Protest: Studies of Collective Behaviour and Social Movements

364 Pages·1985·5.701 MB·English

by  John Lofland

ii The Historiography of Psychoanalysis
Introduction iii
iv The Historiography of Psychoanalysis
First published 1985 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 1985 by Taylor & Francis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 84-23941
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lofl and, John. Protest: studies of collective behavior and social movements.
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
1. Collective behavior—Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Social move-
ments—Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Opposition (Social sciences)—Ad-
dresses, essays, lectures. I. Title.
HM281.L66 1985 303.4’84 84-23941
ISBN 13: 978-0-88738-876-7 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-88738-031-0 (hbk)
Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Protest and the Public Arena 1
Part One Collective Behavior: Contexts of Protest 27
Introduction 29
1. Elementary Forms of Collective Behavior 35
2. Crowd Joys 71
3. The Youth Ghetto: Age Segregation and 89
Confl ict in the American Sixties
Part Two Conversion: Readiness for Protest 115
Introduction 117
4. Becoming a World-Saver: A Theory of 125
Con version to a Deviant Perspective
(with Rodney Stark)
5. Becoming a World-Saver Revisited 147
6. Conversion Motifs 158
(with Norman Skonovd)
Part Three Movement Organization: 173
Associating for Protest
Introduction 175
7. Religious Movement Organizations: 179
Elemen tary Forms and Dynamics
(with James T. Richardson)
8. Social Movement Locals: Modal Member 201
Structures
(with Michael Jamison)
9. Social Movement Culture 219
10. White-Hot Mobilization: Strategies of 240
a Millenarian Movement
11. Mankind United 249
Part Four Movement Action: Doing Protest 255
Introduction 257
12. Social Struggle and the Protest Occupation 260
13. Sociologists as an Interest Group: 270
Prospect and Propriety
14. Crowd Lobbying 287
15. Symbolic Sit-ins 299
(with Michael Fink)
Bibliography 321
Index 343
List of Figures
1.1 Elementary Forms of Collective Behavior 42
6.1 Conversion Motifs 161
7.1 Elementary Forms of Religious Movement Organizations 183
15.1 Types of Symbolic Sit-ins 303
15.2 Structuring Events and Pulse Periods in the PUARS Vigil 313

Preface and Acknowledgments
This volume collects fi fteen of my previously published studies addressed
to aspects of social protest, crowd or collective behavior, and social
movements. Even though the studies are diversely cast, they exhibit
preoccupation with a single and overarching question: When and how
do people object collectively in some fashion to conditions prevailing
in their society? Although stated as a single question, this is actually
many questions, both on the surface and in the successive layers of
complexity that emerge in pursuing analysis.
Four specifi cations of this overarching question have been of special
concern to me, and they are the four around which the fi fteen studies in this
volume are organized. Forming its four parts, these questions are:
1. What are larger contexts and immediate circumstances in which
people defi ne collectively a need for concerted action of an opposi-
tional character?
2. In such collective behavior contexts, what are the social processes
through which people undergo the sharply discontinuous changes in
social and personal identity we call “conversion”?
3. When people form themselves into social movement organizations,
what is the range of structural forms for doing this?
4. Considered systematically, what are the organized actions move
ments undertake in pursuit of oppositional change?
Detailed analysis of these four questions can become quite special ized
and technical. Perspective can thus be “lost,” as it is convention ally put.
In an effort to counterbalance and mitigate this unavoidable tendency, I
have prepared introductory materials that strive to situate the studies in
relevant, broader contexts. In addition to the connec tions drawn in the
brief introductions to each of the four parts, in the general introduction I
undertake (I) to bring the literature on the concept of protest to a new level
of clarity and (2) to align my more microstructural work and orientation
with more macrostructural ap proaches.
Advisory reviewers of this volume in manuscript have suggested
that the single concept of protest does not clearly capture the range of
ix