania corocznego rytuału przemocy w latach 30. Aby pokazać, że czynnikami, które wyjaśniają, w jaki sposób zwykli studenci byli mobilizowani do zbiorowej przemocy i pozyskiwani dla szowinistycznego programu, były również emocje i osobiste relacje, a nie tylko identyfikacja polityczna i agitacja, stosuję podejście mikrosocjologiczne i czerpię z teorii „łańcuchów rytuałów interakcji” Randalla Collinsa.

The Globalization of an Interaction Ritual Chain: “Clapping for Carers” During the Conflict Against COVID-19

Sociologists have long been interested in the theoretical possibility of a universal ritual. Despite a growing number of indicators of world society and globalization, there have not been attempts to observe and analyze the international reach of particular rituals. We propose an extension of the “interaction ritual chain” by theorizing how an interaction ritual might be created and diffused internationally. We look at the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created shared conditions of social distancing and emotional distress. We analyze a discontinuous chain of urban and national interaction rituals that focused attention on the efforts of healthcare workers fighting the virus. We count clapping and noise-making in 101 countries and 26 global cities. While we find similar ritual forms and international symbols of solidarity, there was also substantial evidence of conflict and particularism.

Protesting Populist Knowledge Practices: Collective Effervescence at the March for Science London

On 22 April 2017, 10,000 people joined the March for Science London, one of 600 events globally asserting the importance of science against post-truth. Here we report an online and on-the-ground observational study of the London event in its distinct, post-Brexit referendum context. We analyse the motives for marchers’ attendance, and their collective enactment of what science is and why and by what it is threatened. Drawing upon Interaction Ritual Theory and the concept of civic epistemology, we develop the notion of populist knowledge practices to capture the ‘other’ that marchers defined themselves against. We detail how this was performed, and how it articulated a particular vision for science–society relations in Britain. In closing, we argue that the March for Science is one in a chain of anti-populist activist events that retains collective effervescence while transcending specific framings.

Ritual Frame Indicating Expressions (An Academic Conversation)

The present paper is based on an interview, conducted by Victor V. Leontyev with Juliane House and Dániel Z. Kádár. It provides an overview of a new theory in pragmatics, namely, Ritual Frame Indicating Expressions (RFIEs). This theory provides a bottom-up and corpus-based approach to the study of various pragmatically important expressions through which the participants of an interaction indicate their awareness of the Ritual Frame underlying the interaction. 'Ritual Frame' encompasses a cluster of standard situations in which the rights and obligations of the participants are clearly defined. The corpus-based RFIE approach complements sociopragmatic approaches to various expression types, including so-called 'politeness markers', honorifics, forms of address and so on, and it also helps us to systematically capture the relationship between expressions and speech acts. In studying RFIEs, the analyst focuses on the ways in which RFIEs spread across various standard situations. The study of this issue also allows the researcher to contrastively examine the use of RFIEs across linguacultures. Such contrastive research helps us to unearth major linguacultural differences. For example, the research of J. House and D.Z. Kádár has revealed that while in East Asian linguacultures such as Chinese RFIEs tend to be strongly associated with a particular speech act, this relationship is casual in Western linguacultures.

EXPRESS: Social Atmospheres: How Interaction Ritual Chains Create Effervescent Experiences of Place

Atmospheres are experiences of place involving transformations of consumers’ behaviors and emotions. Existing marketing research reveals how atmospheric stimuli, service performances, and ritual place-making enhance place experiences and create value for firms. Yet it remains unclear how shared experiences of atmosphere emerge and intensify among groups of people during collective live events. Accordingly, this paper uses sociological interaction ritual theory to conceptualize ‘social atmospheres’: rapidly changing qualities of place created when a shared focus aligns consumers’ emotions and behavior, resulting in lively expressions of collective effervescence. With data from an ethnography of an English Premier League football stadium, the authors identify a four-stage process of creating atmospheres in interaction ritual chains. This framework goes beyond conventional retail and servicescape design by demonstrating that social atmospheres are mobile and co-created between firms and consumers before, during and after a main event. The study also reveals how interaction rituals can be disrupted, and offers insight as to how firms can balance key tensions in creating social atmospheres as a means to enhance customer experiences, customer loyalty, and communal place attachments.