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 Settings Mass Crowd Formal Organization Conventional Behavior Routine national stock market transactions Card tricks at a football game Factory assembly line Collective Wearing yellow ribbons during Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980 March on Washington in 1963 Wildcat strikes, many social movements Source: Marx and McAdam, 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

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 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