This chapter introduces the logics, assumptions, and theoretical underpinnings of micro-sociology in the context of Peace and Conflict Research. In the chapter, I present and discuss how macro-phenomena comprise and yet are more than the sum of micro-interactions. I then proceed to introduce key concepts and elements of the micro-sociological framework developed in this book, including interaction rituals, emotional energy, social bonds, micro-sociality, and socioemotional credit and discredit. Moreover, the chapter conceptualizes four forms of interaction that shape peace, and conflict: friendly interaction, conflictual interaction, dominant interaction, and low-intensity interaction. These modes of interaction can be analyzed to understand concrete situations and grasp larger patterns of peace and conflict. The chapter discusses how modes of interaction can be changed and challenged, how interactions are also shaped by practices and material circumstances, and how intergroup conflicts and peace may imply different forms of interaction.

This is an overview of the foundation for, and substance of, emerging research on network broker behavior, research that constitutes a second generation of work on network brokerage. I begin with a capstone of key past results along with my cautions and enthusiasms about directions in which things are going. I discuss the information breadth, timing, and arbitrage advantages of network brokers, and returns to those advantages contingent on a broker’s social standing. Research linking network structure with success has been a first generation of work. That work is well advanced, but far from complete. I discuss the current position becoming stronger and broader with replication, attention to negative results, and attention to dynamics. Shifting to an exciting second generation of work, research has emerged focused on the behavior by which broker advantage is linked with success. I discuss framing and frame shifts, the importance of personal engagement, the uncertain moderating effects of culture and personality, and a few behavioral variations in brokerage. I discuss the context dependence of tertius gaudens tactics iungens versus separans, and the distinction between brokers who consume versus produce emotional energy in their colleagues.

This chapter elaborates on how moral remembrance resonates for local communities. It briefly theorises the concept of solidarity as currently understood, placing particular focus on Randall Collins’s work on the significance of interaction ritual chains and emotional energy. Central to his interaction ritual chain theory is the notion that people in face-to-face encounters produce mutual rituals that are sustained through an emotional energy that results in a feeling of membership and in a desire for action that is considered a morally ‘proper’ path. Drawing on numerous human rights–sponsored memorialisation initiatives in the Western Balkans and Israel–Palestine, the chapter analyses the myriad of ‘facing the past’ dialogue groups. The chapter demonstrates that ‘facing the past’ encounters ritualise historical narratives and generate a strong vocabulary of sentiments, which, in the long run, does not translate transnational solidarity into human rights values but ends up strengthening ethnic homogenisation, essentialisation and group polarization. In other words, moral remembrance does not offer a real alternative to sustaining those emotions and transforming them into solid, long-lasting human rights values; instead, contrary to what would be expected, it strengthens the narrow, ethnically based nationalist perceptions of collective memory, and reproduces nationalist discourses and practices.