Quantum Intra‐Active Rituals
Reinterpreting Randall Collins' Social Theory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6431991 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert Lee (0000-0002-3214-9577, Sociology Department Cañada College Redwood City California USA), Robert D H Lee (0000-0001-7535-3554, Cañada College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/jtsb.70017 |
| OpenAlex | W7105593899 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 43 |
This paper reinterprets Randall Collins' theory of Interaction Rituals with a quantum social ontology. While Collins' theory has broad explanatory powers, its ontological foundations are incoherent. Quantising Interaction Rituals yields Quantum Intra‐active Rituals, a set of processes that synchronically instantiates the agent and social structure into a ‘flat’ and monadological collective mind or superorganism. Rituals facilitate emotional entrainment between subjects and can escalate into moments of collective effervescence, which, I suggest, is the collective mind or superorganism powerfully (re)embedding itself into the human being. The result of this process is not Emotional Energy as Collins posits, but the emergence of Personal Teleology or Personal Narrative—that is, collective effervescence transforms human beings into persons that embody and enfold the teleology of the collective mind or superorganism. Instead of a deterministic world with networks of separate individuals engaging in mechanistic and utility‐maximising behaviour as Collins suggests, Quantum Intra‐Active Rituals posits an indeterminate world of inseparable persons engaging in super‐organismic and teleological behaviour. It is, ironically, a metaphysical picture more consistent with Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life than Collins' own neo‐Durkheimian theory. Quantum Intra‐active Rituals suggests social structures are actually living entities energised by the collective emotions generated through collective rituals
Indeterminacy (philosophy · Metaphysics · Object (grammar · Philosophy of mind · Set (abstract data type · Teleology · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Origins and Evolution of Life
Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision
Commercialization of Intimate Life
Quantum Mind and Social Science
Realist Social Theory
The Causal Power of Social Structures
Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity
Posthumanist Performativity
Violence
Entangling the social
We are not walking wave functions. A response to “Quantum Mind and Social Science” by Alexander Wendt
The state as person in international theory
A quantum leap for social theory
The mind–body problem and social science
Social positioning theory and quantum mechanics
The human person, the human social individual and community interactions
The Palgrave Handbook of Quantum Models in Social Science
On the Ontological Status of the State
Enfolding wholes in parts
Interaction Ritual Chains
The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conditions
Morphogenesis versus Structuration
Durkheim and Spencer
The Power of the Sacred
Central Problems in Social Theory
Time and Narrative, Volume 1
Cultural Rules and Material Relations
The narrative constitution of identity
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |