Chapter 17: Social Change and Collective Behavior
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CRITICAL THEORY and AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism
CDSMS EDITED BY JEREMIAH MORELOCK CRITICAL THEORY AND AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism edited by Jeremiah Morelock Critical, Digital and Social Media Studies Series Editor: Christian Fuchs The peer-reviewed book series edited by Christian Fuchs publishes books that critically study the role of the internet and digital and social media in society. Titles analyse how power structures, digital capitalism, ideology and social struggles shape and are shaped by digital and social media. They use and develop critical theory discussing the political relevance and implications of studied topics. The series is a theoretical forum for in- ternet and social media research for books using methods and theories that challenge digital positivism; it also seeks to explore digital media ethics grounded in critical social theories and philosophy. Editorial Board Thomas Allmer, Mark Andrejevic, Miriyam Aouragh, Charles Brown, Eran Fisher, Peter Goodwin, Jonathan Hardy, Kylie Jarrett, Anastasia Kavada, Maria Michalis, Stefania Milan, Vincent Mosco, Jack Qiu, Jernej Amon Prodnik, Marisol Sandoval, Se- bastian Sevignani, Pieter Verdegem Published Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet Christian Fuchs https://doi.org/10.16997/book1 Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism: An Introduction to Cognitive Materialism Mariano Zukerfeld https://doi.org/10.16997/book3 Politicizing Digital Space: Theory, the Internet, and Renewing Democracy Trevor Garrison Smith https://doi.org/10.16997/book5 Capital, State, Empire: The New American Way of Digital Warfare Scott Timcke https://doi.org/10.16997/book6 The Spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the Context of Digital Capitalism Edited by Marco Briziarelli and Emiliana Armano https://doi.org/10.16997/book11 The Big Data Agenda: Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies Annika Richterich https://doi.org/10.16997/book14 Social Capital Online: Alienation and Accumulation Kane X. -
Classical Crowd Psychology, Ideology and the Social Identity Approach
Contemporary understanding of riots: classical crowd psychology, ideology and the social identity approach Article (Accepted Version) Stott, Clifford and Drury, John (2016) Contemporary understanding of riots: classical crowd psychology, ideology and the social identity approach. Public Understanding of Science, 26 (1). pp. 2-14. ISSN 0963-6625 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/60239/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse: Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University. Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available. Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Contemporary understanding of riots: classical crowd psychology, ideology and the social identity approach. -
A Century of Social Psychology: Individuals, Ideas, and Investigations GEORGE R
1 A Century of Social Psychology: Individuals, Ideas, and Investigations GEORGE R. GOETHALS ^ f INTRODUCTION This chapter tells an exciting story of intellectual discovery. At the start of the twentieth century, social psy- chology began addressing age-old philosophical questions using scientific methods. What was the nature of human nature, and did the human condition make it possible for people to work together for good rather than for evil? Social pschology first addressed these questions by looking at the overall impact of groups on individuals and then began to explore more refined questions about social influence and social perception. How do we understand persuasion, stereotypes and prejudice, differences between men and women, and how culture affects thoughts and behavior? In 1954, in his classic chapter on the historical govem themselves. In The Republic, Plato argued that background of modem social psychology, Gordon men organize themselves and form governments Allport nominated Auguste Comte as the founder because they cannot achieve all their goals as of social psychology as a science. He noted that individuals. They are interdependent. Some kind of Comte, the French philosopher and founder of social organization is required. Various forms emerge, positivism, had previously, in 1839, identified depending on the situation, including aristocracy, sociology as a separate discipline. In fact, sociology oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. Plato clearly did not really exist, but Comte saw it coming. favored aristocracy, where the wise and just govern, Allport notes that 'one might say that Comte and allow individuals to develop their full potential. christened sociology many years before it was Whatever the form, social organization and govem- born' (Allport, 1968: 6). -
A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective to Appreciative Inquiry: a Theoretical Analysis Payam Saadat George Fox University
http://journals.sfu.ca/abr ADVANCES IN BUSINESS RESEARCH 2015, Volume 6, pages 1-13 A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective to Appreciative Inquiry: A Theoretical Analysis Payam Saadat George Fox University Appreciate inquiry is utilized to facilitate organizational change by encouraging stakeholders to explore positives and generative capacities within their organization. In the literature, analysis of the effectiveness of AI is confined to psychological and managerial explanations such as highlighting the promotion of positive mindset and collective organizational planning. This paper will discuss a complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspective and present a new model for understanding the functionality of AI. The emphasis of this paper is placed on exploring the effects of AI on the behavior and interactions of agents/employees related to how they cope with change. An analysis of AI’s functionality through the lens of CAS reveals two critical insights: a) AI enhances adaptability to change by strengthening communication among agents, which in turn fosters the emergence of effective team arrangements and a more rapid collective response to change and b) AI possesses the potential to generate a collective memory for social systems within an organization. Furthermore, a systematic analysis of AI indicates a close connection between this method and CAS-based styles of management. This paper concludes by suggesting that AI might represent a potential method with the capacity to place organizational teams at the edge of chaos. Keywords: appreciative inquiry, organizational change, management, complex adaptive systems, edge of chaos Introduction In today’s fast-paced world where the fluctuating preferences of consumers, the growth in the global web of interdependence, and technological advancements guide the co-evolving relationship between the dominant business environment and the social systems within its domain, an organization’s capacity to cope with change in a timely manner determines its survival (Hesselbein & Goldsmith, 2006; Macready & Meyer, 1999; Senge, 2006). -
Collective Behaviour
COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR DEFINED COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR • The term "collective behavior" was first used by Robert E. Park, and employed definitively by Herbert Blumer, to refer to social processes and events which do not reflect existing social structure (laws, conventions, and institutions), but which emerge in a "spontaneous" way. Collective Behaviour defined • Collective behaviour is a meaning- creating social process in which new norms of behaviour that challenges conventional social action emerges. Examples of Collective Behaviour • Some examples of this type of behaviour include panics, crazes, hostile outbursts and social movements • Fads like hula hoop; crazes like Beatlemania; hostile outbursts like anti- war demonstrations; and Social Movements. • Some argue social movements are more sophisticated forms of collective behaviour SOCIAL MOVEMENTS • Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals and/or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change. CBs and SMs 19th C. ROOTS • Modern Western social movements became possible through education and the increased mobility of labour due to the industrialisation and urbanisation of 19th century societies Tilly’s DEFINITION SM • Charles Tilly defines social movements as a series of contentious performances, displays and campaigns by which ordinary people made collective claims on others [Tilly, 2004].]: Three major elements of SMs • For Tilly, social movements are a major vehicle for ordinary people's participation in public politics [Tilly, 2004:3]. • He argues that there are three major elements to a social movement [Tilly, 2004 THREE ELEMENTS OF SMs 1. Campaigns: a sustained, organized public effort making collective claims on target authorities; 2. -
Threshold Models of Collective Behavior!
Threshold Models of Collective Behavior! Mark Granovetter State University of New York at Stony Brook Models of collective behavior are developed for situations where actors have two alternatives and the costs and/or benefits of each depend on how many other actors choose which alternative. The key concept is that of "threshold": the number or proportion of others who must make one decision before a given actor does so; this is the point where net benefits begin to exceed net costs for that particular actor. Beginning with a frequency distribution of thresholds, the models allow calculation of the ultimate or "equilibrium" number making each decision. The stability of equilibrium results against various possible changes in threshold distributions is considered. Stress is placed on the importance of exact distributions for outcomes. Groups with similar average preferences may generate very different results; hence it is hazardous to infer individual dispositions from aggregate outcomes or to assume that behavior was directed by ultimately agreed-upon norms. Suggested applications are to riot behavior, innovation and rumor diffusion, strikes, voting, and migra tion. Issues of measurement, falsification, and verification are dis cussed. BACKGROUND AND DESCRIPTION OF THE MODELS Because sociological theory tends to explain behavior by institutionalized norms and values, the study of behavior inexplicable in this way occupies a peripheral position in systematic theory. Work in the subfields which embody this concern-deviance for individuals and collective behavior for groups-often consists of attempts to show what prevented the established patterns from exerting their usual sway. In the field of collective behavior, one such effort involves the assertion that new norms or beliefs "emerge" 1 This report is heavily indebted to three co-workers. -
Crowd Psychology and American Culture, 1890-1940
"Mental Epidemics": Crowd Psychology and American Culture, 1890-1940 Eugene E. Leach In 1900, disillusioned with high-powered newspaper work and weary of cities, progressive journalist Ray Stannard Baker quit New York and fled to Arizona. Going west to find himself was a gesture of affiliation sanctified by both national myth and his family folklore of pioneer stock ancestry and his father's move west to start over after failing in business. But the Arizona deserts had no power to heal him. In his memoirs he recounted a moment of reckoning with the omnipotence of crowds: he could not forget the congestion that lay just beyond the horizon. For better or worse, to him America was epitomized by suffocating New York: What a different world I knew from that of my ancestors! They had the wilderness, I had crowds. I found teeming, josding, restless cities; I found immense smoking, roaring industries; I found a labyrinth of tangled communication. I found hugeness and evil.1 Baker decided that learning to navigate this world of crowds would be "the prime test" of the modern citizen. E. A. Ross had a grimmer and more intellectualized encounter with crowds. In 1894, he jotted down "thirty-three distinct means by which society controls its members" in a list that became twenty American Journal of Sociology articles and the popular book Social Control (1901).2 Ross' work grew from his assumption, shared with Frederick Jackson Turner, that the closing of the frontier would 0026-3079/92/3301 -005$ 1.50/0 5 inaugurate a difficult new epoch for America. -
The Communist Propagandistic Model: Towards a Cultural Genealogy Cioflâncă, Adrian
www.ssoar.info The communist propagandistic model: towards a cultural genealogy Cioflâncă, Adrian Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Cioflâncă, A. (2010). The communist propagandistic model: towards a cultural genealogy. Studia Politica: Romanian Political Science Review, 10(3), 447-482. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-446622 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz This document is made available under a CC BY-NC-ND Licence (Namensnennung-Nicht-kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung) zur (Attribution-Non Comercial-NoDerivatives). For more Information Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.de The Communist Propagandistic Model 447 The Communist Propagandistic Model Towards A Cultural Genealogy∗ ADRIAN CIOFLÂNCĂ The communist state is often labeled by scholars a ”propaganda-state”1. The explanation for this stays with the prevailing role of mass communication and indoctrination, which constantly defined the relation between the regime and the society at large. The communist regime granted propaganda a central position, thus turning it into a valuable mean to achieve radical ends: the total transformation of the society and the creation of a ”new man”. Consequently, massive, baroque, arborescent propaganda outfits were institutionally developed. Furthermore, the verbalization of ideology became a free-standing profession for millions of people all over Eastern Europe2. In other words, the communist political culture turned the propaganda effort consubstantial with the act of governing, with the results of the latest being often judged from the standpoint of the propagandistic performances. -
Politics of the Crowd
Senior Seminar: Politics of the Crowd Government 405-02 Professor Rebekah Sterling Fall 2013 - College of William & Mary Email: [email protected] Monday 5:00-7:30pm Office: Morton 32; Tel: 757 221 3087 Location: Morton Hall 37 Office Hours: M 3-4:30pm & Th 10:30am-12pm, or by appointment “The age we are about to enter will in truth be an ERA OF CROWDS.” - Gustave Le Bon “There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.” - Raymond Williams Since ancient times, democracy has been associated with the crowd. On the one hand, democracy has long carried connotations of both number and space: both the rule of the many and the politics of the people assembled in public, in the agora or the popular assembly. On the other hand, many ancient and early modern writers also associated democracy and crowds with violence and ignorance, portraying “the people” as a fickle crowd and democracy as tantamount to ochlocracy — mob rule. In modernity, revolutionary politics, changing social conditions, and the rise of representative government prompted new fears and fascinations about crowds and masses, as well as new forms of collective and popular politics, such as mass meetings, rallies, and marches. In many ways, the crowd and the masses become focal points for anxieties about modern life and politics: worries about conformity, irrationality, overpopulation, the lower classes, totalitarianism, political apathy, and more. Yet the crowd remains an ambiguous figure, sometimes the monstrous “other” of the people, the sovereign liberal individual, or the rational public, and sometimes a potent symbol of collective action and popular power. -
Psychology of a Revolution by GUSTAVE LE
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REVOLUTION BY GUSTAVE LE BON CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. THE REVISION OF HISTORY PART I THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS OF REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS BOOK I GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF REVOLUTIONS CHAPTER I. SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS 1. Classification of Revolutions 2. Scientific Revolutions 3. Political Revolutions 4. The results of Political Revolutions CHAPTER II. RELIGIOUS REVOLUTIONS 1. The importance of the study of Religious Revolutions in respect of the comprehension of the great Political Revolutions 2. The beginnings of the Reformation and its first disciples 3. Rational value of the doctrines of the Reformation 4. Propagation of the Reformation 5. Conflict between different religious beliefs. The impossibility of tolerance 6. The results of Religious Revolutions CHAPTER III. THE ACTION OF GOVERNMENTS IN REVOLUTIONS 1. The feeble resistance of Governments in time of Revolution 2. How the resistance of Governments may overcome Revolution 3. Revolutions effected by Governments. Examples: China, Turkey, &c 4. Social elements which survive the changes of Government after Revolution CHAPTER IV. THE PART PLAYED BY THE PEOPLE IN REVOLUTIONS 1. The stability and malleability Of the national mind 2. How the People regards Revolution 3. The supposed part of the People during Revolution 4. The popular entity and its constituent elements BOOK II THE FORMS OF MENTALITY PREVALENT DURING REVOLUTION CHAPTER I. INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS OF CHARACTER IN TIME OF REVOLUTION 1. Transformations of Personality 2. Elements of character predominant in time of Revolution CHAPTER II. THE MYSTIC MENTALITY AND THE JACOBIN MENTALITY 1. Classification of mentalities predominant in time of Revolution 2. The Mystic Mentality 3. The Jacobin Mentality CHAPTER III. -
Information Socialtaxis and Efficient Collective Behavior Emerging In
Information socialtaxis and efficient collective behavior emerging in groups of information-seeking agents Ehud D. Karpasa, Adi Shklarsha, and Elad Schneidmana,1 aDepartment of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel Edited by Curtis G. Callan Jr., Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved April 17, 2017 (received for review October 31, 2016) Individual behavior, in biology, economics, and computer science, is highly efficient in finding a sparsely signaling source in a tur- is often described in terms of balancing exploration and exploita- bulent environment. These infotaxis search trajectories resemble tion. Foraging has been a canonical setting for studying reward the paths of foraging insects, suggesting a biological implication seeking and information gathering, from bacteria to humans, of this model. mostly focusing on individual behavior. Inspired by the gradient- In nature, many species, including bacteria (15), amoebae (16), climbing nature of chemotaxis, the infotaxis algorithm showed insects (17, 18), fish (19), birds (3), and mammals (20, 21), dis- that locally maximizing the expected information gain leads to play complex group behavior, including foraging. The mecha- efficient and ethological individual foraging. In nature, as well as nisms that underlie group behavior have been of great experi- in theoretical settings, conspecifics can be a valuable source of mental and theoretical interest, focusing on the computation that information about the environment. Whereas the nature and role each individual performs (22–24) and emergent collective behav- of interactions between animals have been studied extensively, ior (24, 25). In terms of social behavior, such models have been the design principles of information processing in such groups used to describe exploration and exploitation of the environment, are mostly unknown. -
Society As a Complex Adaptive System
59. Society as a CompIex Adaptive System WALTER DUCKLEY WE HAVE ARGUED at some length in another place1 istic is its functioning to maintain the given struc- that the mechanical equilibrium model and the ture of the system within pre-established limits. It organismic homeostasis models of society that involves feedback loops with its environment, and have underlain most modern sociological theory possibly information as well as pure energy inter- have outlived their usefulness. A more viable changes, but these are geared principally to self- model, one much more faithful to the kind of regubtion (structure maintenance) rather than adap- system that society is more and more recognized tation (change of system structure). The complex to k,is in process of developing out of, or is in adaptive systems {species, psychological and socio- keeping with, the modern systems perspective cultural systems) are also open and negentropic. (which we use loosely here to refer to general But they are oppn "internally" us well as externally systems research, cybernetics, information and in that the interchanges among their components communication theory, and related fields). Society, may result in significant changr.s in the nature of or the sociocultural system, is not, then, principally the components theinselves with important con- an equilibrium system or a homeostatic system, sequences for the system as a whole. And the but what we shalt simply refer to as a complex energy level that may be mobilized by the system adaptive system. is subject to relatively wide fluctuation. Internal To summarize the argument in ove~lysimplified as well as external interchanges are mediated form: Equilibria1 systems are relatively closed and characteristically by infirmation flows (via chemi- entropic.