SOCI 3006 – Collective Behaviour May 2007

1. What is collective behaviour? any event during which a group of people engages in unusual behaviour – that is, ‘non-normative’ behaviour behaviour that falls outside the usual, ‘normative’ expectations for behaviour norms – the rules regulating people’s behaviour in particular situations – they are situation-specific, and may over time become institutionalized (folkways, mores, laws) e.g. riots, fads, fashions, social movements, rumours examples???

1. What is collective behaviour? (cont’d) originally thought collective behaviour mostly mob behaviour or mass hysteria – because it was assumed that collective behaviour was largely irrational, a function of biological/ psychological factors that emerge in a crowd situation and cause individuals to act in irrational ways (note Durkheim here, along with Le Bon) collective behaviour can take a wide variety of forms (e.g. ‘swarming’ and bullying behaviour; sports riots) like other forms of behaviour, collective behaviour can become institutionalized – it can become normative itself – e.g. ‘goal-posting’ at college football games – or ‘streaking’ in the 1960’s

1. What is collective behaviour? (cont’d) the key question from a sociological perspective: how does collective behaviour, behaviour in groups that did not exist before and is outside the norms, arise? What causes it? What effect does it have? How does it change over time? What does it tell us about social behaviour generally? collective behaviour can have both positive and negative effects – any examples you can think of?

2. Why study collective behaviour? most of the time people do what we expect them to do – why? the importance of culture – socialization, the internalization of beliefs, values, norms (folkways, mores, laws) and the impact on personality. what does collective behaviour tells us about behaviour in general? to understand why it happens (e.g. rumours) to be able to predict when it will happen to be able to control it it is interesting reveals information about ‘typical’ behaviour

3. History of the Study of Collective Behaviour Mackay (1841) – Extraordinary Popular Delusions & The Madness of Crowds Le Bon (1895) – The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind – note here influence of French Revolution, and the events stemming from this – the origins of ‘contagion theory’ – that collective behaviour can cause animal instincts to be brought out Robert Park, Ernest Burgess (1921) An Introduction to the Science of Sociology – another version of contagion theory Herbert Blumer – the concept of the ‘acting crowd’ Contagion Theory fell out of favour beginning in the 50’s and in particular in the 1960’s

3. History of the Study of Collective Behaviour (cont’d) Turner and Killian (1957) Collective Behaviour – development of the ‘emergent norm’ perspective – that collective behaviour is a product of new norms that emerge from novel situations – note here W.I. Thomas and the ‘definition of the situation’ example – new norms emerging in an situation of violent behaviour, or in a university dormitory individuals have their own reasons for involvement – but the group is the catalyst for the new emergent norms the Asch experiments

3. History of the Study of Collective Behaviour (cont’d) Smelser (1962) – Theory of Collective Behavior - development of the ‘value-added’ perspective – collective behaviour as a response to social conditions that leads to unusual behaviour (e.g. joining a protest group) – the behaviour though is rational to the participants 6 steps: structural conduciveness, structural strain, generalized belief, precipitating factors, mobilization of participants, reactions of agents of social control (note: MADD) collective behaviour can work to relieve social strain

3. History of the Study of Collective Behaviour (cont’d) SBI/Sociocybernetic Perspective (McPhail) – emphasis on understanding how people control, regulate their own behaviour, how this influences the behaviour of others in interaction, and how this can ‘spread’ to form the basis for collective behaviour Individualist Theories – ‘Convergence Theory’, ‘Learning Theory’ , Social Identity Theory’ – focus on individual personality traits, the coming together of these in combination with one another, igniting group behaviour (e.g. a bunch of gullible people coming together). Miller and Dollard (1941) Social Leaning and Imitation, also Hogg and Abrams (1988), Social Identifications group behaviour as the sum of the parts?

3. History of the Study of Collective Behaviour (cont’d) social movements – a more organized, sustained, goal oriented force for social change Kornhauser (1959) – The Politics of Mass Society - the development of mass society theory – that social movements attract socially isolated, marginalized people to causes relative deprivation theory – Stouffer (1949) – the importance of perceptions of equality resource mobilization theory – Zald and Ash (1966) McAdam (1982) – political process theory – an extension of Smelser’s theory