CHAPTER 14
ARCHITECTS OF CHANGE:
RECONSTRUCTING SOCIETY

Macro-Micro Connection

Collective Action

Some people have greater access than others to important social and financial resources and therefore have greater power. But don't conclude that only powerful people have the wherewithal to change society. By acting collectively, ordinary people can sometimes create sweeping, historic changes in a culture and in the structure of major social institutions.

"Collective action" is group behavior that is not derived from, and may even be opposed to, the institutional norms of society.1 The term encompasses spontaneous as well as organized group behavior.

Collective actions vary in several ways:

Goals : The goal of collective action may be expressive (to publicly display emotions such as joy or hostility) or instrumental (to achieve some concrete goal, like the redistribution of power in society).

Organization : Collective actions range from the unorganized, such as street riots, to the highly organized, such as social movements with formal leadership, bureaucratic organization, and a planned program of action.

Duration : Some activities, such as victory celebrations, last a few hours. Others, like riots, last for days.

Still others, like the civil rights movement, may last for years.

Whether expressive or instrumental, organized or diffuse, short-term or long-term, all types of collective action require that a relatively large number of people redefine a situation from one that is routine to one that is problematic. This shared redefinition of right and wrong prompts these people to begin to feel that events in a community or in society as a whole are not proceeding as they should.

The norms that emerge during collective action rationalize activity that would not be acceptable under ordinary conditions. One of the key features of collective action is that citizens acting in groups do things they would not usually do. They may panic, riot, loot from stores, march, demonstrate, engage in civil disobedience, or launch terrorist campaigns because they find immediate social support for the view that what they are doing is the right thing given present circumstances.2

Of course, incorrect redefinitions may predominate. Take, for instance, the mass hysteria that resulted from the discovery of the AIDS virus in the early 1980s. Panic and anxiety over the deadly disease spread quickly. Misinformation about how it is transmitted was disseminated nationwide and took on the appearance of fact.

People began to believe that AIDS could be picked up merely by being near or touching someone with the disease. Homosexuals, the subset of the population most closely identified with the disease, were fired or denied housing and, at worst, became the objects of violent attacks. Children diagnosed with the AIDS virus were forced out of school by their classmates' parents and school officials. Some doctors, dentists, and hospital workers refused to treat not only AIDS patients but all homosexuals; undertakers refused to embalm AIDS patients; police officers wore rubber gloves and masks when arresting anyone they thought was homosexual.3 A legitimate and tragic medical emergency had been made even worse by widespread hysterical fears based on false definitions.

1 Lofland, J. 1981. "Collective behavior: The elementary forms." In M. Rosenberg & R. H. Turner (Eds.), Social psychology: Sociological perspectives. New York: Basic Books.
2 Turner, R. W., & Killian, L. M. 1987. Collective behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
3 Conrad, P. 1992. "The social meaning of AIDS." In J. W. Heeren & M. Mason (Eds.), Sociology: Windows on society. Los Angeles: Roxbury. See also Johnson, A. G. 1992. Human arrangements. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.