The expression collective behavior was first used by Robert E. Park, and employed definitively by Herbert Blumer, to refer to social processes and events which do not reflect existing social structure (laws, conventions, and institutions), but which emerge in a "spontaneous" way.
Collective behavior might also be defined as action which is neither conforming (in which actors follow prevailing norms) nor deviant (in which actors violate those norms). Collective behavior, a third form of action, takes place when norms are absent or unclear, or when they contradict each other. Scholars have devoted far less attention to collective behavior than they have to either conformity or deviance.
Read more about Collective Behavior: Defining The Field, Examples of Collective Behavior, Theories Developed To Explain Crowd Behavior, Criticisms and Evidence
Famous quotes containing the words collective and/or behavior:
“Perhaps one reason that many working parents do not agitate for collective reform, such as more governmental or corporate child care, is that the parents fear, deep down, that to share responsibility for child rearing is to abdicate it.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small—
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all.”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)