Chapter 14
Architects of Change: Reconstructing Society
Collective Action
Some people have greater
access than others to important social and financial resources and therefore have greater
power. But don't conclude that only powerful people have the wherewithal to change
society. By acting collectively, ordinary people can sometimes create sweeping, historic
changes in a culture and in the structure of major social institutions.
"Collective
action" is group behavior that is not derived from, and may even be opposed to, the
institutional norms of society.1 The term encompasses spontaneous as well as
organized group behavior.
Collective actions vary in
several ways:
Goals: The goal of
collective action may be expressive (to publicly display emotions such as joy or
hostility) or instrumental (to achieve some concrete goal, like the redistribution of
power in society).
Organization:
Collective actions range from the unorganized, such as street riots, to the highly
organized, such as social movements with formal leadership, bureaucratic organization, and
a planned program of action.
Duration: Some
activities, such as victory celebrations, last a few hours. Others, like riots, last for
days. Still others, like the civil rights movement, may last for years.
Whether expressive or
instrumental, organized or diffuse, short-term or long-term, all types of collective
action require that a relatively large number of people redefine a situation from one that
is routine to one that is problematic. This shared redefinition of right and wrong prompts
these people to begin to feel that events in a community or in society as a whole are not
proceeding as they should.
The norms that emerge
during collective action rationalize activity that would not be acceptable under ordinary
conditions. One of the key features of collective action is that citizens acting in groups
do things they would not usually do. They may panic, riot, loot from stores, march,
demonstrate, engage in civil disobedience, or launch terrorist campaigns because they find
immediate social support for the view that what they are doing is the right thing given
present circumstances.2
Of course, incorrect
redefinitions may predominate. Take, for instance, the mass hysteria that resulted from
the discovery of the AIDS virus in the early 1980s. Panic and anxiety over the deadly
disease spread quickly. Misinformation about how it is transmitted was disseminated
nationwide and took on the appearance of fact.
People began to believe
that AIDS could be picked up merely by being near or touching someone with the disease.
Homosexuals, the subset of the population most closely identified with the disease, were
fired or denied housing and, at worst, became the objects of violent attacks. Children
diagnosed with the AIDS virus were forced out of school by their classmates' parents and
school officials. Some doctors, dentists, and hospital workers refused to treat not only
AIDS patients but all homosexuals; undertakers refused to embalm AIDS patients; police
officers wore rubber gloves and masks when arresting anyone they thought was homosexual.3
A legitimate and tragic medical emergency had been made even worse by widespread
hysterical fears based on false definitions.
1Lofland, J. 1981. "Collective behavior:
The elementary forms." In M. Rosenberg & R. H. Turner (Eds.), Social
psychology: Sociological perspectives. New York: Basic Books.
2Turner, R. W., & Killian, L. M. 1987. Collective
behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
3Conrad, P. 1992. "The social meaning of
AIDS." In J. W. Heeren & M. Mason (Eds.), Sociology: Windows on society.
Los Angeles: Roxbury. See also Johnson, A. G. 1992. Human arrangements. Fort Worth,
TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Sociology:
Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life, Fifth Edition
by David M. Newman.
Copyright © 2004 Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of Sage Publications, Inc. http://www.pineforge.com/newman5study/
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