Soziologische Klassiker/ Collins, Randall

Grundstruktur des Kapitels:

Biographie in Daten

Er wurde 1941 in den USA geboren - wuchs aber im Ausland auf, da sein Vater Offizier im Außenamt war. Seine ersten Kindheitserinnerungen hat er vom zerstörten Berlin am Ende des 2. Weltkrieges - danach war sein Vater (mit der ganzen Familie) in verschieden Orten Deutschlands und auch in Moskau und Südamerika stationiert. "...And we agreed that this experience made us receptive toward the ideas of Erving Goffman, because there’s nothing like the diplomatic world for this stark contrast between what happens on the very formal idealized front stage and what happens back stage." (Auszug aus einem Interview von 2000)

Ausbildung:

A.B. Harvard College, 1963
M.A. (psychology) Stanford University, 1964
M.A. (sociology) University of California, Berkeley, 1965
Ph.D. (sociology) University of California, Berkeley, 1969

Anstellungen :

Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 1997-present
Member of the Graduate Group in Comparative Literature, 1999-
Member of the Graduate Group in History and Sociology of Science, 1999-
Professor, University of California, Riverside, 1985-97; Chair of the Department of Sociology, 1987-89
Visiting Professor, Harvard University, fall 1994
Visiting Professor, University of Chicago, spring 1985
Visiting Professor, University of California, Riverside, winter 1984-winter 1985
Visiting Professor, University of Southern California, winter l983
Visiting Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, winter 1982
Visiting Professor, University of Arizona, Fall 1981
Private scholar and author, 1982-85
Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia, 1978-82
Private scholar and author, 1977-78
Assistant and Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego, 1969-77
Instructor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1968-69
Acting Instructor, University of California, Berkeley, 1967-68

"Professional Activities":

Member, American Sociological Association
Member, Society for Social Studies of Science
Member, Pacific Sociological Association
Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Member, History of Science Society
Member, Crime Writers’ Association (Great Britain)
Member, International Society for Research on Emotion
Member, International Network for Social Network Analysis
Member, Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality;
Founder and Editor, Theory and Society 1973-75
Editor, Sociological Theory 1980-84
Consulting Editor, American Journal of Sociology 1976-78, 1990-92.
Editorial Board, American Sociological Review 1995-7
Associate Editor, Social Forces l979-82
Advisory Editor, State, Culture, and Society 1984-
Consulting Editor, Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Science, 1986-88.
Advisory Editor, Sociological Quarterly 1987-89
Comité de rédaction, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1991-
Associate Editor, Sociological Perspectives, 1992-
Comité de lecture, Enquête: anthropologie, histoire, sociologie, 1995-
Editorial Board, Vremia mira (Moscow), 1996-
Elected Member, Committee on Nominations, American Sociological Association, 1981-82
Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award Committee, American Sociological Association, 1981-83
Committee on Publications, American Sociological Association, 1980-85
Nominations Committee, Theory Section, American Sociological Association, 1987
Theory Prize Committee, Theory Section, American Sociological Association, 1987
Overseers’ Committee to Visit the Department of Sociology, Harvard University, 1985-88
Program Committee, Sociology of Emotions Section of the American Sociological Association, 1988-9
Nominations Committee, Sociology of Emotions Section American Sociological Association, 1991-3
Chair, Nominations Committee, Pacific Sociological Association, 1993
Visiting Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria, 1986
Visiting Lecturer, Course in the Science of Organization, Associazione Istituzione Libera
Università Nuorese, Nuoro, Sardinia, 1992; 1994; 1996; 1997.
Visiting Professor, National Research Course in Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway, 1994.
Directeur associé, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, SHADYC (Sociologie, Histoire, Anthropologie des Dynamiques Culturelles), Marseille, 1995
Visiting Research Scholar, Sonderforschungsbereich, Universität Bremen, 1995.
Visiting Professor, Short course in Micro-sociology, University of Orebro, Sweden, August 1996.
Professeur invité, École Normale Supérieure Paris, March 1997
Visiting lecturer, Nankai University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, May 2000.
Teaching Workshop: Graduate Theory Courses. Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago. August 2002.

Auszeichnungen:

Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., 1974-75
Member of the Center of Advanced Study, University of Virginia, 1978-1982
Elected Chair, Theory Section of the American Sociological Association, 1979-80
Elected Chair, Sociology of Education Section of the Americal Sociological Association, 1982-83
Elected Member, Sociological Research Association
Theory Prize, awarded by the Theory Section of the American Sociological Association, 1982, for
“Micro-foundations of Macro-sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 1981.
Elected Member of Council, American Sociological Association, 1987-90.
Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989.
Citation *reads: “For work on the theory of social conflict, and for research on education and stratification, and on the sociology of science.” Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Social Science, Uppsala, Fall 1989.
Paul Hanly Furfey Lecturer, Association for the Sociology of Religion, 1991.
Bruce C. Mayhew Memorial Lecturer, University of South Carolina, 1992.
President, Pacific Sociological Association, 1992-3.
Distinguished Faculty Research Lecturer, University of California, Riverside, 1993.
Taft Lecturer, University of Cincinnati, 1994.
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Amsterdam School for Social Research, June 1996.
Distinguished Paper Award, Sociology of Religion Section, American Sociological Association, 1998, for “An Asian Route to Capitalism: Religious Economy and the Origins of Self-Transforming Growth in Japan,” American Sociological Review 1997.
Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, American Sociological Association, 1999, for The Sociology of Philosophies
Association of American Publishers Scholarly Publishing Annual Award in the Category of Sociology and Anthropology, 1999, for The Sociology of Philosophies
Fritz Nova Memorial Lecturer, Villanova University, April 2000.
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2000).
Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, University of Cambridge, 2000-2001
Vincent Woo Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, Nov. 2001.
Ludwik Fleck Prize, for best recent book, Society for Social Studies of Science, 2002, awarded for The Sociology of Philosophies.

Romane:

1979. The Case of the Philosophers’ Ring. New York: Crown Publishers; British edition, London: Harvester Press, 1980; Spanish edition, Madrid: Valdemar Ediciones, 1989
. .... er hat nach eigenen Angaben vor irgendwann nochmal einen Roman schreiben ...sometimes...

Historischer Kontext

Er erlebte als kleines Kind Europa am Ende des zweiten Weltkriegs hautnah. Berlin war noch voll von Bombenkratern und toten Körpern. Er erlebte auch Moskau am Höhepunkt des Kalten Krieges während der Koreakrieg ausbrach. Er wuchs also in einer Welt voller Gewalt und Machtkämpfe auf und vermutete selber, dass dies in ihm das Interesse an Max Weber entfachte und da besonders der Teil dem in jener Zeit kaum jemand Aufmerksamkeit schenkte - nämlich die Texte von Weber die Machtpolitik behandeln. Er geht davon aus dass auch sein geopolitisches Interesse darin begründet liegt.

Theoriegeschichtlicher Kontext

Spurred on by an admittedly eclectic reading of Max Weber, Collins insists — in opposition to all presentist myopias — that sociologists with nomological ambitions should turn their attention to variation in the structure and culture of societies over the longue durée of human history and in distancing himself from the tendency of mainstream researchers to embrace — if only in the interests of parsimony — overly simplified models of human action, Collins grounds his theorization in a complex action-theoretical framework that, in his view, takes into consideration the emotional and semiotic contours of human action as these are revealed through phenomenological investigation.

This framework, which revolves around the notion of "interaction ritual chains," marries insights from Goffman and from the Durkheim of The Elementary Forms to produce an image of individuals as strategic pursuers of "emotional energy" whose interactional choices take shape in an interactional economy where solidarity is the unit of exchange.

Rather, they superimpose an analytical focus on moral consciousness onto a broadly Weberian understanding of status group conflict, which Collins sees as a central dynamic in all social life.

Werke

Publikationen (Bücher) :

1968. State and Society, co-editor with Reinhard Bendix et. al. (Boston: Little, Brown; re-issued, University of California Press, 1974.

1972. The Discovery of Society , with Michael Makowsky. New York; Random House; second edition, 1978; third edition, l983; fourth edition, 1988; fifth edition, 1992; Dutch edition, 1979;

Italian Edition, 1980; Japanese edition, 1987; Chinese edition, 2004.

1975. Conflict Sociology: Toward an Explanatory Science. New York: Academic Press; Italian edition, 1981; Japanese edition 1991. Partial translations in Romanian, Korean, and Chinese.

1979. The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. New York: Academic Press; Japanese edition 1984; Spanish edition 1989; Italian edition 1994; Chinese and Portuguese editions forthcoming; partial translation in Serbo-Croatian.

1981. Sociology since Mid-century: Essays in Theory Cumulation. New York, Academic Press; Italian edition 1993.

1982. Sociological Insight: An Introduction to Non-obvious Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press; Japanese edition 1991; Spanish and Chinese editions forthcoming. Second edition 1992.

1985. Three Sociological Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press. Italian edition 1987;Japanese edition 1990. Second edition Four Sociological Traditions 1994. Mexican edition 2000; Japanese edition 1997; Italian edition 1999; Portuguese edition 1999.

1985. Three Sociological Traditions: Selected Readings (edited volume) New York: Oxford University Press. Second edition Four Sociological Traditions: Selected Readings 1994.

1985. Sociology of Marriage and Family: Gender, Love and Property. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Second edition 1988. Third edition with Scott Coltrane 1991. Fourth edition 1994. Fifth edition 2000.

1985. Max Weber: A Skeleton Key. Beverly Hills: Sage. Japanese edition 1988. Danish edition 2000.

1986. Weberian Sociological Theory. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

1988. Theoretical Sociology. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Italian edition 1992; India edition 1996.

1998. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Russian edition 2002. Chinese edition 2004. Italian, Chinese and Spanish editions forthcoming. - (Eine global angelegte wissenssoziologische Analyse über Entwicklungen der Philosophie in Asien und Europa von den Anfängen bis ins 20. Jahrhundert.)

1999. Macro-History: Essays in Sociology of the Long Run. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2002. co-editor with Mauro Guillen, Paula England, Marshall Meyer. The New Economic Sociology: Developments in an Emerging Field. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton University Press.

in Arbeit:

Violent Conflict: A Micro-Sociological Theory with Macro-sociological Extensions.

Artikel und Mitarbeiten in Büchern:

1965. “Facilitation as a Function of Temporal Spacing of Stimuli in Intracranial Selfstimulation,” with J.A. Deutsch. Nature 208: 592-93.
1966. “A Comparative Study of Academic Freedom and Student Politics,” with J. Ben-David, Comparative Education Review 10: 220-249.
1966. “Social Factors in the Origins of a New Science: the Case of Psychology,” with J. Ben-David, American Sociological Review 31: 451-465. Reprinted in Bobbs-Merrill series and elsewhere.
1968. “A Comparative Approach to Political Sociology,” in R. Bendix et.al. (eds.), State and Society. Boston: Little, Brown, 42-67.
1968. “Competition and Social Control in Science,” Sociology of Education 41: 123-140. Reprinted in Bobbs-Merrill series.
1971. “Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification,” American Sociological Review 36: 1002-1019. Reprinted in Warner Module series and elsewhere. Translations into Italian and Japanese.
1971. “A Conflict Theory of Sexual Stratification,” Social Problems 19: 3-21. Reprinted in H.P. Drietzel (ed.). Recent Sociology #4. New York: Macmillan, 1972, and elsewhere.
1974. “Reassessments of Sociological History: the Empirical Validity of the Conflict Tradition,” Theory and Society 1: 147-178.
1974. “Where are Educational Requirements for Employment Highest?” Sociology of Education 47: 419-442.
1974. “Three Faces of Cruelty: Towards a Comparative Sociology of Violence,” Theory and Society 1: 415-440.
1974. “The Basics of Conflict Theory, Conflict Sociology”. New York: Academic Press, pp.56-61.
1975. “Outline of Organizations in Conflict Sociology, "Organizations" in Conflict Sociology: Toward an Explanatory Science”. New York: Academic Press.
1976. “Educational Credentialism and the Future of Social Inequality,” The Center Magazine 9 (November/December), 66-74.
1977. “Some Comparative Principles of Educational Stratification,” Harvard Educational Review 47: 1-27. Serbo-Croatian translation: “Usporedno Istrazivanje Principa Obrazovne Stratifikacije,” in Sergej Flere (ed.), Proturjecja Suvremenog Obrazovanja. Zagreb, 1986.9
1978. “Some Principles of Long-term Social Change: the Territorial Power of States,” in Louis Kriesberg (ed.), Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change, Vol. 1. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1-34.
1979. “Erving Goffman and the Development of Modern Social Theory,” in Jason Ditton (ed.). The View from Goffman. London: Macmillan.
1979. “The Late Twentieth-Century Credential Crisis, The Credential Society”. New York: Academic Press, pp. 191-204.
1980. “Weber’s Last Theory of Capitalism: A Systematization,” American Sociological Review 45: 925-942.
1981. “On the Micro-foundations of Macro-sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 86: 984-1014. Winner of the Theory Prize of the Theory Section, American Sociological Association, *l982. German translation in Hans-Peter Müller and Steffen Sigmund (eds.), Zeitgenössische amerikanische Soziologie. Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2000.
1981. “Micro-translation as a Theory-building Strategy,” in Karin Knorr-Cetina and Aaron V. Cicourel (eds.), Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Towards an Integration of Micro- and Macro-sociology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 81-108.
1981. “The Comparative Sociology of Philosophy: Oriental Materials,” International Society for the Sociology of Knowledge Newsletter 7 (May) 29-32.
1981. “Does Modern Technology Change the Rules of Geopolitics?” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 9: 163-177.
1982. “Mathematics and Civilization,” with Sal Restivo. The Centennial Review 26: 277-301.
1982. “Fluttuazioni e crisi dei mercati delle credenziali educative,” in Fanny S. Cappello, Marcello Dei, and Maurizio Rossi (eds.), L’immobilita Sociale: Stratificazione Sociale e Sistemi Scolastici. Bologna: Il Mulino, 27-52.
1983. “Robber-barons and Politicians in Mathematics: A Conflict Model of Science,” with Sal Restivo. Canadian Journal of Sociology 8: 199-227.
1983. “The Weberian Revolution of the High Middle Ages,” in Albert James Bergesen (ed.) Crises in the World System. Beverly Hills: Sage, 205-226.
1983. “Upheavals in Biological Theory Undermine Sociobiology,” Sociological Theory 1983. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 306-18.
1983. “Conflicts and Developments in the Sociology of Science,” with Sal Restivo. The Sociological Quarterly 24: 185-200.
1983.”Micro-methods as a Basis for Macro-sociology,” Urban Life 12: 184-202.10
1983. “Alienation: Micro or Macro?” Western Sociological Review 14: 16-26. Italian translation: “Alienazione: Micro o Macro?” Studi di Sociologia 22 (1984): 109-126.
1984. “Statistics versus Words”. Sociological Theory 1984. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 329-62.
1984. “Riflessioni sul passagio delle generazioni intellectuali,” Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia 25: 351-368. Translation: “Reflections on the Death of Erving Goffman.” Sociological Theory 1986) 4: 106-113.
1984. “The Role of Emotion in Social Structure” In: Ekman, Paul / Scherer, Klaus R. / Erlbaum, Lawrence [1984] Approaches to Emotion, Chapter 18 New Jersey London
1985. “The Mega-historians,” Sociological Theory 3: 114-122.
1986. “Is 1980s Sociology in the Doldrums?” American Journal of Sociology 91: 1336-55.
1986. “Three Sociological Traditions: On Creating the Future while Creating the Past.” In James S. Coleman, Siegwart Lindenberg, and Stefan Nowak (eds.), Approaches to Social Theory. Yew York: Russell Sage Foundation.
1986. “The Borkenau Thesis and the Rise of the West.” Sociological Forum 1: 379-388.
1986. “A Dynamic Simulation of Marx’s Model of Capitalism.” (with Robert Hanneman.) in Norbert Wiley (ed.), The Marx/Weber Debate. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
1986. “Historical Perspectives on Religion and Regime: Some Sociological Comparisons of Buddhism and Christianity.” In Jeffrey K. Hadden and Anson Shupe (eds.), Prophetic Religions and Politics. New York: Paragon House.
1986. “Sociology as the Land of Oz.” California Sociologist 9 :33-57.
1987. “Looking Forward or Looking Back?: Reply to Denzin.” American Journal of Sociology 93: 180-84.
1987. “A Micro-Macro Theory of Creativity in Intellectual Careers: the Case of German Idealist Philosophy.” Sociological Theory 5: 47-69.
1987. “Schließungsprozesse und die Konflikttheorie der Professionen.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 12, No. 2: 46-60. Translation: “Market Closure and the Conflict Theory of the Professions,” in Michael Burrage and Rolf Torstendahl (eds.), Professions in Theory and History: Rethinking the Study of the Professions in Europe and North America. London: Sage, 1990, 24-43.
1987. “Interaction Ritual Chains, Power and Property.” In Jeffrey C. Alexander (ed.), The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1988. “Theoretical Continuities in Goffman’s Work.” In Paul Drew and Anthony Wooton (eds.), Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order. Oxford: Polity Press. 11
1988. “The Durkheimian Tradition in Conflict Sociology.” In Jeffrey C. Alexander (ed.), Durkheimian Sociology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
1988. “Women and Men in the Class Structure.” Journal of Family Issues 9: 27-50. Reprinted in Rae Lesser Blumberg (ed.), Gender, Family and Economy. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990; revised version in Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier (eds.), Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992. Translation: “Femmes, stratification sociale et production de la culture.” Sociologie et Sociétés 21 (1989): 27-45.
1988. “The Micro Contribution to Macro Sociology.” Sociological Theory 6 (Fall): 242-53.
1988. “Toward a Micro Theory of Structuring,” with Jonathan H. Turner. In Jonathan H.Turner (ed.), Theory-Building in Sociology. Newbury Park, Ca.: Sage: 118-130.
1988. “For a Sociological Philosophy.” Theory and Society 17: 669-702.
1989. “Sociology: Pro-Science or Anti-Science?” American Sociological Review 53: 124-139. Russian translation in Thesis No. 4, 1994.
1989. “Toward a Neo-Meadian Sociology of Mind.” Symbolic Interaction 12: 1-31. “Response” [to commentaries on the preceeding] Symbolic Interaction 12: 111-119.
1989. “Sociological Theory, Disaster Research, and War.” In Gary Kreps (ed.), Social Structure and Disaster: Conception and Measurement. University of Delaware Press, 365-385. Revised version: “Violent Conflict and Social Organization: Some Theoretical Implications of the Sociology of War.” Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift 16 (1990): 63-87. Translation in J.Goudsblom (ed.), Hoofstukken uit de sociologie, Amersterdam University Press, 1995.
1989. “Toward a Theory of Intellectual Change: the Social Causes of Philosophies.” Science, Technology and Human Values 14: 107-140.
1989. “Future Organizational Trends of the ASA” u 17 (No. 6, September): 1-6. with J. McCarthy, M. Meyer, P. Oliver, and J. Turner. [Newsletter of the American Sociological Association]
1990. “Stratification, Emotional Energy, and the Transient Emotions.” in Theodore D. Kemper (ed.), Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions. Albany: SUNY Press, 27-57.
1990. “Webers tes nygranskad: religios kapitalism i Kina,” Sociologisk Forskning 14: 6-19. [Swedish]
1990. “Changing Conceptions in the Sociology of the Professions.” In Michael Burrage and Rolf Torstendahl (eds.), Knowledge, State and Strategy. The Formation of Professions in Europe and North America. London: Sage, 11-23. 12
1990. “Conflict Theory and the Advance of Macro-Historical Sociology.” In George Ritzer (ed.), Frontiers of Social Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 68-87. Translation: in Filosofskaia i Sotsiologicheskaia Mysl [Russian]
1990. “The Dimensions of Micro-interaction.” American Journal of Sociology 96: 32-68 (with Theodore Kemper).
1990. “Market Dynamics as the Engine of Historical Change.” Sociological Theory 8: 111-35.
1990. “The Organizational Politics of the ASA.” The American Sociologist 21: 311-5.
1991. “Historical Change and the Ritual Production of Gender.” in Joan Huber (ed.), Micro-Macro Linkages in Sociology. Newbury Park CA: Sage, pp. 109-120.
1991. “Implicaciones Ontologicas del Teoria del Conflicto: La Energia Emocional de los Rituales de Interaccion y el Culto a la Voluntad.” In Teresa Gonzalez de la Fe (ed.), Sociologia. Unidad y Diversidad. Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, pp. 93-116.
1991. “Las Cadenas Rituales de Interaccion y la Produccion del orden Social Estratificado.” In Teresa Gonzalez de la Fe (ed.), Sociologia. Unidad y Diversidad. Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, pp. 223-232.
1991. “The Confusion of the Modes of Sociology” in Steven Seidman and David G. Wagner (eds.), Postmodernism and Social Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 179-198.
1991. “Altruism and Culture as Social Products.” Voluntas 2, No. 2: 1-16. (with Neal Hickman)
1992. “The Romanticism of Agency/Structure versus the Analysis of Micro/Macro.” Current Sociology 40, No. 1: 77-97.
1992. “Conflict Theory.” The Encyclopedia of Sociology. New York: Macmillan: 288-90.
1992. “On the Sociology of Intellectual Stagnation: The Late Twentieth Century in Perspective.” Theory, Culture and Society 9: 73-96.
1992. “Thoughts in Slow Motion.” Times Higher Education Supplement [London] June 26 (pp. 15, 17).
1992. “What Theories Predicted the State Breakdowns and Revolutions of the Soviet Bloc?” (with David Waller). In Louis Kriesberg (ed.), Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change. Vol. 14: 31-47. German translation in Hans Joas and Martin Kohli (eds.), Der Zusammenbruch der DD: Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
1992: “The Rise and Fall of Modernism in Religion and Politics.” Acta Sociologica 35: 171-86. 13
1992. “The Geopolitical and Economic World-systems of Kinship-based and Agrarian-coercive Societies.” Review 15 (summer): 373-88. Russian translation in Vremia Mira 2001: 462-476.
1992. “Weber's Last Theory of Capitalism: A Systematization” In: Granovetter, Mark / Swedberg, Richard [1992] The Sociology of Economic Life, Chapter 3. Westview Press.
1992. Foreword In: Hilbert, Richard A. [1992] The Classical Roots of Ethnomethodology: Durkheim, Weber and Garfinkel. University of North Carolina Press.
1993. “The Rationality of Avoiding Choice.” Rationality and Society 5: 58-67.
1993. “Emotional Energy as the Common Denominator of Rational Choice.” Rationality and Society 5: 203-230.
1993: “Maturation of the State-centered Theory of Revolution and Ideology.” Sociological Theory 11 (March): 117-28.
1993: “Toward an Integrated Theory of Gender Stratification” Sociological Perspectives 36 (Fall): 185-216. (with Janet Chafetz, Rae Lesser Blumberg, Scott Coltane, and Jonathan Turner).
1993: “What Does Conflict Theory Predict about America’s Future?” Sociological Perspectives 36: 289-313.
1993: “Ethical Controversies of Science and Society: a Relation between Two Spheres of Social Conflict.” in Thomas Brante, Steve Fuller and William Lynch (eds), Controversial Science. Albany NY: SUNY Press, pp. 301-17.
1993. “Quattro macrostrutture in conflitto.” in Paolo Ammassari (ed.), Talcott Parsons e La Tradizione Sociologica in Europa Occidentale e Nel Nord-America. Napoli: Guida Editori, pp. 135-172.
1993: “Heroizing and Deheroizing Weber.” Theory and Society 22: 861-70.
1993. “Liberals and Conservatives, Religious and Political: A Conjuncture of Modern History” In: Sociology of Religion 54(2):127.
1994. “Did Social Science Break Down in the 1970s?” (with David Waller). In Jerald Hage (ed.), Formal Theory in Sociology: Opportunity or Pitfall? Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 15-40.
1994: “The Geopolitics of Ethnic Mobilization: Some Theoretical Projections for the Old Soviet Bloc”. (with David V. Waller) in John H. Moore (ed.), Legacies of the Collapse of Marxism. Arlington VA: George Mason University Press, pp. 79-104.
1994. “Why the Social Sciences Won’t Become High-Consensus, Rapid-Discovery Science.” Sociological Forum 9: 155-77. Reprinted in Stephen Cole (ed.) What’s Wrong with Sociology? Princeton: Princeton University Press (forthcoming).
1995. “German-Bashing and the Theory of Democratic Modernization.” Zeitschrift für Sociologie 24: 1-19. Dutch translation: Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift 21 (1995).
1995. “Prediction in Macro-sociology: the Case of the Soviet Collapse.” American Journal of Sociology 100: 1552-93. 14
1995. “Introduction.” to Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Los Angeles: Roxbury.
1995: “Discovering Theory Dynamics by Computer Simulation: Experiments on State Legitimacy and Imperialist Capitalism.” (with Robert A. Hanneman and Gabriele Mordt) Sociological Methodology 25: 1-46.
1995: “Les traditions sociologiques.” Enquête: anthropologie, histoire, sociologie 2: 11-38.
1996. “Can Rational Action Theory Unify Future Social Science?” in Jon Clark (ed.), James S. Coleman. London: Falmer Press, pp. 329-43.
1996. “Disasters, Natural and Man-Made: Sociological Reflections on Kobe and Hiroshima.” Kobe Law Journal 45: 809-26.
1997. “Stark and Bainbridge, Durkheim and Weber: Theoretical Comparisons.” in Lawrence A. Young (ed.), Rational Choice Theory and Religion. Routledge.
1997 “An Asian Route to Capitalism: Religious Economy and the Origins of Self-Transforming Growth in Japan” American Sociological Review 62 (Dec.): 843-65.
1997. “The Transformation of Philosophy.” in Johan Heilbron, Lars Magnusson, and Björn Wittrock (eds.), The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity. Kluwer.
1997. “A Sociological Guilt Trip: Comment on Connell.” American Journal of Sociology 106: 1558-64.
1998. “The Sociological Eye and its Blinders.” Contemporary Sociology 27 (Jan.): 2-7.
1998. “Democratization in World-Historical Perspective.” In Ralph Schroeder, ed. Weberian Political Sociology: Democracy, Nationalism and Modernization. London: Macmillan.
1998. “Modelling Interaction Ritual Theory of Solidarity.” (with Robert Hanneman). in Patrick Doreian and Tom Farraro (eds.) The Problem of Solidarity: Theories and Models. Gordon and Breach.
1999. “Capitalism.” Encyclopedia of Political Revolutions. Jack Goldstone, Editor. Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books.
1999. “The European Sociological Tradition and Twenty-First Century World Sociology.” In Janet Abu-Lughod (ed.), Sociology for the Twenty-first Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1999. “Applying Contemporary Religious Sociology to Early Christianity.” Religious Studies Review 25 (April): 136-139. 15
1999. “Socially Unrecognized Cumulation.” American Sociologist 30 (summer): 41-61.
1999. “The Golden Age of Macrohistorical Sociology.” [in Russian translation] in Nikolai Rozov (ed.), Vremia Mira. Novosibirsk.
2000. “Situational Stratification: A Micro-macro Theory of Inequality.” Sociological Theory 18: 17-43. Chinese translation 2002.
2000. “Vier Makro-Strukturen von Konflikten.” In Dieter Bogenhold (ed.), Moderne Amerikanische Soziologie, Stuttgart: Universitäts-taschenbucher (Lucius & Lucius). 99-134.
2000. “Comparative and historical patterns of education.” In Maureen T. Hallinan (ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of Education. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 213-239.
2000. “The Sociology of Philosophies: a Précis.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 30: 157-201.
2000. “Reply to Reviewers and Symposium Commentators.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 30: 300-326.
2000. “Reflexivity and Embeddedness in the History of Ethical Philosophies.” in Martin Kusch (ed.), The Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. New Synthese Historical Library, Kluwer Publishers.
2000: “The Multidimensionality of Social Evolution and the Historical Pathways of Asia and the West.” Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift 26; also in Iranian Social Science Journal
2000. “Predictions of Geopolitical Theory and the Modern World-System,” in Georgi M. Derluguian and Scott L. Greer (eds.), Questioning Geopolitics: Political Projects in a Changing World-System. (with David Waller), Praeger Publishers, 51-68.
2000. Über die mikrosozialen Grundlagen der Makrosoziologie in "Zeitgenössische amerikanische Soziologie" Hans-Peter Müller/Steffen Sigmund (Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2000)
2000. Collins R. & Walter, David V.: Predictions of Geopolitical Theory and the Modern World-System In: Derluguian, Georgi M. / Greer, Scott, L.: Questioning Geopolitics: Political Projects in a Changing World-System, Chapter 4. Westport/London: Praeger.
2000. “The Multiplie Fronts of Economic” Sociology Editorial essay in the Economic Sociology Section of the ASA
2001. “Social Movements and the Focus of Emotional Attention.” In Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (eds.), Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
2001. “Ethnic Change in Macro-Historical Perspective.” In Elijah Anderson and Douglas S. Massey (eds.), The Problem of the Century: Racial Stratification in the United States. New York: Russell Sage.
2001. “Emotion as Key to Reconstructing Social Theory.” In Jack Barbalet and Margot Lyon (eds.), Emotion in Social Theory: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield.
2001. “Weber and the Sociology of Revolution.” Journal of Classical Sociology 2: 171-194. 16
2001. “Civilizations as zones of prestige and social contact.” International Sociology 16: 421-437.
2002. “On the Acrimoniousness of Intellectual Disputes.” Common Knowledge 8: 47-70.
2002. “Geopolitics in an Era of Internationalism.” Social Evolution and History Journal vol. 1
2002. Rössel, Jörg and Randall Collins: “Conflict Theory and Interaction Ritual: the Microfoundations of Conflict Theory.” In Jonathan Turner (ed.), Handbook of Sociological Theories. New York: Plenum Publishers.
2002. “Introduction.” with Mauro Guillen, Paula England, Marshall Meyer. in The New Economic Sociology: Developments in an Emerging Field. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
2002. “Credential Inflation and the Future of Universities.” In Steve Brint (ed.), The Future of the City of Intellect. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Excerpted in Chronicle of higher Education, Sept. 2002.
2002. “Black’s Contributions to a General Theory of Conflict.” [review essay] Contemporary Sociology 31: 655-58.
2003. “A Network-location Theory of Culture.” Sociological Theory 21: 69-73.
2003. “Fuller, Kuhn, and the Emergent Attention Space of Reflexive Studies of Science.” Social Epistemology 17: 145-150.
2003. “Interaction rituals and sociological explanation of intellectual creativity.” [in Russian] Komparitivistika 2: 33-57.
2003. “Sociology and Philosophy.” in Craig Calhoun, Chris Rojek, and Bryan Turner (eds.) International Handbook of Sociology. London: Sage.
2004. “The Durkheimian Movement in France and in World Sociology.” in Jeffrey Alexander and Phil Smith (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim. Cambridge Univ. Press.
2003. “Mann’s Transformation of the Classical Sociological Traditions.” In John A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder (eds.), An Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge Univ. Press.
2004. “Rituals of solidarity and security, and processes of mass hysteria, in the wake of terrorist attack.” Sociological Theory 22: 53-87.
2004. “Lenski’s power theory of economic inequality: a central neglected question in stratification research.” Sociological Theory 22: 219-228. 17
2004. “Commonality and Divergence of World Intellectual Structures in the Second Millenium CE.” in Immanuel Wallerstein (ed.), The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée. Boulder CO: Paradigm Publishers.

von ihm empfohlenes Werk für jeden Soziologen:

Ulysses von James Joyce woraus den meisten ja nur der Bloomsday bekannt ist

Sekundärliteratur:

Jörg Rössel, 1999: “Konflikttheorie und Interaktionsrituale. Randall Collins' Synthese von Emotionssoziologie und Konflikttheorie.” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 28: 23 - 43.

Das Werk in Themen und Thesen

Für Collins ist der Konflikt notwendige Konsequenz der natülichen Ungleichheit der Macht. Diese Ungleichheit werde verursacht durch:

die Arbeit, durch welche die Gesellschaft in Klassen geteilt wird
das soziale Umfeld
die Politik, in der sich verschiedene Parteien gegenüberstehen.

Courses taught: Sociological theory, social conflict, stratification, economic and network sociology, formal organizations, micro-sociology, sociology of emotions, sociology of eligion, sociology of science, sociology of culture, social change, historical/comparative sociology, qualitative methods, introductory sociology, literary theory.

Not content, however, to remain within the confines of action theory, Collins has mobilized the notion of interaction ritual chains to explore a wide-range of macro topics, from the structure of organizations to the geo-political situations of states, from social stratification to long-term developments in philosophical thought.

Rezeption und Wirkung

Er wird als führender Theoretiker der Konfliktheorie bezeichnet, der sich einerseits auf Karl Marx bezieht, andererseits die Soziologie von Max Weber erweitert und außerdem an Émile Durkheim anschließt.

Randall Collins is widely regarded as a leading figure in contemporary sociological theory. Eschewing interpretivist visions of the sociological project, Collins is an unabashed advocate of positivism and attempts, in his theoretical work, to formulate "generalized, causal, empirical explanations" for social phenomena.