right thanks I'm a crowd psychologist and we'll talk to you today about crowds and

crowds in fact have a very negative representation in popular culture some of the
negative representations of crowd include their heightened emotion allottee the
reduced intelligence that occurs to people when they become part of crowds people
get swept up by what other people are doing in crowds people lose self-control I
think an overarching theme for these features is one of the madness that people do
things they wouldn't ordinarily do that they become mad in the crowd and that kind
of idea is also represented in literature in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar after the
conspirators assassinated Caesar Mark Antony gave a speech to the public and you
ripped up the public you looked up the mob so much then he went out and they
tried to murder the conspirators and they came across and somebody called Cinna
the poet and he had the same name with one of the conspirators but they've killed
him anyway even when they knew that he would just have the same name who
wasn't even the same person just because he had the same name as the conspirator
they didn't even care they were so whipped up and in social science when social
science first looked at the crowd over a hundred years ago we find again these
same themes of madness of loss of control or rationality right but on top of that
these processes of of madness within the crowd were use to predict particular
forms of crowd behavior and specifically that crowd behavior would be inherently
Indiscriminate new violence then that will be the typical and the default2:04
response of people once in a crowd now I want to argue that that unless and in
young standing of the crowd is being mad and the way that that has been
reproduced in popular discourse only the early science of the crowd is deeply
ideological and wrong okay and I'm going to give you an alternative right
whichother stands this so-called madness of the crowd as the power of the crowd
the
ability of the crowd to allow people to
do things they wouldn't normally do and
that emotionality associated with crowds
due to that power of the crowd okay so
let me unpack that point about our
ideology what do I mean by audiology
well first of all let me tell you how
crowd science the understanding of the
crowd by scientists first arose at the
end of the 19th century and he arose
because the crowd was seen as a social
problem at that time particularly in
France where urbanization was taking
place
 cities were being created as factory
factories developed and there wasn't
mass unrest the picture on the slide is
of the Paris Commune in 1871 seen by the
gentlemen observers who wrote about it
in the historical text as a threat a
threat to their class which they
characterized as a threat to
civilization so they saw in the crowd a
threat to humanity and their crowd
science was a systematic attempt not
only to understand but also to combat
that threat so the first the sense that
crowd is understandings of the crowd as
mad or is ideological is in a sense that
this idea isn't neutral it reflects a
set of interests the second way that
this understanding of the crowd is mad
is ideological it's not-it's simply
empirically wrong so the prediction as a
set of crowd science is that crowds are
typically violent that violence is
default behavior of crowds and that
violence will be indiscriminate okay
never loon problem for that idea and for
the early crowd science in general is
that that simply wrong
most crowds are not violent okay and
when we do see violence in crowds we
typically see selectivity patterns and
new HD behavior the picture in the
background of the slide the current
slide is from the waltz right in 1964
and for the urban rights in the United
States in the 1960s some of the biggest
ever program of research ever undertaken
on riots and one of the conclusions of
one of the scholars studying those riots
was that they were characterized by
selectivity and discrimination
completely contradicting the predictions
of the crowd scientists when a third
point on this is that if one looks at
different violet clouds one finds
different targets so the writers in the
1960s in the United States were
targeting the police the food rioters in
the 18th century were targeting
merchants so room when crowds are
violent there's not only discrimination
but also a pattern reflecting their
different identities of the different
crowds so what I want to do now is
presently with an alternative to this
idea of the magaz MacLeod an alternative
way of thinking about power in the crowd
linked to collective identities okay I'm
going to talk about a case study a piece
of research I carried out on energy
roads campaign which took place about 20
years ago and instantly roads campaign
they were acting taking direct action
putting their bodies in front of diggers
to prevent the construction of a
motorway through London that would see
the demolition of a number of houses and
some doing spaces including a park
Paul George group and as part of this
mobilization was part of this campaign
they organized what they called a true
blessing ceremony which was a way of
trying to get the
the local public local residents in one
stead in London where the road was being
built involved in the campaign involved
in the direct action and so they
advertised for this children campaign
come along dress the tree dress the tree
that's going to be demolished to make
way for Road dressing with ribbons okay
this misses and features and enjoying
okay so they won't turned up in the day
and what they found was that the people
constructing the roads are already
erected fences around the tree and
around the grim exploding every body
from the site and and what was
interesting about that explosion was
that apply to everyone not just the
activists who wanted to climb a tree and
sit in front no diggers we're local
residents as well who felt it was their
breathe a common land that they should
be allowed to to go on it they were
excluded logical but else so there's a
sense for first time that these people
were one they weren't two separate
groups of activists and locals they were
loyal group in a common relationship so
that engendered a sense of social
support we are the same people will find
act in an in-group nor waiting way in
our interest and I will be supported so
when the first person climbed up the
fates and climbed into the site other
people join me
they followed because they knew that
other people would be backing them up
and then when some people felt confident
enough to start pushing down the faces
of the site other people joined into and
people felt that other people would join
in and so it became a collective thing
and people talked about everyone anyone
joining in and you can see on the
picture that you've got
activists and families and kids all
joining in with the demolition of the
faces and at the same time the security
and police who are present and were
overwhelmed they weren't wounded and you
can see in the pictures they gave up
they simply stood around
watched as a face pictures demolished
and so named all of those faces were
demolished and it was no longer a
construction site but it was returned
instead to what people thought it should
be which was common land and so in my
study I interviewed people and I've
listened to them talking about this
experience and it was a very emotional
experience so there is that emotionality
so that representation that emotion
associated with crowds that's correct in
one sense people were emotional they
were joyful though excited and they
talked about empowerment they talked
about feeling more confident in
themselves more confident in the ability
of the campaign to meet its aims and to
have an impact in the world they felt
more confident changed the world and so
why was it empowering well there are two
things the first is that people were
they felt they were supportive they felt
that other people would back them up
that's the first thing but there was
something about breaking those fences
down and turning that land into Colin
land that itself empower people and made
them feel stronger because now they were
in a different world before that world
when the fences around it was the
alienated world that denied their needs
and their identity knocking effect is
down meant that they represented the
world they constructed the world in
their own image in line with their own
identity they objectified their identity
in the world that was why it was
empowering so it was a good experience
for these twelve participants but of
course not everyone saw it like that the
people trying to build a road didn't see
it like that
the the press didn't see it like that so
back to our our picture of our people
from what the Watts Riots
you can see they were celebratory too
but certainly a dominant representation
of the what's right isn't positive from
the outside these things can look like
violence disorder they can look like
there are no limits they can look like
just anything goes if you look closely
you can see there are limits you can see
that the what's riotous picked only on
certain targets that the police and
certain white owned shops you can see
that the people involved in the known
and m---eleven Rose campaign just
destroyed the fences they didn't attack
people so there are limits in line with
their values which are a function of who
they are
they shared social identity but without
that understanding you just see this
emotional outburst and therefore this
account this understanding of what's
going on is madness as irrationality
seems to make some sense so on the one
hand this understanding this I would say
incorrect understanding of the Crowder's
as an outburst of madness seems that
come from the observers social location
the fact that they are on the outside
they can't understand what's going on
well I think there's something else here
something else going on here which is
that there is a political rationality
there is a political reason for this
kind of understanding I said that this
the scientific understanding of the
Crowder's mad arose at a time when the
crowd was seen as a threat
now most crowd just as most crowds are
not violent most cloudy not
revolutionary most crowds aren't

associated with social change at all but

when social change does occur the crowd
is often implicated so therefore it kind
of makes sense and it's inevitable
perhaps that for those who see who who
seek to defend the existing order who
seek to defend existing power relations
they will see in the crowd their own
potential nemesis
so I started off where you talking about
emotion so let me return to that I would
say the reason that people sometimes get
so emotional in some of the crowd events
we've been talking about is because of
the
thirty of crowds to allow people to put
into practice to elect their collective
identities and I'd like to end with a
quote because the only dears I've been
talking about called the social identity
approach they argue that we have
collective identities which is just as
real as our personal identities and that
crowns an app social identities so I'd
like to end with a quote from somebody
who was instrumental in the development
of the social identity approach which is
John Turner and he says the crowd is
precisely the adaptive mechanism that
frees human beings from restrictions of
and allow them to be more than just
individuals thanks