Chapter 17: Collective Behavior, Social Movements, and Social Change

1. Chapter 17: Collective Behavior, Social Movements, and Social Change

2. Objectives (slide 1 of 2) 17.1 Collective Behavior • Define collective behavior and explain its challenges to sociologists. • Compare and contrast types of collectivity. • Examine examples of mass behavior. 17.2 Social Movements • Illustrate the various types of social movements. 17.3 Stages of Social Movements • Describe the stages of a social movement.

3. Objectives (slide 2 of 2) 17.4 Social Movements in the United States • Analyze key social movements in the United States. 17.5 Theories of Social Movements • Explain the main theories of social movements. 17.6 Social Change • Illustrate theories of social change.

4. Collective Behavior • Collective behavior: Behaviors involving a large number of individuals that are usually unplanned, often controversial, and sometimes even dangerous • Collectivity: A large number of individuals whose minimal interaction occurs without the benefit of conventional norms • Localized collectivities emerge among people who share close physical proximity. • Dispersed collectivities involve people who influence one another even though they are spread over a large area.

5. How Collectivities Differ from Social Groups Collectivities Social Groups

6. Localized Collectivities • Crowd: A temporary gathering of people who share a common focus of attention and who influence one another • Types of crowds: • Casual • Conventional • Expressive • Acting • Protest

7. Riots and Mobs • Mob: A highly emotional crowd that pursues a destructive or violent goal • Riot: An eruption of social activity that is highly emotional, undirected, and violent

8. Theories of Crowd Behavior • Contagion theory argues that crowds have a hypnotic effect on their members, causing people to act in ways they would not ordinarily act. • Convergence theories argue that crowd behavior comes from like-minded individuals. • Emergent norm theory states that it is possible to observe patterns that help predict the behaviors of individuals within the collective.

9. Dispersed Collectivities: Rumors • Rumors: Unconfirmed information that people spread, often by word-of-mouth • Characteristics of rumors: • They occur in situations in which there are large degrees of uncertainty and in which facts are difficult to authenticate. • They are unstable and change frequently. • They are difficult to stop. • Gossip: Rumors about the personal affairs of a person

10. Propaganda and Public Opinion • Public opinion: Widespread attitudes or beliefs about a particular issue • Propaganda: Information that is given with the intention of influencing public opinion through: • Facts or evidence • Emotions • Authority

11. Fads and Fashions • Fashion: A social pattern that is adopted or followed by a large number of people • Conspicuous consumption: Spending money on things that advertise status and prestige • Fad: A unique or unconventional social pattern that is adopted briefly and enthusiastically by members of a social group or society

12. Other Collective Behaviors Panic and Mass Hysteria Disasters Disaster: An event that causes extensive harm to people and property Types of disasters: Natural disasters Technological disasters Intentional disasters • Panic: A form of collective behavior in which people react to a perceived threat in a frantic and irrational way • Moral panic (mass hysteria): A form of dispersed collective behavior in which people react to a perceived threatening event with an irrational fear

13. Social Movements • Social movement: Any organized activity that encourages or discourages social change • The cultural variety that accompanies industrial and postindustrial societies makes social conflict more likely.

14. Types of Social Movements • Alternative social movement: A social movement that seeks to change only very limited aspects of society • Redemptive social movement: A social movement that seeks radical change for a specific, targeted group of people • Reformative social movement: A social movement that targets a broad group of people but whose changes are limited in scope • Revolutionary social movement: A social movement that seeks radical change of an entire society • Progressive movements promote new social patterns • Reactionary movements oppose movements that seek change

15. Why Do People Join Social Movements? • Sociologists have identified four main reasons people join social movements: • Personal advantage • Principled commitment • Sense of self-identity • Desire to be part of a group • Claims making: The process of trying to convince people that the cause of a social movement is important

16. Stages of Social Movements • Emergence: The tendency for social movements to form to address a perceived social problem • Coalescence: A stage of social movements in which the social movement begins to mobilize resources to achieve its goal • Bureaucratization: The tendency for a social movement to adopt the characteristics of a bureaucratic organization to achieve its goals • Decline:The tendency for all social movements to fade in power and significance

17. The American Civil Rights Movement • The American civil rights movement: • Fought to end racial discrimination through litigation, education, and lobbying efforts • Was centered around peaceful, but forceful, motivation

18. The Women’s Movement • The women’s movement: • A series of movements occurring over many years that have been committed to achieving equal rights for women. • Three phases: • Phase 1: Concerned with the basic rights of women. • Phase 2: Focused on issues of sexuality, family, and the workplace. • Phase 3: Evolved to criticize social definitions of what it means to be a woman.

19. The Environmental Movement • The Environmental movement has had two main goals: • Conservation • The creation of social policies that will lead to environmental sustainability

20. The Gay Rights Movement • The gay rights movement: • The goal of achieving acceptance and equal rights for people of all sexual orientations and sexualities • Works through the media and the legal system

21. The Occupy Wall Street Movement • The Occupy Wall Street movement: • Attempted to raise awareness of growing income inequality and corporate influence • Relied on consensus-based decisions made in large assemblies • Did not have clear-cut goals

22. The Tea Party Movement • The Tea Party movement: • Arose in protest of increasing government intervention in the lives of citizens • Articulated a clear set of demands from its inception • Has remained politically relevant at state and local levels

23. Mass Society Theory • Mass society theory: A theory that suggests that people join social movements because it gives them a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves

24. Deprivation Theory • Deprivation theory: A theory that states people join social movements because they feel deprived in some way • Relative deprivation: The feeling of dissatisfaction upon realizing that while conditions are improving, they are improving more for other people than for you

25. Resource Mobilization Theory • Resource mobilization theory:A theory that suggests that for a social movement to be successful, it has to accumulate and mobilize substantial resources • Political process theory: A theory of social movements that emphasizes the role of the political structure and public opinion in the outcomes of social movements

26. Culture Theory • Culture theory: A theory that argues that cultural symbols are important for the development of a social movement

27. New Social Movement Theory • New social movement theory: A theory that suggests that social movements in postindustrial societies are substantially different from social movements that occurred in industrial societies

28. Marxist Theory • Marxist theory: A theory of social movements that suggests that societies change through a dialectical process

29. Categories of Social Change: Natural Cycles • Natural cycle theories attempt to explain the rise and fall of entire civilizations. • Every civilization faces challenges. • Groups within a society develop solutions that often conflict with the ruling class. • The ruling elite eventually turns to force to keep the masses under control. • The resultant fracturing of society leads to the inevitable decline of the empire.

30. Evolutionary Theories • Evolutionary theories suggest that societies develop from lower forms to higher forms. • All societies go through phases of cultural progress. • As they develop, cultures become more complex.

31. Conflict Over Power • Conflict-over-power approaches are based in the dialectic of Karl Marx. • Antitheses are conflicts over who gains or maintains power in society. • Between societies, conflicts over power often occur in violent clashes or as indirect competition.

32. Technology • Technology changes society through three main processes: • Invention: The combining of existing materials to form new ones • Discovery: A new way of seeing reality • Diffusion: The spread of discovery or invention from one area to another