COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

2.  Describe the sources of social change in society.
 Describe the attributes and types of crowds.
 Know what the various dispersed forms of
collective behavior are.
 Describe the major types of social movements.
 Understand the life cycle of social movements.
 Explain the processes of cultural diffusion and
forced acculturation.

3.  Social change and technological change are
important topics because they constantly occur
in societies.
 DEF: Consists of any modification in the social
organization of a society in any of its social
institutions or social roles.
 - Changes in shared values
 - Changes in patterns of social behavior
 - Individual discoveries, acts, etc do not
constitute social change
 Social change is often the result of collective
behavior

4.  DEF: the relatively spontaneous social actions
that occur when people respond to
unstructured and ambiguous situations.
 - Collective behavior has the potential for
causing the unpredictable, and even the
improbable, to happen.
 - Collective actions are capable of
unleashing powerful social forces

5. Sources of Social Change
 Internal Sources of Social Change
 External Sources of Social Change

6. INTERNAL SOURCES
 Include those factors that originate within a
specific society and that singly or in
combination produce significant alterations
in its social organization and structure.
 - Technical Innovation
 - Ideology
 - Reactions to institutional inequality

7.  Technological Innovation
 Technological change in industrial society is rapid
and has an effect on social organizations and
institutions
 Ideology
 Refers to a set of interrelated religious or secular
beliefs, values, and norms that justify the pursuit of a
given set of goals through a given set of means.
 Reactions to Institutional Inequality
 Groups within society who see themselves as victims
of unjust or unequal treatment demand social
change

8.  Conservative Ideologies
Try to preserve things as they are
Liberal ideologies
 Seek limited reforms that do not involve
fundamental changes in the social structure of
society.
 Radical ideologies
 Seek major structural changes in society.

9.  DEF: Changes within a society produced by
events coming from outside that society
 - Diffusion is an example of an external
source of social change. (From CH 3) it is the
transmitting of values, ideas, technology etc
from one society to another
 - Forced Acculturation is a social change
that is imposed by might or conquest on
weaker people.

10.  Crowd
Def: A temporary concentration of people who
focus on some thing or event, but who also are
attuned to one another’s behavior.
Attributes of Crowds
 Crowds are self-generating. (chaotic potential)
 Crowds are characterized by equality.
 Crowds love density. (reduced physical distance)
 Crowds need direction. (leaders emerge)

11.  Typology from H. Blumer (interactionist)
 ACTING CROWD is a group of people whose
passions and tempers have been aroused by
some focal event, who come to share a purpose,
and who feed off one another’s arousal, and
can erupt into spontaneous acts of violence.
 - A threatened crowd is an acting crowd that
is in a state of alarm, believing that some kind
of danger is present.

12.  EXPRESSIVE CROWD
 A group drawn together by the promise of personal
gratification through active participation in activities
and events
 CONVENTIONAL CROWD
 A gathering in which people’s behavior conforms to
some well-established set of cultural norms, and
gratification results from a passive appreciation of an
event.
 CASUAL CROWD
 Any collection of people who happen to be in one
place at the same time and focus attention on a
common object or event.

13.  Crowds, by definition, are groups acting
together in one place for a limited time.
 DEF: MASS - A collection of people who,
although physically dispersed, participate in
some event either physically or with a common
concern or interest.
 - TV Audience
 - Fads/Crazes
 - Fashion

14.  A fad is a social change that is very short lived
and rapidly adopted and ended. An especially
short-lived fad may be called a craze.
 Fashions relate to the standards of dress or
manners in a given society at a certain time.
 Fashions spread more slowly and last longer
than fads.

15. RUMORS
 Information that is shared informally and spreads
quickly through a mass or a crowd.
 It arises in situations that create ambiguity with
regard to their truth or their meaning.
 Rumors may be true, false, or partially true, but
characteristically they are difficult or impossible to
verify.

16. PUBLIC OPINION -
Public refers to a dispersed collectivity of
individuals concerned with or engaged in a
common problem, interest, focus, or activity.
 An opinion is a strongly held belief.
 OPINION LEADERS
 Socially acknowledged experts whom the public
turns to for advice. Each social stratum has its own
set of opinion leaders

17.  PROPAGANDA
 Information or advertisements of a political
nature, seeking to mobilize public support
behind one specific party, candidate, or point
of view

18. Mass Hysteria and Panic
 Occurs when large numbers of people are
overwhelmed with emotion and frenzied activity
 MASS HYSTERIA - people become convinced that they
have experienced something for which investigators
can find no discernible evidence.
 A PANIC is an uncoordinated group flight from a
perceived danger.
 Ex: the public reaction to the radio broadcast of H.
G. Wells’s War of the Worlds.

19.  DEF: A Form of collective behavior in which
large numbers of people are organized or
alerted to support and bring about, or to
resist, social change.

20. Theoretical explanations of how social
movements occur:
RELATIVE DEPRIVATION THEORY
 It refers to the situation in which deprivation or
disadvantage is measured by comparison with the
condition of others with whom one identifies or thinks
of as a reference group.
 Assumes social movements are the outgrowth of the
feeling of relative deprivation among the large
numbers of people who believe they lack certain things
they are entitled

21. RESOURCE MOBILIZATION THEORY
 Assumes that social movements arise at certain
times because some people know how to
mobilize and channel the popular discontent.
 - This presupposes that the discontent exists
all along and needs to be mobilized or a
movement to begin.

22.  4 Types of Social Movements (Blumer)
 1. REACTIONARY Social Movements
 Seek to return general society to yesterday’s
values and lifestyle
 2. CONSERVATIVE Social Movements
 Seek to maintain society’s current values by
opposing change or the threat of change.
 3. REVISIONARY Social Movements
 Seek partial or small changes within the existing
order, but do not threaten the existing order itself

23.  4. REVOLUTIONARY Social Movements
 Seek to overthrow much of the existing social
order and replace it with another order.
 - REBELLIONS – Are attempts to achieve rapid
political change that is not possible within existing
institutions
 REVOLUTIONS – Are attempts to rapidly and
dramatically change a society’s previously existing
social order
 - Political revolutions change the government
structures
 - Social revolutions change the society’s state
and class structure

24. FIVE LIFE CYCLE STAGES: Social movements
do not last forever, and may pass through all,
or only some of these stages.
1. INCIPIENCY
A movement begins when large numbers of
people become frustrated about a problem and
do not perceive any solution to it through
existing institutions.
2. COALESCENCE
 Groups form around leaders to promote
policies and to promulgate programs.

25. 3. INSTITUTIONALIZATION
 Social movements become formal, rational
organizations and reach the peak of their strength and
influence.
4. FRAGMENTATION
 The movement gradually begins to fall apart.
5 DEMISE
 The movement either becomes institutionalized or
fades away.

26.  For the social movement you have been given
describe which stage they are in and how you
determined that they had gotten to that stage.
 - Give indications that they had not made
the next stage
 - Give evidence they had achieved previous
stages
 Also determine whether they are reactionary,
conservative, revisionist or revolutionary –
support your answer.

27. GLOBALIZATION
 DEF: The worldwide flow of goods, services,
money, people, information, and culture. It
leads to a greater interdependence and mutual
awareness among the people of the world.
 The concept of diffusion is applied to the world
as a whole and is viewed as a routine part of
the social world

28. Recall (CH 3) that cultural change comes from 3
main sources (innovation, diffusion,
reformulation)
TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
 Technological innovation takes hold only when
there is a need for it and social acceptance.
 - Technology itself is neutral; people decide
whether and how to use it
 DIFFUSION and REFORMULATION are
much more common due to globalization.