SOC 525 Social Movements Collective Behavior or collective

SOC 525: 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

Fuzzy Areas • • • Communes Religions Fashion and fad Riots and panics Civil wars and revolutions

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 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 -1980 March on Washington in 1963 Wildcat strikes, many social movements Source: Marx and Mc. Adam, p. 13

Emergence • Collective Action/Behavior and Social Movements – Emerge – Change – Effect change – Respond to change

Model of Social Movements, Collective Behavior, and Social Change Social Movement Collective Behavior Social Change

Comparing Theories • Resource Mobilization tends to – Exaggerate difference between scheduled and emergent events – Minimize difference between collective behavior and collective action • Le. Bon 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 riot was a police riot resulting from a march • And riots can start movements – Police raid on Blind Pig in Detroit inspired 1968 “ghetto [urban] riot”

Theories of Social Change Mass Society Social Change Collective Behavior Early Resource Mobilization Collective Behavior Social Change Dynamics of Contention Collective Behavior Social Change

Riots and Demonstrations • Elaborate performance that involves rioters or demonstrators (participants) plus – Constituents: whom they claim to represent – Sympathetic witnesses: conscience constituents (not “us” but sympathetic) – Antagonists – authorities

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

The Danger of Emergence • Marches, demonstrations and large public gathering frighten police – Possibility of police losing control • Panic • Riot – Possibility of effective challenge: leadership and organization • Hitler’s (or MLK, Jr. ’s) speeches to mass audience • Malcolm X confronting police with his Lieutenants