Festive ritual, emotional monopoly and social domination. Case Analysis of the Fallas

Abstract

The festive ritual has been interpreted as a way to generate sociability and social cohesion not only in traditional societies but also in modern ones. However, from the perspective of the Randall Collins interaction ritual, the holiday ritual is used by certain social status groups to define identity, strengthen stratification and establish political domination by generating shared focus points and accumulating emotional energy. In addition, the organizers of traditional cultural rituals are not a direct social or political elite or a social movement, but an intermediate group that monopolizes the generation of collective emotion through ritual and operates as a dominant group in a relatively autonomous social sphere. This is reflected in the analysis of the festival of the Fallas of Valencia in which the sociability generated in the festive culture and the generation of the emotional energy of the ritual allow a socially mobilized minority to define the regional identity, exclude those considered enemies or foreigners, and to reproduce social stratification.