Collective Action and Psychological Change by Drury & Reicher (2000) - Article

For a long time, crowds have been seen as irrational and destructive. However, the last couple of decades, many researchers have stated that crowds are socially meaningful. The study in this article shows how crowd actions can develop new social meanings. The writers also want to show that crowd events are marked by social change. This is completely different from the view of Le Bon (he proposed the classical theory about crowds), who thinks that crowds dislike novelty and show a strong liking for traditional behaviours. Many studies and instances throughout history contradict Le Bon’s picture of the conservative crowd. Further examinations of participants’ actions in crowds have shown that changes occurred in the identities and social representations of these people. Although the phenomenon of psychological change in crowd actions has been established, it hasn’t really been explained. There are a couple of possible explanations in social psychology, but these have not been applied to change in collective action. These possibilities are considered by the social identity approach. This approach states that individuals in crowds don’t lose their identity, but they shift it from individual to social identities. They don’t lose control, but act according to their social identity. Social identities are products of culture and this shows that crowd members can produce culturally meaningful patterns of action.

Most studies have treated social identity as a predefined construct which guides collective behaviour. The elaborated social identity model of crowd behaviour (ESIM) places more emphasis on the fact that crowd events are intergroup encounters. Then, it looks at how identity in a group develops as a function of intergroup dynamics. But, before this can be done, it’s best to consider some main concepts of the social identity tradition. One of those concepts is social identity. It should be seen as a person’s position in a set of social relations and also the actions that are possible in such a position. Another concepts is context. The main thing here is, that the context in which a group acts is constituted partially or wholly by other groups. Third, the relation between intention, identity and consequence should be considered. When one group does this, whatever its intentions might be, the other group will interpret the action in a certain way and then react to it. This will create new contexts and have an influence on the actions of the first group.

Many studies show that interactions are responsible for the developments within crowd events, but they don’t really focus on change, like psychological change that results from taking part in these events. More evidence is needed for the ESIM and the writers of this article decided to take this on. The current study is concerned with identity change. Identity change is seen as the endorsement of a self-conception one had not adopted previously. The writers would also like to examine the change that occurs in self-categorizations of crowd members, after having interacted with an outgroup. They think that the ESIM can help answer these questions, but they do state that there might be other psychological and social theories that can also help answer these questions. Nothing should be discarded.

The study

This study focused on a campaign against the building of the M11 extension road in the 1990s. The planning permission was granted in 1991. The direct action campaign against the road began in September 1993. In November 1993, more than 200 people pushed the contractors’ fences and occupied a tree house in a chestnut tree on the building site. The Department of Transport received a possession order for the part the people occupied. The eviction took place on the 7^th of December.

The campaign participants did receive a tip about the eviction, two days before it took place. The night before the eviction, 200 people gathered under the tree. One campaign participant had a megaphone and he told the crowd that the police would ask them to move and the ones who didn’t want to move, would be dragged away or even arrested. He also stated that they all should remain non-violent and not swear at the police. In the early morning, police vans came to the green part. First, 150 officers were presented, but later in the day they were joined by 200 more. The police later stated that an official warning was given that they tended to drag people away, but participants stated this didn’t happen. The police started to drag people away and many campaign participants accused the police of kicking and punching them. People removed from the base of the tree were thrown into the mud. No arrests were made at that time. A half hour after arrival, the police had removed almost everyone round the base of the tree. The police also formed a cordon around the tree and the protesters tried to stop the police moving and to penetrate this cordon. The police attempted to remove these protesters and the protesters accused them of acting violently. The next 3 hours, everything remained calm. More police reinforcements arrives and the cordon expanded towards the road.

Later on, a hydraulic platform reached the green site and a couple of protesters sat in front of it. They were carried away by the police and a couple of arrests were made. Another digger vehicle came and protesters sat in front of that again and yet again, they were moved. The police was again accused of violence. The vehicles had eventually moved onto the green. The platform extended into the chestnut tree and one participant climbed from the tree onto the platform and he attached himself to the machine arm with a pair of handcuffs. Six other people also climbed in trees and the bailiffs began sawing some of the tree-branches. The protesters stated that this endangered their fellow protesters. As this was occurring, a bucket the protesters used as a toilet fell from the tree onto the police. The police stated that the participants did this on purpose, but the participants stated that this was not the case. After all participants were taken from the tree, the tree was demolished. There were also six plane trees that were occupied and these people were also removed from them and the trees were demolished.

The writers of this article analysed the whole event. They divided the analysis into three sections: initial perceptions of the context, crowd perceptions and reactions to the police and results of involvement. The participants were asked about their ingroup perceptions and expectations, the expectations or right being upheld and not being upheld by the police. The police was also asked about their perceptions and expectations. The crowd was asked about their perceptions of and the reactions to the police action and the violence perpetrated by the police and bailiffs. Lastly, they were asked about the results of involvement and their conceptions of self.

All the answers were analysed and the results support the claims of the writers. It has been found that protestors acted in terms of social identity and that during the participation of the event, this social identity changed. The participants who talked about their identity, defined this identity in positional terms. Most of them saw being a campaign participant as being a responsible citizen who is using his/her rights to protest. Their identity as a campaign participant was seen as a stand against the opposition and they wanted to challenge the illegitimacy of the system. The participants felt as if they had a common fate, because the police officers treated every participant in the same way- they treated everybody who was sitting or standing in their way roughly. The change that occurred, could only have occurred in an asymmetrical relationship between ingroup and outgroup. The participants who at the beginning thought that they were in a neutral relationship with the police and who didn’t expect the relationship to become antagonistic, changed their sense of self. The participants who anticipated the antagonistic relationship didn’t change in their perspective. Asymmetry is needed for change. However, change depends on more than asymmetry. What’s also needed for change is the ability of the outgroup to enact its perspective. The police saw the crowd as a homogenous whole and treated it as such. Because of the behaviour of the police, the participants found themselves in an antagonistic relationship with the police. The participants came to see themselves as oppositional, while they first (before the police came to grab them) would have rejected this behaviour. The participants had the feeling that they were responsible to oppose the illegitimate acts of the police. The relationship between identity and action seems to be a reciprocal relationship. There are four propositions for the intergroup dynamics of identity change:

• Members of a crowd act according to their social identity

• Crowd events will always have encounters between different groups. The outgroup can come to see the crowd members in different ways than the crowd members see themselves.

• Asymmetry of the social location between crowd members and outgroup members, plus the power or the outgroup to enact its understanding together result in the change of social location.

• Social identity is defined in terms of social location, so the change in social location will also result in change of identity. As a consequence, this will lead to different actions endorsed and taken by the members of a crowd.

The writers argue that further points can be drawn from their study. They argue that the specific actions of some police officers can have an influence on how the participants perceive the police in general, the society in general and themselves. The perceived representativeness of police actions will mediate the change of perception. Another point to make is that people only starting really undertaking action (cuffing oneself to a platform and climbing trees) once they saw the police action as illegitimate. If the police had not violated the expectations of the majority (‘we have a neutral relationship with the police’), then the crowd would not have radicalized. When people radicalize and come to see themselves as oppositional to the police, state or authority, they will also see the anti-authority extremists as part of their ingroup. This means that the group boundaries become more inclusive. This will also lead to more empowerment, because there are now more people with whom you could associate yourself. The growing size and solidarity (common fate) also increase the ability of members to challenge authority. The group boundary change also resulted in people feeling inclined to do something.