andall Collins is one of the most important present-day sociologists. He teaches Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. As is fitting with complex, high-brow works, it is difficult to sum up his works in a few introductory lines.
His approach tends to bring together two concepts: the idea that society is organized around conflicts between different social groups, with regard to domination, clashes or negotiation; the Durkheimian idea of moral solidarity as a foundation for the cohesion inside single groups thanks to the social ritual which allows the participation of common ideals and feelings. Even every individual interaction takes on, for Collins, the forms of a ritual, in which emotions play a fundamental role. Every individual brings with himself his cultural capital (in common with his own social groups) and he confronts himself with his interlocutor's and his group's. Society is similar to an infinite interaction rituals chain, through which ideas, the symbols of various cultural capitals are transmitted according to a mechanism which generally tends to re-enforce the domination of the upper classes, although we cannot exclude upheavals. Social stratification, for Collins, is a multi-dimensional structure, and so social inequality is due not only to differences in power but also to the different cultural and social networks to which we belong. Among his works published in Italy we have Sociologia (Conflict Sociology. Toward an Explanatory Science, 1975), Teorie sociologiche (Theoretical Sociology), Quattro tradizioni sociologiche (Four Sociological Traditions, 1985), and recently L'intelligenza sociologica (Sociological Insight. An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology, 1992).

In your last book, Violence.
A Micro-sociological Theory, 2008 – still not translated in Italian – you examine carefully the wide range of situations of physical violence that we can live through, from the simple quarrel to domestic abuse,

from armed conflicts to violence occurring in sports, from terrorism to mugging and so on. Your assumptions try to go beyond the common idea that social, cultural, ideological, racial conditions or individual pathologies are the main foundations of violence. You assert that human beings don’t usually act violently, that they can use violence only thanks to some specific conditions allowing people to get over those emotional barriers that naturally inhibit violent conduct. Can you explain in more depth the most important features of your interesting “compact theory” about violence, and its possible link with your idea about the ritual shape of everyday interactions?
Almost all theories of violence assume that it is sufficient for people to have a motive, and then violence will be easily carried out. There are many kinds of theories, positing that people are violent because of poverty, honour, resistance, childhood experiences, cultural beliefs, masculinity, etc. But in fact, when we look closely at situations of violence, of every kind, the main pattern is that violence does not happen. Most soldiers in combat do not fire their guns; most persons in a crowd of rioters stay back; most angry quarrels go no further than shouting.
Furthermore, in the small number of cases where violence does proceed forward, people show themselves usually to be very incompetent at fighting. Most bullets that are fired miss, or they hit the wrong targets – this is true for soldiers, police, criminals alike.