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Contemporary understanding of riots: classical crowd psychology, ideology and the social identity approach

Stott

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Abstract

This article explores the origins and ideology of classical crowd psychology, a body of theory reflected in contemporary popularised understandings such as of the 2011 English ‘riots’. This article argues that during the nineteenth century, the crowd came to symbolise a fear of ‘mass society’ and that ‘classical’ crowd psychology was a product of these fears. Classical crowd psychology pathologised, reified and decontextualised the crowd, offering the ruling elites a perceived opportunity to control it. We contend that classical theory misrepresents crowd psychology and survives in contemporary understanding because it is ideological. We conclude by discussing how classical theory has been supplanted in academic contexts by an identity-based crowd psychology that restores the meaning to crowd action, replaces it in its social context and in so doing transforms theoretical understanding of ‘riots’ and the nature of the self.

Acceptance Date Feb 29, 2016
Publication Date Apr 1, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Public Understanding of Science
Print ISSN 0963-6625
Publisher SAGE Publications
Pages 2-14
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662516639872
Keywords crowds, discourses of science, history of science, Le Bon, psychology, public understanding of science, riots, science and popular culture, social identity
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963662516639872

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