Cultural Objects as Emotional Modulators: Interaction Ritual Chains and the Genesis of Chicago’s Millennium Park

• In Event: Places and Performances as Cultural Objects

Abstract

The sociology of culture has focused on how cultural objects work and produce effects, with less systematic attention to the genesis of an object’s form. Where do cultural objects come from? Why does an object take the form it does vis-à-vis other plausible “forms not taken”? In this paper, I draw on Randall Collins’ interaction ritual chain theory and a micro-historical analysis of the making of Chicago’s Millennium Park to develop a micro-interactionist theory of object making. Drawing on an extensive primary archive covering the micro-interactions among the various agents involved in developing Millennium Park’s design, I argue that the form of a cultural object can emerge via a process of emotional modulation -i.e., the micro-interaction process by which the various emotional orientations of different groups of agents are adjusted, balanced and stabilized through an object’s form. I identify four mechanisms (sparking, fractioning, escalating, toning down) through which emotional modulation can play out. Crucial to the process is not just the emotional energy and solidarity that agents share through successful interaction rituals, but also the emotional tensions and ambivalence that segment, fracture and un-chain interaction rituals, inducing agents to build shifting coalitions and resources. The paper contributes to theories of cultural objects’ production, micro-interactions and emotional dynamics by identifying emotional modulation as one micro-interactional process underlying the genesis of a cultural object’s form.

Author

• Santi Furnari