317.1
From Fun to Pain. Observations of Interactional Qualifications of Violence.
This contribution relies on observations and recordings of the last Pillow Fight Day (PFD) in Paris, which took place in April 2014 and consisted in a flash mob of among 1.000 young people (aged from 20 to 30) who enjoyed a pillow fight for 30 minutes. I analyze sequences of gestures that were qualified as violent by participants themselves.
After presenting the theoretical and empirical frame of festive violence as a breaching experiment (Garfinkel 1967), I present the observations I recorded during the PFD. I then demonstrate that cognitive qualifications of violence occur when the metacommunicative properties of a social frame blur. Indeed, gestures, postures and gaits are representational re-descriptions (Cicourel 2006) for a social frame, and, given this attribute, they can also break attentes (Mauss 1924) when they excessively divert from an anticipation zone, i.e. from an expected repertoire of attitudes (Chartier et al. 2017). Consequently, I propose that violent acting lies in the contestation of the stability of an initial social frame and in the rigid assertion of metacommunicative rules to set a new stabilized social frame. Eventually, I discuss Collins’ situational hypotheses on violent gestures (Collins 2008).
Chartier, Gaëlle, et al. 2017. “Violence and Uncertainty: Interactional Sketches for a Cognitive Analysis of Violent Actions.” Social Science Information 56 (2): 198–219.
Cicourel, Aaron V. 2006. “Cognitive/affective Processes, Social Interaction, and Social Structure as Representational Re-Descriptions.” Mind & Society 5 (1): 39–70.
Collins, Randall. 2008. Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs (N.J.): Prentice-Hall.
Mauss, Marcel. 1924. “Rapports Réels et Pratiques de la Psychologie et de la Sociologie.” Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique.