From crowd events
to social movements
John Drury
School of Psychology, University of Sussex
EASP Medium Size Meeting on
Collective Action and Social Change:
Toward Integration and Innovation
July 3-6, 2009, Groningen, The Netherlands
From crowd events
to social movements
Acknowledgements
Steve Reicher, Charles Abraham, Dermot Barr, Joseph Beale,
Chris Cocking, Angela Haddow, Charlotte Hanson, Karl Marx,
Faye Rapley, Clifford Stott
From antecedents….
• Perceptions of collective illegitimacy and
disadvantage (Wright & Tropp, 2002)
• Identification (Veenstra & Haslam, 2000; Van Zomeren et al.,
2008)
• Instrumental rewards (Simon & Klandermans, 2001;
Sturmer & Simon, 2004)
• Group efficacy (Kelly & Breinlinger, 1995; Klandermans 1992)
• Activist identity (Simon)
• Normative alignment (Thomas, 2009)
…to consequences….
Only lately have psychologists taken an interest:
• Human ‘flourishing’ (Kasser & Klar, 2006)
• Pride, policization, group relations (Fedi, Mannarini,
& Rovere, in press)
• Consolidating or eroding commitment to the
group (Louis, in press)
• Emotion, empowerment, well-being,
resilience (Van Zomeren)
…to consequences….
But psychological consequences of CA have long been
documented by sociologists, political scientists and
historians:
• Class consciousness
(Mann, 1973)
• Continued activism and liberal values (McAdam,
1989)
• Opposition to police, positive relations to
other groups (Green, 1990)
• Pride (Britt & Heise, 2000)
…to consequences….
Seem to be subjectively and socially important!
Paris, 1968
‘ [t]he tumultuous development of the students' struggle ...
transformed both the relation of forces in society and the
image, in people's minds, of established institutions and
of established leaders’ (Anon., 1968, p. 51).
‘The occupants of Censier suddenly cease to be
unconscious, passive objects shaped by particular
combinations of social forces; they become conscious,
active subjects who begin to shape their own social
activity … (Gregoire & Perlman, 1969, pp. 37-41).
From antecedents to
consequences… and back?
Two-fold argument:
1. Prima facie, theoretical, and practical
reasons to seek conceptual integration of
antecedents and consequences of CA.
From antecedents to
consequences… and back?
2. Crowd research offers a way into such
integration.
• Crowd events provide insights into psychological and
social change
• We need the ESIM (or something like it) to grasp the
relation between antecedents/ crowd events and social
movements /consequences … and back
Overview
Reasons for conceptual integration of the
antecedents and consequences of CA
1. A prima facie case
2. The theoretical case – The elaborated social
identity model (ESIM) of the crowd and
beyond
3. Practical reasons for research of this kind
1. A prima facie case
Watts riot,
Los Angeles, 1965
Antecedents
Grievance/relative deprivation
Police racism
New black identities developing
Failure of non-violent movement
Consequences
Empowerment and black pride
Black /working class social movements
Legislation and social policy
‘For the first time people in Watts feel a real pride in being black…’ (cited in
Milgram & Toch, 1969)
2. The theoretical case
• Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM; Reicher,
Stott & Drury)
• A historical, interactive account of identity
(self) and context (social world) change
through crowd dynamics.
• Hence a framework for showing links
between
– Crowd events and social movements
– Antecedents and consequences of CA
ESIM
Based upon social identity and self cat
principles
To explain change in crowd events:
1. Dynamics and conditions
2. Concepts
3. Types of change
ESIM (1): Dynamics and conditions
• Crowd may begin as divided
• Police perceive crowd homogeneity. Police practices impose a
common fate on crowd members
• Crowd unites around opposition to the police.
• Conditions
(i) asymmetry of categorical representations between crowd
participants and the police
(ii) asymmetry of power: the police initially able to impose
their definition of legitimate practice on the crowd.
• Where police action is seen as both indiscriminate and
illegitimate  more willingness to enter into conflict with the
police.
• The emergence of a inclusive self-categorization (as
‘oppositional’) within the crowd leads to feelings of unity; this
empowers crowd members to take on the police.
ESIM (2): Concepts
Identity:
• a representation of one’s position in a set of
categorical social relations, along with the possible
and proper actions that flow from that position
Context:
• those social practices which enable or constrain our
actions.
Identity and context are different moments in
time: One group’s identity forms context for other
groups over time, and vice versa
ESIM (3): Types of identity change
Psych consequences of CA that help explain
how crowd events become social movements
• Identity content – becoming oppositional
(Drury & Reicher, 2000)
• Identity boundaries – joining with others (Drury,
Reicher, & Stott, 2003)
• Empowerment (Drury, Cocking, Beale, Hanson, & Rapley,
2005; Drury & Reicher, 2005)
• Changed aims and purposes of future action
(Drury, 1996; Drury & Reicher, 2005, in press)
Identity content – becoming oppositional
Longitudinal study of
No M11 link-road campaign (1993-4)
Many (inexperienced) protesters entered events considering
themselves ‘liberal individuals’.
But they were treated collectively as an illegitimate group.
In being positioned as oppositional, they saw themselves as
oppositional: far from facilitating their ‘democratic rights’ the
police were perceived as obstructing them.
Hence change in the content of the social identity – who ‘we’ are.
Identity content – becoming oppositional
Int: What in particular has
radicalized you do you think?
CP25: The police. Simple as that.
You can't win sticking to the
rules; you can't win cos they
don't. And you've got to do
something like that, there's no
other option left, I don't think.
The day of the tree [eviction]…
made me realize there's no way
you're gonna win by just sort of
going quietly, you've got to
make as much fuss as you can.
Really did change me, I think,
that day the day the tree came
down. (Interview)
Identity boundaries – joining with others
• Police action grouped ‘local’ protesters with ‘national’ activists
• The changed identity content  protesters defined
themselves as one with other oppositional groups
– the Nigerian Ogoni tribe (protesting against Shell oil
company)
– those who fought ‘injustice’ in the past (e.g., the British
miners’ strike, 1984-5).
• Hence, identity boundaries became more inclusive in both
space and time.
• Following the M11 campaign, many participants graduated
from the local protest in London
– to the national anti-car ‘Reclaim the Streets’ parties
– to the world-wide anti-capitalist/ anti-globalization
movement
Empowerment
Process (ESIM dynamics/conditions revisited)
Indiscriminate police action
 from fragmentation to inclusive selfcategorization
 Subjective unity/homogenization in the
crowd
 Expectations and provision of support for
ingroup normative action
 Ingroup normative action as collective
self-objectification
Empowerment
Collective self-objectification (CSO)
‘Action which serves to realize (‘objectify’)
participants’ social identity (their definition of
legitimate practice) in the world, over against the
power of dominant outgroups.’
Some features of CSO
– CSO can itself be empowering
– CSO, like empowerment itself, feels good!
– CSO can lead to further participation
Empowerment: Evidence for aspects of CSO
1. CSO is an outcome of the
crowd dynamic specified in the
ESIM
Cross-sectional, longitudinal survey
of London demo against Israeli
attack on Gaza, London, January
2009 (Haddow & Drury, in prep)
Identification  Subjective unity
 Expectations of support
 Feelings of empowerment
 CSO measures (i.e. campaign
‘success’, ‘achievement’, ‘goals’)
Empowerment: Evidence for aspects of CSO
2. CSO is collective action which transforms the social
world
M11 protesters transformed a ‘construction site’ back into ‘common
land’ through direct action
Their action (changed social world, in line with their collective identity)
subjectively evidenced that their group was indeed an active and
powerful subject. (Drury & Reicher, 2005)
Empowerment: Evidence for aspects of CSO
3. CSO is not ‘success’ per se but must be group-identity
congruent
Interview study of march against Labour Party conference (Drury et al., 2005):
socialists felt empowered; anarchists felt disempowered.
Lab analogue study (Drury & Cocking, in prep)
• Different identities induced in participants for which ‘intellectual
achievement’ was more or less central.
• They complete activities which were described as ‘intelligence/ability’ tasks
• Bogus feedback on success or failure
• Then Ps completed ‘empowerment’ measures: ‘subjective success’, future
expectations of success, desire for participation and positive feelings.
• Positive feedback increased the sense of subjective success for all
participants
• BUT the effect of such feedback on feelings of empowerment was greater
when tasks were identity-relevant; and the effects of failure feedback on
feelings of disempowerment was greater for those to whom the tasks were
identity-relevant.
Empowerment: Evidence for aspects of CSO
4. CSO is empowering
CSO is a result of having power, but empowerment is also an experiential
outcome of CSO! (Drury et al., 2005; Drury & Reicher, 2005; Reicher &
Haslam, 2006)
‘It was almost as if that kind of sent a kind of wave of—a wave of kind of
empowerment through a lot of people, including protesters. I think a lot
of people [ ] suddenly realized that they could actually—they could
actually take some responsibility for what was going on and actually
take control. [ ] A lot of people have just powered on since then, they
really have.’ (M11 protester)
Empowerment: Evidence for aspects of CSO
5. CSO is associated with positive emotions
Existing research demonstrates that empowering actions are experienced
as joyful.
Interview study of activists’ accounts of empowering factors found CSO
was statistically the best predictor of positive emotion (Drury et al., 2005)
‘That felt really brilliant, cos it was just I don’t know, there’s something about
overcoming opposition. Like if we’d just walked out of the tube station and
walked straight onto the road, it wouldn’t have been as good, as having to
have got round the police lines first. So it was that kind of, you know, makes
you feel more like you’ve achieved something. [ ] If you’re left completely
free to do whatever you want, it doesn’t feel as wa-hey! Exciting as, as the
whole crowd pulling together against some opposition and then achieving
what it wants’ (M41 Reclaim the Streets party)
Cross-sectional survey of London demo against attack on Gaza (Haddow
& Drury, in prep) found CSO variables predicted ‘happiness’
Empowerment: Evidence for aspects of CSO
6. CSO is associated with well-being
More speculative…
Pathway 1: Empowerment via CSO
Perceived control reduces cardiovascular disease and associated risk
factors (de Lange et al., 2003). Consequently, the sense of empowerment
and control engendered by the realization of identity in collective action
may enhance well-being.
Pathway 2: Positive emotions via CSO
Just as negative emotions predispose us to ill-health (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 2002)
so positive emotions can contribute to well-being (Moskowitz, Epel, & Acree,
2008). Positive emotions such as joy reduce anxiety, which in turn lowers
blood pressure levels and enhances immune functioning. Joy also
broadens the range of healthy activities we engage in (Fredrickson, 2004).
Also follows the logic of ISIS (Haslam & Reicher) linking social identification
with stress reduction (via support in CA for ingroup normative action)
Empowerment: Evidence for aspects of CSO
7. CSO can lead to further collective action
Positively
CSO was associated with an upsurge in No M11 campaign activity
(Drury & Reicher, 2005)
Negatively
Lack of CSO and ‘police control’ were best predictors of reduced
subsequent participation (Drury et al., 2005)
A positive cycle of collective action, its
antecedents and consequences
From Reicher & Haslam (2006, in press)
Empowerment and CSO: Some caveats
1.
Is collective action always ‘healthy’?
Stress, injury, cold and lack of food all lower the immune system.
No simple link from CA/CSO to well-being – many intervening
variables!
Gaza survey study results (Haddow & Drury, in prep) mixed:
•
CSO marginally predicted ‘psychological health’
•
BUT ‘enduring empowerment’ correlated negatively with
physical health!
2. Is CSO always predictive of future collective action?
Some of the best successes are also associated with burnout!
E.g. the Reclaim the Streets events – followed by police persecution
and exhaustion.
Hence no simple predictive relation between CSO and future action
(Drury et al., 2005)
Changed aims and purposes
Changed aims link with change in identity content:
• After being ‘attacked’ by the authorities, M11 Protesters moved from
saving particular pieces of land to exposing the illegitimacy of the police
(Drury & Reicher, in press)
Means can become ends – fighting the police becomes an aim and
achievement in itself rather than an occupational hazard:
‘Just giving the police such a run-around, you know, that was empowering, just
like, um, seeing that the police were, like, quite pissed off, and: : : just a chance
to demoralise the police, I think, although we couldn’t liberate any animals or
anything like that, it was good to see the police demoralized.’ (P14, Shamrock).
This can cut both ways, however!
G8 activists elevated their protest camp (means) into an end in itself. They
felt empowered. But promotion of ‘activist culture’ served to create an
activist ghetto that alienated political neophytes. (Barr & Drury, in press).
3. Practical reasons
for research on CA
Our interest lies in support for social change
Protests often have a bad press:
• Protesters are criminalized, pathologized
• Campaigns are put down by being described as ‘single issue’
• Or the message is that collective action is self-sacrifice, hassle
By highlighting both ‘rational’ causes and positive experiences we
can contribute to the political project of promoting collective
action participation.
An example of the ‘ideological battle’ – as in the case when
student protest at your university is criminalized by the
authorities in order to discredit it…. 
Conclusion and summary
The argument:
• The antecedents and consequences of CA
need to be linked theoretically
• ESIM is a framework for such integration and
hence explaining how crowd events can
become part of social movements
• In particular the ESIM suggests
– (i) how change occurs (dynamics)
– (ii) how we need to think of identity in explaining
change (concepts)
– (iii) a typology of changes in identity
Conclusion and summary
Why ESIM? Concepts common to related accounts:
SIT
ESIM
SIMCA
Identity
Identity
content and
boundaries
Identification
Stability
Empowerment
Efficacy
Legitimacy,
Aims,
purposes
Injustice
Cognitive
alternatives
Aims,
purposes
BUT what we try to add is the historical interactive perspective
– showing how key concepts relate over time
Conclusion and summary
We can learn much from the crowd – but ESIM is not
just a crowd theory.
The examples show how particular events are
interpreted in a wider context
Crowd events can become social movements because:
•
The types of change described may be enduring
changes for individuals and groups
•
Consequences can translate into antecedents:
motivations, rationales, confidence for future action