Theory of collective behavior.

Abstract

"In all civilizations, men have evinced dramatic collective behavior--the craze, the riot, the revolution. In Theory of Collective Behavior, the author applies the insights of contemporary sociology in the first work to unify the subject of collective behavior under a single, coherent sociological theory. The treatment is new and controversial. It marks a radical departure from the European social-psychological tradition of Le Bon, Trotter, MacDougall, and Freud, as well as from the American tradition of Ross, Park, and Blumer. Smelser explains why collective episodes occur where they do, when they do, and in the ways they do. He discusses the distinctive social conditions that accompany collective seizures. He also studies the kinds of beliefs that spark collective behavior and explores the relations among simple beliefs of hysteria and wish-fulfillment and the more complex beliefs envisioning the reconstruction of social norms and cultural values. The explanations are based on a theoretical scheme that permits classification and analysis of the social strains that underlie collective outbursts--strains such as ambiguity, deprivation, conflicts of norms, and conflicts of values. The greater part of this volume is devoted to empirical and comparative applications of Smelser's theory to several types of collective behavior. Individual chapters treat isolated phenomena such as the panic and the craze (including the financial boom and certain types of religious revivals); in these chapters the author has drawn from the literature of sociology, history, anthropology, and psychology, integrating the provocative but unorganized material hitherto available"--Jacket. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)