Forms and Condition of Collective Behaviour!
Sociologists have examined many forms of collective behaviour. Among these the important ones are crowds, mobs, panics and crazes, fads and fashions, rumours, public and public opinion, and social movements.
All these forms of collective behaviour can be grouped into two major types as under:
1. Spatially proximate collective behaviour:
There are situations in which people are in face-to-face contact (physically visible) or geographically close to one another. Crowds, violent mobs, riots, etc., are best example of this type of collective behaviour in which we find people in close proximity with one another.
2. Spatially diffuse collective behaviour:
People engaged in collective behaviour may not always collect physically at one place and at a certain time but may be dispersed over a wide geographical area. Such groupings of people are not in close proximity and may not have a common focus of attention. Masses, publics, fads and fashions, mass hysteria and panics and social movements are some types of diffuse collective mass behaviour.
Conditions of Collective Behaviour:
Certain conditions in cotemporary societies tend to increase the likelihood of collective behaviour. Rising prices, shortage of drinking water and electricity, corruption, oppression, red-tapism, injustice, terrorism, rising graph of crimes, rape cases and suicides by farmers or increasing unemployment—all provide fertile ground for collective behaviour.
These situations bring people into contact with others to get redress their day-to-day problems in a collective manner. Sometimes certain events like breaking some statue of a great leader trigger some kind of collective behaviour. Rapid social changes create tensions and conflicts that sometimes lead to collective actions and violence.
Social diversity and the associated inequalities in the distribution of wealth and opportunities may produce social movements—the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, right to information movement, Kisan Majdoor Sabha movement, etc. In activating these movements, the mass media play a very important role in dissemination of information of all types.