The article “Ritual Power in Interaction” was written by Andrew Travers in October 1982 in the journal “Symbolic Interaction.” By stating the research question, Travers (1982) tries to discover how Erving Goffman’s idea of people being ritual creatures can be refined into a new concept of “ritual power.” The study is guided by Goffman’s ritual frame to study people as ritual beings. Goffman claimed that sacrality is a personal belonging, which can be offended by rudeness. At the same time, Travers (1982) tries to go beyond this notion and seeks to find out the rules of interaction and the organization of ritual experience, using the data concerning punks and nurses. The scholar collected the data by observing punks in public places and concerts and interviewing them for 12 months, meaning qualitative methods (Travers, 1982). Moreover, he researched nurses by working in the hospital for a period of three weeks. Travers (1982) highlights that he used such methods to invent a theory, not accept or reject any hypothesis. The scholar aimed to sample punks and nurses according to their attitude towards pollutants (Travers, 1982).
I am concerned about a couple of questions that were raised while I was reading the article. Firstly, is there a possibility that the sample from the population can be biased? Travers (1982) mentioned: “I see punks (known to me),” meaning that he observed those people whom he knew (p. 284). From my perspective, this fact cannot guarantee unbiased sampling. Secondly, can a scholar make generalizations about nurses based on observations in the Nursing Auxiliary in male Urology? I mean, the scholar worked for three weeks in a single nursing organization, researching the rituals of nursing there; can he generalize nurses in common? I want to know more about other factors that can provide grounds for the different rituals, apart from pollutan
Reference
Travers, A. (1982). Ritual Power in Interaction. Symbolic Interactions 5(2), 277-286.