Classnotes #42 Crowds Dec 5

Collective behavior---what it is
1. Unstructured, large scale, significant social situations
  1. Riots and public actions that are intense but unplanned
  2. Political actions shaped by terrorism or other unpredictable disruptions
  3. Fads where individuals participate in new styles or activities as part of routine life
  4. Large scale expressions of values or ideas in the population---not dependent on organizations or institutions (like the notion of the moral majority...people are just out there disapproving of immoral mass media and individualistic behavior).
2. Collective behavior is an important source of social change
  1. Most of our discussion this semester has had to do with structured, controlled group patterns (like social class structures) or things that are formally organized (like institutions and organizations)
    1. Sociologists tend to explain behavior by depending on structure explanations
    2. But since structures are static, we cannot predict or account for change; this makes theories by nature conservative and not change oriented
    3. Collective behavior is especially important in the structural functional perspective (like Smelser) because it provides an explanation of how old structures break down and new ones emerge.
  2. Radical theory is based on the expectation that revolutionary change will happen and a lot of its focus is on why oppressed groups do not engage in spontaneous, disruptive action
Models of man (or woman)
1. One thing to recognize in the discussion of collective behavior is the way that it draws on the beginning discussions we had of different models of socialization and the development of individuals.
  1. Although collective behavior is about mass action that is unstructured and inherently social, the different theories of collective behavior listed in the book all imply a certain idea about how social psychology works.
  2. These different social psychology theories are what we mean by the term "models of man"; they represent different ideas about what leads people into social behavior and what governs their behavior when they are social.
2. Models of man in the theories of collective action
  1. Psychological explanations present behavior as the consequence of personality (life history) or physiological attributes, downplaying the causal influence of social context
    1. The notion that people act in response to preferences, tastes, or primeval urges
      1. genetic or evolutionary sources of male violence
      2. genetic causes of alcohol abuse or drug addiction
      3. aesthetic choices and responses that are just a matter of taste or preference
    2. The notion that social behavior is a product of immitation or brainwashing
      1. the notion that media violence breeds violent behavior (prize fights increase the murder rate; famous suicides increase suicide rate; violent TV movies leads to youth violence)...where the message causes the behavior rather than behavior caused or mediated by social structures
      2. marketing and advertising create brand awareness and product appeal
    3. collective action as primordial herd behavior---people act in wild and violent ways because they are swept up in the mood of a crowd----it's an emotional response not mediated by social causes
  2. Berk's notion that people make calculated, self-interested choices to loot or be disruptive based on
    1. Desires they bring into the situation to loot or be disruptive
    2. Recognition that if they start disruption they will be caught and punished so price is too high
    3. Once disruption begins they can join in and do their predetermined preferred behavior but without consequences.
    4. All of this thinking is economic in character since actors are seen as rational, utility maximizers
  3. Blumer's notion that people in crowds copy the behavior of people immediately around them reflects the symbolic interactionist perspective (and Blumer is a famous member of that group)
    1. People shape their identity or sense of self in response to significant others close to them
    2. People in a crowd develop a sense from the crowd of what is desirable, acceptable, and normatively approved behavior, thus conforming to their generalized other.
    3. This suggests that crowds have many different subgroups within them so that you cannot say the whole crowd is doing any particular thing---it is doing many things.
  4. Smelser's theory of the stages that lead up to collective behavior reflects the functionalist view
    1. first in the sense that it gives social structure precursors to collective behavior so the actual collective behavior itself becomes a consequence of socially structured causes
    2. second in that it gives an explanation of how one stable functional structure can make a transition to a new state...it tells how social change can happen.
  5. Although Luhman does not give us a conflict or radical perspective on collective behavior, we do see echoes of the radical perspective when he talks about relative deprivation as a cause of collective action
    1. This is related to the radical perspective in the sense that he tells us truly deprived or poor people are inactive.
    2. Radicals recognize that the poor of a society have a class interest to mobilize and act but they do not
    3. Trying to explain inaction is a major focus of the radical perspective, talking about false consciousness and the way poor people do not see their common class interests.