Collective Violence

A Description of Collective Behavior

Collective behavior refers to relatively spontaneous, unstructured, and extrainstitutional behavior engaged in by large numbers of people responding to a common stimulus. “Extrainstitutional” simply means that behavior of this type deviates from the firmly placed, normative, institutionalized patterns of everyday life. Collective behavior belongs to the realm of action not governed by the everyday rules and expectations that normally shape social behavior. Collective behavior operates in situations where the clear-cut guidelines and enforcement of behavior are not provided by mainstream society. Human responses to relatively unstructured and ambiguous situations can appear to be rather emotional and unpredictable. Individuals suspend the attitudes of everyday life and, instead, engage in emergent forms of behavior. Collective behavior can be understood as the result of an emerging collective definition of the situation. This definition includes elements of shared cognitive belief (the “facts” as perceived by the participants as real and relevant), emotional factors (participants feeling frustrated, angry, etc.), and the predominant motivation of those present (do they feel motivated to join in the emerging collective behaviors?).

Collective behavior can be placed on a continuum, with one extreme involving the spontaneous behavior of people who react to situations they perceive as uncertain, threatening, or extremely attractive. Riots and random youth gang fights are examples of spontaneous collective behavior. At the other extreme are the organized forms of collective behavior. These include social movements, coups, rebellions, revolutions, terrorism, the Mafia, and war.

Defining Collective Violence

Criminologists divide violence into two major types: individual violence and collective violence. Individual (or personal) violence is injurious force directed by one person against others. It includes making physical attacks and destroying another's property. In contrast, collective violence consists of a number of persons [Page 247]directing injurious force against others. Acts of collective violence do not spring from madness, perversion, or intentional criminality; they spring from everyday life and mundane issues, and the people who commit these acts are normal people who become convinced that the time has come to take matters into their own hands.

Generally speaking, collective violence can be divided into three categories:

• 1.
  Situational collective violence is unplanned and spontaneous. Something in the immediate situational environment triggers a group to violent action. For example, in a barroom brawl, one group of patrons interprets messages sent by another group as a form of disrespect and feels it necessary to retaliate physically.
• 2.
  Organized collective violence is planned violent behavior. It is also unauthorized or unofficial and lacks government approval. An example of organized collective violence is acts of terrorism.
• 3.
  Institutional collective violence is carried out under the direction of legally constituted officials. Examples include a country fighting a war, a state's national guard putting down a riot, or a SWAT team attacking a barricaded suspect.

Using the collective behavior continuum, situational collective violence is viewed as spontaneous behavior, and organized collective violence and institutional collective violence are combined into the category of organized collective behavior.

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