Between Two Rituals: Face and Effervescence as Moments of Social Life

Many of the social outcomes and patterns located at the very center of sociological inquiry are grounded in interaction ritual dynamics. Yet, while broadly used across subdisciplinary divides, such rituals are depicted in radically different ways. Drawing from a Durkheimian tradition, and following Erving Goffman and Randall Collins, we distinguish between what we term “rituals of face” and “rituals of effervescence”—rituals aimed at defending the self, and rituals that produce emotional entrainment. Leveraging two very different empirical research projects—patterns of ethnoracial stigmatization in Norway and an ethnography of creative songwriting sessions in Canada—we show that these two kinds of rituals are simultaneously at play. Using the first empirical case, we show how actors ritually segregate their social worlds, saving face with white audiences while often producing effervescence with minority audiences. Using the second, we show how rituals of face and of effervescence are recursively intertwined. We then argue that distinguishing these interaction ritual forms, and attending to their situational dynamics, allows us to ask new empirical questions and to develop a better understanding of the interactional structure of diverse processes: from social movement dynamics to discrimination.