Collective behavior involves large groups acting together in an unplanned manner and can take various forms such as crowds, mass behavior, social movements, and social change. Crowds are temporary gatherings that share a focus and can become suggestible, while dispersed collectives like mass behavior involve people spread over a wide area sharing common information sources. Social movements aim to promote or resist social change through organized collective action. Theories of social movements examine factors like deprivation, resources, and the social construction of issues. Frame analysis explores how social movements define problems, solutions, and motivations to mobilize participants.

1. Principles of Sociology 23/24
Collective Behavior, Social
Movements, & Social Change

2. Basics
• collective behavior = activity involving a large number of
people that is unplanned, often controversial, and
sometimes dangerous.
– Activity involves the action of some collectivity.
• collectivity = a large number of people whose minimal interaction
occurs in absence of well-defined and conventional norms.
• Collectivity can be localized (everyone together) or dispersed.
– Difficult to study for three reasons …
• Very diverse.
• Varies in form.
• Much of it is transitory.

3. Conditions for Collective Behavior
• Three Major Factors:
1. Structural factors that increase the chances of people
responding in a particular way.
EX: The development of DDT (a dangerous pesticide), and other acts of
powerful corporations that were doing significant harm to the
environment in the 1960s.
2. Timing
EX: the emergence of air pollution in the US, the dying on birds and fish in
Europe, and oil spills all made people ready for the message of
Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), a book that began the environmentalist
movement.
3. A breakdown in social control mechanisms.
EX: In the 1970s, people became willing to protest in grassroots efforts
like that of the dumping of waste materials in Niagara Falls, NY.

4. Localized Collectives
• crowds = temporary gathering of people who
share a common focus of attention and who
influence one another.
– Crowds tend to be suggestible.
– A crowd acts as a group, with individuality being lost.
– Crowds are more likely to behave spontaneously.
– People in crowds often feel invulnerable.
– Crowds are largely unorganized.
– Crowds tend to have no controlling authority.

5. Localized Collectives
• Types of Crowds (Blumer):
– casual crowds = large gathering of people with little or nothing in
common.
• EX: people at a shopping mall.
– conventional crowds = crowds gathered for a scheduled event with a
common focus.
• EX: audience in a theater or at a concert.
– expressive crowds = organized for the expression of some emotion.
• EX: funeral; Mardi Gras.
– protest crowds = engage in activities to achieve specific political
goals.

6. Localized Collectives
• Types of Crowds (Blumer):
– acting crowds = these crowds become so focused on
a specific goal or object that they may erupt into
violent behavior.
• mob = highly emotional crowd that pursues a violent or
destructive goal.
• riot = social eruption that is highly emotional, violent, and
undirected.

7. Theories: Crowd Behavior
• Contagion Theory (Le Bon):
– Crowds exert hypnotic influence over their members.
– People surrender to a “collective mind.”
– Members find anonymity in large numbers.
– People rid themselves of inhibitions and act out.
– Crowd assumes a life of its own.
• Social Unrest & Circular Reaction: Social unrest is
transmitted by a process of circular reaction = the
interaction between persons is such that the discontent of
one is communicated to another, who then reflects the
discontent back to the first.

8. Theories: Crowd Behavior
• Convergence Theory = like-minded people who
wish to act in a certain way form crowds.
– Participants come together because of already
existing social and/or political attitudes.
• Emergent Norm Theory = people in crowds begin
with mixed interests and motives.
– In less stable crowds (e.g., expressive, acting, and
protest), norms might be vague or changing.

9. Dispersed Collectives: Mass Behavior
• mass behavior = includes collective behavior among
people spread over a wide geographic.
– Rumor and gossip
– Public opinion
– Propaganda
– Fashions and fads
– Panic and mass hysteria
• Such behavior is typically made possible because
the individuals involved share common sources of
information.

10. Dispersed Collectives: Mass Behavior
• propaganda = Information presented with the
intention of shaping public opinion.
– There is a thin line between information and
propaganda (most information is interpreted in the
best interest of the interpreter).
– Although the term has taken on a negative
connotation, not all propaganda is false.
– All nations and groups engage in propaganda at
times.

11. Propaganda is used in many ways by many
different types of groups, and for varied
purposes. It is more about style and agenda than
it is about “good” or “bad.”

12. Dispersed Collectives: Mass Behavior
• mass hysteria = irrational, compulsive behavior that
spreads among a large, dispersed group of people.
– Often based on false beliefs taken seriously.
– EX: listeners to Orson Well’s “War of the Worlds”
broadcast (1938; again in 1988 on a Portuguese station!).
• panic = a number of people together in one place
reacting to a perceived threat in the environment
with fear and anxiety.

13. Mass hysteria (panic) erupted in the U.S.
in 1938 when Orson Welles dramatized
H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds on
radio (left), as The New York Times
reported the next day (below).

14. Social Change
• Causes:
– Invention: Production of new objects, ideas, and social patterns.
– Discovery: Noticing existing elements of a culture.
– Diffusion: Spreading products, people and information from one
culture to another.
– Social conflict arising from inequality forces changes in every
society (Marx).
– Ideas fueling social movements can bring about social change
(Weber).
– Population patterns, including migration, can play a part in social
change.

15. Social Change: Modernity
• modernity = changes brought about by the
Industrial Revolution.
• modernization = the process of social change begun
by industrialization.
• Four Major Dimensions of Modernization:
– Decline of small, traditional towns.
– Expansion of personal choice.
– Increasing social diversity.
– Orientation toward the future and a growing awareness
of time.

16. NOTE:
The concepts of Tönnies,
Durkheim, Weber, and Marx
were covered back in
Chapter 4: Society. Don’t
worry about these concepts
again here.

17. Theory: Structural-Functional
• Modernity as mass society:
– Draws upon the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, and Weber.
– Proposes modernization as the emergence of mass
society.
• The Ever-Expanding State:
– Power resides in large bureaucracies; local communities
have reduced control.
– Regulations may protect and advance social equality, but
they also undermine the autonomy of families and local
communities.

18. Theory: Social-Conflict
• Draws upon the ideas of Marx, and views the
heart of modernization as an expanding
capitalist economy, marked by inequality.
• Suggests increasing scale of social life in modern
society results from the growth and greed
unleashed by capitalism (Marx).
• Sees science as an elite ideology that justifies
status quo.

19. NOTE:
Modernization and Dependency
theories were covered back in
Chapter 12: Global Stratification.
Don’t worry about these
concepts again here.

20. Social Movements
• social movement = organized collective action to
promote or resist change in society.
- Social movements have significant social consequences.
- Social movements happen throughout history all over the
world.
- Such movements are most likely to begin in industrialized
nations, and in urban over non-urban areas – due to
greater diversity and weaker tradition.
- Social movements do not have to “win” to be influential,
but can alter public opinion even when unsuccessful.

21. Types of Social Movements
• reform = a movement campaigning for change (EX:
Civil Rights movement).
• revolutionary (most extreme) = rejects some aspect
of society and wants to replace it with something
new (EX: terrorist groups).
• redemptive = promotes radical change through a
selective focus.
• alternative (least extreme) = seek limited change in
some aspect of behavior (EX: AA).

22. Types of Social Movements
• Additional Types:
– resistance = movements that oppose some change or
seek to undo change (EX: anti-abortion).
– separatist = seeks to set up an alternative society in
order to escape the wider society (EX: ‘hippie’
communes during the 1960s-70s).
– migratory = several discontented people move to the
same area from another (EX: Jews relocating to
Israel in 1948).

23. Stages of Social Movements
• emergence stage = social unrest = people become discontent with
some aspect of society, and leaders emerge to agitate others into
taking action.
– claims making = the process of trying to convince others of the importance
of some problem and need for specific change (usually begins with a small
number of people).
• coalescence stage = official organization for change occurs, and
the issue begins to be publicized.
• bureaucratization stage = administrators take over as an
organizational structure takes over the maintenance of the
movement.
• decline

24. Theories: Deprivation Theory
• relative deprivation = a conscious feeling of a
negative discrepancy between legitimate
expectations and present actualities.
• Before discontent will be channeled into a social
movement …
– People must feel they have a right to their goals and
perceive that they cannot attain their goals through
conventional means.

25. Theories: Mass-Society Theory
• Social movements attract socially isolated people who
feel personally insignificant.
– Social movements are rarely very democratic.
– Activists tend to be psychologically vulnerable people who
eagerly join groups and can be manipulated by group leaders.
• Evaluation:
– Explains social movements in terms of people hungry to
belong.
– Does not set clear standard for measuring the extent to which
we live in a “mass society.”

26. Theories: Culture Theory
• Recognizes that social movements depend not on
material resources and the structure of political power
but rather on powerful cultural symbols appropriated
by the group.
– Such symbols often take on a reality of their own (EX: the
American Flag).
• Evaluation:
– Suggests social movements depend on material resources and
cultural symbols.
– Does not address how and when powerful cultural symbols
turn people from support toward protest.

27. Theories: Resource-Mobilization
• Ways in which a social movement utilizes
resources such as money, political influence,
access to the media, and workers.
– This perspective points out that the creation and success of a
social movement depends on its access to and use of such
resources.
– To sustain a social movement, there must be an organizational
base and continuity of leadership.
– Marx recognized the need to overcome false consciousness =
attitudes that do not reflect people’s objective position.

28. Theories: Structural-Strain Theory
• Claims that the likelihood of collective behavior increases as each
of six factors (‘values’) add up in complex ways:
– structural conduciveness = how much a social structure permits collective
action.
– structural strain = an identifiable feeling of social deprivation.
– generalized belief = a shared view of the problem and solution = growth
and spread of an explanation.
– precipitating factors = event, incident, or behavior that somehow supports
the generalized belief.
– mobilization for action = actual organization to participate in collective
action.
– social control = a society’s means to make sure there is conformity to group
norms (movements depend on whether they are allowed to organize).

29. Theories: Political Economy Theory
• Social movements arise within capitalist societies simply
because the capitalist economic system fails to meet
needs of the majority of people, causing frustration and
dissatisfaction.
• Evaluation:
– Contains a macro-level approach that explains social
movements concerned with economic issues.
– Does not explain the recent rise of social movements
concerned with non-economic issues such as obesity, animal
rights, or the state of the natural environment.

30. Theories: Social Constructionist
• Uses the concept of social construction [Chapter
6] to highlight the place of peoples’ perceptions
and agendas in social movements.
• A social movement is an interactive, symbolically
defined, and negotiated process that involves
participants, opponents, and bystanders.
– Uses Goffman’s frame analysis: our interpretation of
the particulars of events and activities is dependent
on the framework from which we perceive them.

31. What is Frame Analysis?
• Three Ways Grievances are Framed:
– diagnostic framing = provides a target for the social movement by identifying who
to blame for a social problem.
– prognostic framing = identifies solutions based on the identified target.
– motivational framing = provides a vocabulary of motives that compels members to
take action.
• Frame Alignment Processes:
– frame bridging = process of reaching those who already share the movement’s
worldview.
– frame amplification = connected deeply-held values and beliefs with movement
issues (EX: MLK).
– frame extension = enlarging the frame boundaries to include other issues
important to potential participants.
– frame transformation = activities and events are redefined by the introduction of
new values or beliefs.