Download or read book Status, Power and Ritual Interaction written by Theodore D. Kemper and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numerous sociologists suppose that ritual is foundational for social life. Kemper, however, argues that status and power structure social relations, determine emotions and link individuals to the reference groups that deliver culture and administer preferences, actions, beliefs and ideas. An important contention is that allegiance to fundamental ideas is primarily faithfulness to the reference groups that foster them, not to the ideas themselves. This triggers the counter-intuitive deduction that the concept of the self is both feckless and irrelevant.