Collective Behavior - Social Movements - Lecture Slides, Slides of Sociology

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Social Movements

Collective Behavior (or collective

action) as a component of social

movements

What are Social Movements?

• Clearly are not:
  • Students moving from class to class
  • Shoppers in a mall
  • Workers in a factory
• Clearly are:
  • Labor movement
  • Women’s suffrage
  • Civil Rights

Elements of Social Movements

• Social Action: takes others into account
• Collective Action (or Collective Behavior)
  • May involve organizations
  • But also includes flesh and blood human beings, physically co-present and acting together
• Some degree of tension or deviation if not

conflict from the conventional/routine world

Conventional and Collective Behavior Across Settings

Setting

Mass Crowd

Formal Organization Conventional Behavior

Routine national stock market transactions

Card tricks at a football game

Factory assembly line

Collective Behavior

Wearing yellow ribbons during Iran hostage crisis of 1979-

March on Washington in 1963

Wildcat strikes, many social movements

Source: Marx and McAdam, p. 13

Comparing Theories

• Resource Mobilization tends to
  • Exaggerate difference between scheduled and emergent events
  • Minimize difference between collective behavior and collective action
• LeBon and collective behavior theorists
  • Exaggerate difference between routine and non-routine (crowd/mob) behavior
  • Minimize scheduled/emergent distinction

Hegel’s Riddle

• Hegel: to be and not to be: to become
• Tilly’s social movement includes

scheduled events: marches but not riots

• But marches can become riots
  • Chicago 1968 Democratic convention was a police riot
  • Police raid on Blind Pig in Detroit inspired 1968 “ghetto [urban] riot”

Some Definitions

• Tilly (1986, p. 381)
  • Collective action: “acting together on shared interests”
  • Contention: action “bears directly on interests of [others]”
  • Social movement: “a series of challenges to established authorities” (p. 392)

Riots versus Panics?

• Demonstrations, crowds and riots are, in

varying degrees

• Organized
• Disciplined
• contentious
• When police confront crowd, challenge is

likely if crowd has interest, organization,

and opportunity to challenge