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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Prologue -- 1. Creating the Myth: LeBon -- Park -- Blumer -- Introduction -- Gustave LeBon (1841- 1931) -- Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944) -- Herbert George Blumer (1900-1987) -- The Transformation Hypothesis: An Assessment -- Notes -- 2. Perpetuating the Myth: Allport -- Miller and Dollard -- Introduction -- Floyd H. Allport (1890-1978) -- Neil E. Miller (b. 1909) and John Dollard (1900-1981) -- The Predisposition Hypothesis: An Assessment -- Discussion -- Notes -- 3. Challenging the Myth: Sherif -- Turner and Killian -- Introduction -- Muzafer Sherif (1905-1988) -- Ralph H. Turner (b. 1919) and Lewis Killian (b. 1919) -- The Emergent Norm Hypothesis: An Assessment -- Notes -- 4. Moving Beyond the Myth: Couch -- Berk -- Tilly -- and Lofland -- Introduction -- Carl J. Couch (b. 1925) -- Richard A. Berk (b. 1942) -- Charles Tilly (b. 1929) -- John Lofland (b. 1936) -- Moving Ahead -- Notes -- 5. What Phenomena Are to be Explained? -- Introduction -- Sociological Birthright of Collective Behavior -- The Life Cycle of Temporary Gatherings -- Extant Definitions of Collective Behavior -- Working Definition of Collective Behavior -- The Crowd and Collective Behavior: A Recharacterization -- Collective Behavior within Gatherings -- Other Levels and Units of Analysis -- Summary and Discussion -- Notes -- 6. Elements of an Explanation -- Introduction -- George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) -- William T. Powers (b. 1925) -- A Sociocybernetic Theory of Social Behavior -- Summary and Discussion -- Notes -- Epilogue -- References -- Author Index -- Subject Index

Protest events occur in historical time and geographical place. In the U.S., some places are now constitutionally privileged with respect to citizen access and free assembly and speech. These venues are known as the traditional commons or the public forum. It is our contention that in recent years (1) these spaces have been shrinking in number, (2) citizens have experienced increasing difficulty in gaining unrestricted access to them, and (3) such venues are no longer where most people typically congregate in large numbers. Nevertheless, as we will show, when citizens gather to express dissenting views toward the government at the turn of the twentieth century they overwhelmingly choose spaces in the public forum to do so.

Disputes over the size of mass protests have become routine. Organizers want to highlight widespread commitment to their cause and distrust conservative estimates by the media and police. More accurate counts probably will not end these disagreements, but will provide better evidence amidst the partisan squabbling.

The authors provide a set of criteria and procedures for systematically observing and recording collective action across temporary gatherings such as political demonstrations. Their method uses trained observers, distributed across a gathering, who complete a code sheet during time interval samples. The code sheet allows observers to record the extent of participation in 40 or more elementary forms of collective action by members of six actor categories. These elementary forms were inductively generated from extensive prior observations of temporary gatherings. The data collected provide a rich record of collective action across space and time. The method can be used to investigate a number of problems facing students of collective action and social movements.

Protest events occur in historical time & geographical place. in the U.S., some places are now constitutionally privileged with respect to citizen access & free assembly & speech. These venues are known as the traditional commons or the public forum. It is our contention that in recent years (1) these spaces have been shrinking in number, (2) citizens have experienced increasing difficulty in gaining unrestricted access to them, & (3) such venues are no longer where most people typically congregate in large numbers. Nevertheless, as we will show, when citizens gather to express dissenting views toward the government at the turn of the twentieth century they overwhelmingly choose spaces in the public forum to do so. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

Draws upon diverse theoretical & empirical research on repression & mobilization to explore what seems to be changing & what still needs to be learned. It is contended that the existing research tends to overemphasize violent activity within collective action & often misrepresents both democratic political systems & repression/mobilization as uniformly structured in a specific manner. A discussion of the interaction of the actors/actions involved in mobilization & repression highlights the complexity of interaction between challengers & the state as well as the wide variation in both protester objectives/tactics & protest policing. A review of videotaped interactions between protesters & police at several large events in London indicates that violent actions by either protesters or police are relatively rare & when they do occur they tend to be short-lived & engaged in by only a small fraction of the total group. An approach for analyzing interaction between protesters & the police that considers how actors adapt their behaviors to one another is suggested. 4 Tables, 61 References. J. Lindroth