Week 12 / Collective Behavior and Social Movement / Kiara Juliane Annisa

1.     Summary :

Based on what I read collective behavior is a term that refers to various behavior in which many people also take a part of. It is tend to be unstructured and spontaneous influenced by other individual. We can also define that collective behavior is a mass behavior or a mob action.  The cause of collective behavior is usually a phenomenon which people have interested in and ended up getting involved in it because other people is also doing the same. There are a few characteristics than we can use to define a collective behavior, which is :

a.     The pattern of their behavior

b.     Those who attracted by an accident or event

c.     Unpredictable

The common examples that of collective behavior are :

a.     Crowds : a large number of people who gather together with a purpose

b.     Riots : spontaneous outbreak of violence by a group of people

c.     Social Movement : a group of people who focused on a specific issue regarding the society such as politics and economics

Now I’m going to talk more about social movement. Social movement as I stated above is a group of people who have a focus on a specific issue regarding the society. Just like other groups, social movement Is connected through the same interest. There are 4 types of social movement that operates in modern society identified by Giddens, which is :

1.     Democratic movement that work for political rights

2.     Labor movement that works for control of the workplace

3.     Ecological movement that are concerned with the environment

4.      Peace movements that work towards well and peace

In order to enter/make a social movement there are a few stages that a group have to gone through. The first one is emerge, the second one is a coalesce, the third one is bureaucratise. From bureaucratise there are a few result that we can achieve which is success, failure, cooptation, repression, and go mainstream. From all of the result above we could also ended up being declining the movement.

2.     What interesting/what did you learn :

From the materials that I have read I found out that there are actually many collective behavior in our daily lives. And it’s something that is completely normal in society. I also find it interesting that sometimes people doesn’t realize that they are a part of a group or social movements.

3.     Discussion point :

As I read on the webpage I see that social movement definition is only a group of people who have focus on a specific issue regarding the society, can a social movement be a negative one? Is it consider a riot if a social movement went to a negative way?