Unit 13

• Collective behaviour 


  Group behaviour that is relatively spontaneous and, unstructured and unconventional in nature.
• Crowd


  A temporary gathering of people at the same time and place
• Casual crowd


  A gathering of people who by proximity alone happen to be in the same location at the same time
• Conventional crowd


  A group of people gathered in the same place at the same time because of a shared interest or objective
• Expressive crowd


  A gathering of people who share a common interest and are gathered at the same event at the same time for an explicit participatory purpose
• Acting crowd(Protest crowd)


  Consists of people gathered at the same place and time who engage in overt collective behaviour in pursuit of a common goal such as freedom from police violence and systemic racism.
• Contagion theory


  Suggests that anyone who happens to be in a crowd is likely to get caught up in the action
• Convergence theory


  posits that people in crowds come together in a particular location at a particular time specifically to behave in accordance with their prior predispositions
• Emergent norm theory


  collective behaviour is both rational and diverse and that various courses of action are available to members of a group

  
  

  Justification is the last stage
• Fads


  Temporary but highly popular social patterns such as activities, events, hobbies, or types of collectables that make up a current trend but eventually disappear when interest wanes 
• Fashion


  typically involves clothing lines that represent an entire fashion industry of designers and brand labels
• Rumors


  unsubstantiated stories about people or events.

  • Leveled - a lot of the original details get omitted or lost
  • Sharpened - only the most interesting or salient details are most likely to be retained
  • Assimilation the storyteller focuses on a particular theme or part of the rumour and may even embellish on it by adding details so that the story better fits the storyteller’s personal viewpoint.
• Gossip


  unsubstantiated or substantiated stories about specific individuals. Although it was dubbed a rumour by the mass media
• Urban legends 


  unsubstantiated stories that persist over time and contain an underlying message or moral
• Wide spread panic


  during which a large number of people try to flee an area, liquidate their assets, hoard essential supplies, and take other drastic measures, believing that they have little time left before meeting some horrible fate
• Moral panic


  describe the irrational but widespread worry that certain groups represent a terrible threat to the social order
• Moral entrepreneurs


  people who deem it important to bring the damaging behaviour to the attention of others
• Disaster


  has been defined as “a relatively sudden, unscheduled, one-time event that causes a great deal of property or ecological damage, or large-scale loss of life, and substantial disruption or stress among residents in the stricken area”
• Social movements


  are “organized efforts by a substantial number of people to change or to resist change, in some major aspect or aspects of society”
• Claim


   a statement about some phenomenon that is constructed as a social problem
• Claims making


  declaring that a particular condition is unjust and identifying the measures it considers necessary to correct the injustice
• A social movement organization


  “a complex, or formal, organization which identifies its goals with th e preferences of a social movement or a countermovement and attempts to implement those goals”
• Alternative social movements


  seek limited societal change for a specific group or narrow segment of society
• Redemptive social movements


  seek large-scale change for a specific group in society. Often their goal is to change the entire way of life for a particular group
• Reformative social movements


  seek to get everyone in society to adopt a new viewpoint or a particular position on an issue
• Revolutionary social movements


  which seek large-scale change that affects everyone in society
• Indigenous sovereignty


  the right to self-government … which Aboriginal people neither surrendered nor lost by way of conquest
• collective identity


  a shared sense of belonging or “we-ness” that binds individuals in a social movement; it serves as the “animating spirit” that propels them to take action on behalf of that social movement
• Social movements


  Organized efforts by a substantial number ofpeople to change or to resist change in some major aspect oraspects of society
• Alternative crowd


  social movements seek limited societal change fora specific group or narrow segment of society
• adults should engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity weekly 
• Mass media


  helps spread the panic by making a particular version of the story widely available
• contentious 


   social movements involve the collective making of claims that, if realized, would conflict with someone else’s interests
• political


   governments of one sort or another figure somehow in the claims making, whether as claimants, objects of claims, allies of the objects, or monitors of the contention”