After George Floyd: Why does civil unrest spread between cities?

Protests and riots that began in Minneapolis after police killed an unarmed African American have now spread to over 23 states. I recently led a large-scale programme of research on the wave of riots in England in 2011 to address the question of how such events spread. The UK and US waves were different in important ways – most obviously, in the US many of the collective events have been peaceful protests, whereas in England only the initial protest was peaceful. Yet there are some striking similarities between them, as well as with other waves of riots. This similarity suggests that some of the same processes are operating.

It's necessary to begin by examining the meaning of the precipitating incident and the social categories involved. What did ‘they’ do, and who are ‘we’?

In Minneapolis 2020, as in Tottenham in 2011 (and as in Watts 1965, Brixton 1981 and many others), actions by police officers against an individual encapsulated the whole relationship between a wider group and an institution. In each case, the violence inflicted was seen as embodying the history of relations between police and Black / African-American people, where police harassment, assault, and collective humiliation were a daily experience.

Our research found that a local history of police harassment was key predictor of which districts rioted in London in 2011. Other predictors were local deprivation and negative attitudes to the police. Research in the US has found that race is another predictor of where riots occur. These factors correlate, of course: African-Americans are more likely to live in deprived districts and to be subject to police harassment and killing.

But these factors are relatively constant. They help explain which cities riot, but they don’t tell us when and how protest or rioting in one city influences people in other cities to join a wave. 

We found three types of social-psychological processes that helped explain how a wave occurs. 

First, there is spread via a shared identity with those in other cities. This is where people in different locations each define themselves in terms of a similar shared history of injustice at racist policing and resistance to that injustice. Our interviewees said of the police killing of Mark Duggan in 2011, ‘that could have been me’ and ‘that could have been my friends’. This shared identity with those rioting in response to the killing provided a normative motivation to do the same in their own district: the police needed to be shown that they cannot get away with murder. In the case of the George Floyd events, African American identity, defined in terms of a history of police violence, is clearly a key factor leading people in many cities to feel the same sense of injustice and anger as those in Minneapolis. For these people, and for others who feel solidarity with African Americans, action to express that sense of injustice – including punishing the police – is an enactment of common identity.

Second, there is a process that social movement researchers call capacity to mobilize and protest researchers call collective efficacy. In our research, we use the term empowerment. This captures the experience of one’s social relations becoming transformed as power shifts from the police to the crowd. In the English riots, some participants didn’t necessarily identify with the original rioters. But they could see that a common outgroup -- the police – were becoming weakened. This empowered them to participate in their own area, including going beyond the initial issue to enact long-standing grievances and desires. 

People’s perceptions of the identity and empowerment of others was crucial. They came onto the streets when they not only identified with the other location or were empowered by police weakness but also believed that others locally felt the same way. This in turn was the basis of expectations of support for ingroup normative actions – in this case against the police and some properties.

The third process that helps explain riot spread concerns police perceptions. We found that previous rioting led to a heightened level of organizational vigilance in the police. This state of expectancy can lead to pre-emptive forms of police intervention -- such as violent dispersal of a non-violent crowd. Where people in the crowd experience these police actions as illegitimate and indiscriminate, there are significant unintended consequences. Such actions by police serve to unite the crowd – both those who did not originally intend to fight and those who did -- around a new norm of fighting back against the police. 

Some of the coverage of the current wave of US riots has tried to suggest that powerful agitators are involved, with the implication that the crowd is easily swayed. Like the ‘contagion’ metaphor that is so frequently employed in these contexts, it suggests an unthinking crowd and therefore detracts from the meaningfulness of crowd action. Notions of mindless influence do not explain who joins in (and who doesn’t). Nor do they explain the widespread selectivity of targets. Such notions also let the authorities off the hook. As our research has shown, and the events across the US illustrate, the spread of riots is a complex social phenomenon grounded in collective definitions of identity, injustice, and changing power relations between groups.

The social relations of 'stop & search'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/31/police-stop-and-search-riots-2011-london

How participation in collective action can change lives, and how those changes endure over time

by Sara Vestergren

https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/crowdsidentities/2018/08/07/how-participation-in-collective-action-can-change-lives/ 

How do street actions strengthen social movements?

There is evidence that recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, which saw a mass mobilization of white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan, and Nazis have served to embolden and strengthen these groups, who are now ‘bursting with confidence’. The Vice documentary, filmed among the groups as the events took place, showed how the aim of the mobilization was to build the movement psychologically:

‘that camaraderie is and trust is built on activism, and that is one of the tactics we’re adopting’ (‘Unite the Right’ organizer quoted in Vice documentary)

The documentary also showed how the participants felt about and interpreted their mobilization. They took encouragement from the sheer fact of organizing together, being on the streets in such numbers, from imposing themselves on their opponents in this ‘liberal’ town, in expressing themselves:

‘This is the largest nationalist rally in over two decades in the United States. It’s been incredibly exciting… We’re going to keep having a good time and keep fighting.’ (‘Unite the Right’ organizer quoted in Vice documentary)

They were empowered to such a degree that they felt confident there were would be more such events in the near future and that these would escalate, both qualitatively and quantitatively:

‘I think it’s going to be difficult to top, but we’re up to the challenge… I think a lot more people are going to die before we’re done here.’ (‘Unite the Right’ organizer quoted in Vice documentary)

Recent social psychology research can explain how this strengthening process operates in social movements, and can also predict when and how it spreads to individuals and groups not physically present on the mobilization but who feel the same way as the marchers. Most of this research so far has been carried out on campaign groups and issues very different in political content from the fascist-type mobilization in Charlottesville: student fees protesters, Occupy supporters, environmental activists, and so on. But in terms of process, there are key concepts and explanatory principles that can be carried across.

Salience and match of self-categorization are two key concepts here. Based on self-categorization theory, research shows that, in different contexts, we can define ourselves in terms of personal characteristics (our personal identity) but also in terms of shared category memberships (collective or social identity). If our social identity is salient, and if it corresponds to the identity of those involved in the mobilization, then intergroup emotions theory would suggest that we will get emotional (and other) benefits from the event in the same way as the participants themselves.

What are these emotional and other benefits of collective action? Work on appraisal in collective action suggests that, for those who identify with the group, the perception of our group taking action enhances our collective efficacy – our belief in our capacity to act. Seeing social support in our group taking action tells us that we will have social support for further action.

But what is the nature of this action? Does just any collective action have these empowering effects for participants and their supporters? Other research shows that it is specifically collective actions which enact identity which have this effect. We call these forms of action collective self-objectification. By turning the subjective (ideas) into something objective (hard reality), such action operates for participants as tangible evidence of their group’s enhanced agency relative to other groups, and hence is experienced as empowering.

This was clearly going on in Charlottesville, where what was previously limited to an online network now manifested itself physically. To ‘own’ the streets, to be able to shout anti-Semitic slogans, to intimidate the ‘liberals’ and ‘racial’ groups who wanted to remove the statue of General Lee – all these were ways of enacting identity and, as such, imposing a particular definition of the world on opponents. These activities therefore empowered participants, or, in more conventional psychological language, increased their collective efficacy.

From efficacy there may be just a short step to gaining legitimacy. In their BBC prison study, Reicher and Haslam showed that the prisoners turned to tyranny when it was seen to be able to operate when a more democratic system was not. Practical adequacy – the perceived ability of an organization to put its beliefs into practice – increases the extent to which it is seen as a legitimate political force by others. We have recently investigated this in the context of the student movement in Chile, where the main predictor of non-participants' belief that the students’ protest action was legitimate was the perceived efficacy of the movement.

So what is the solution? The collective action literature points to the role of success or failure in increasing or reducing further mobilization. In psychological terms, success for a social movement is again action which realizes the identity – collective self-objectification – whereas failure is the enactment of the opponent’s identity and the negation of one’s own.

In our field-world and interviews and in our current experiments, we found that those actions that realized the participants’ shared identity were particularly rewarding and increased intentions to take part in further collective action, whereas those actions that ended in failure of collective self-objectification led to demoralization and reduced intentions to act. This was particularly the case for those with relatively little experience of protest. It would apply, for example, to the wider population of neophyte sympathisers that the fascist groups attempt to inspire through their shows of strength and identity enactment.

In history, the street violence of Kristallnacht sparked a further rise in anti-Semitic attacks and consolidated the rise of the Nazis in Germany; and events such as the 1936 battle of Cable Street, actions by the 43 group after the second world war, and the 1977 battle of Lewisham set fascism back as a movement. Put simply, controlling the streets builds the movement and getting them off the streets works in defeating that movement.
Of course non-violent tactics also work – my own PhD research examined how one predominantly non-violent direct action campaign had great success in making road-building seen as a political issue and in problematizing the then government’s road-building programme. But pure pacifism relies on a humanism which, if the opponents do not share – if the opponents regard us as less than human – will lead to our defeat not theirs.

How the Brexit vote empowered xenophobes and racists

Social media users and news sources have reported a spate of racist and xenophobic incidents in the UK in the days immediately following the EU referendum result. These include anti-Polish graffiti, people being told ‘go back to your country’ in the street and on public transport, and damage to shops, restaurants, mosques and other Muslim targets. Hate crimes reported to the police have apparently increased by 57%.  

Some commentators have referred to two processes to explain this upsurge in racist and xenophobic attacks: empowerment and legitimization. Our research has shown that collective psychological empowerment is based on shared social identity. When people believe that others have the same identity as them, this increases their expectation that they will be supported in taking action consistent with that ingroup identity. Thus the greater the size of the ingroup, the greater the sense of support. The greater the match between self and ingroup identity, and the greater the perception of ingroup unity, the more ingroup members feel: that they act and speak for the ingroup; that they will be backed up and applauded if they take ingroup-consistent actions; and that others will join in with them if they take such actions. By the same logic, they will also believe that fellow ingroup members are also taking similar actions.

Most of the published research demonstrating this empowerment process has been carried out on collective action and protest. However, we can use the same framework to understand the sudden upsurge in racist and xenophobic incidents in the UK post-referendum.

First there is the content of the shared identity of the racist/xenophobe – who the ‘we’ is. In this case, the identity is ‘British’ (or perhaps ‘English’), which will be narrowly defined (e.g., ‘white’) and which will include opposition to ‘foreigners’ and perhaps also perceive the ingroup as a ‘victim’ of these ‘foreigners’.

One of the effects of the Brexit vote was to convey ‘what other people think’. There was a widely-held understanding that a vote for Brexit was a vote against foreigners (‘taking our country back’ in relation to both ‘foreign’ rule and migrants). Second, then, where the racist/xenophobe shares this perception of the vote for Brexit, s/he will perceive a match between own identity and the position of the ‘majority’. In short, s/he now believes that ‘everyone else’ (white British) is as racist as s/he is.

Third, the racist/xenophobe’s belief that the ‘majority’ now share identity with self means that ingroup boundaries have now become extended: the ingroup of racist/xenophobes is now perceived to be larger than before the referendum. Moreover, there may also be a false consensus effect, or illusion of homogeneity, because the binary ‘for-against Brexit/foreigners’ simplifies the possible range of opinions. This would enhance the sense of unity for the racist/xenophobe, within the ‘white British’ majority ingroup category.

Next, therefore, this larger and homogeneous (united) ingroup means greater expectations of ingroup support for action consistent with that identity. Finally, then, greater expectations of ingroup support means that action to express identity and its values are now more likely. Since that identity is defined in terms of hostility to ‘foreigners’, more hostile action against ‘foreigners’ is the result.

The notion of legitimization suggests that people changed their understanding of what counts as appropriate conduct. But in the present case, it is not clear that some people have changed towards now thinking that racist and xenophobic attacks are ok (noting also that there were of course racist incidents before the referendum). What seems more likely, perhaps, is that racist and xenophobic people have changed towards thinking that other people now think that racist and xenophobic attacks are ok. They have changed in their understandings of what other people see as normative or acceptable. In other words, again, they feel they have permission – support, even – to act in these ways.

In social psychology, collective empowerment (or, more often, group efficacy) and legitimacy have usually been conceptualized as separate and distinct dimensions. But, in political terms, they can be causally related. For example, a movement’s ability to organize and be effective is one of the ways that it gains political credibility.[1] The understanding that power and legitimacy are linked is also behind the anti-fascist strategy of preventing fascists from organizing and public speaking – because when an organization appears able to put its beliefs into practice it increases the extent to which it is seen as a legitimate political force.

So what is the solution? The research on collective empowerment suggests that those actions that realize the shared identity for participants are particularly rewarding. This point and the analysis above therefore suggests a number of points at which the cycle of empowerment of racist and xenophobes can be broken.

First, disabuse them of the illusion that their views are widely shared. Challenging them will undermine their belief that others now regard racism and xenophobia as legitimate. Indeed, doing nothing in response to hate crimes could be seen as endorsing them, or implying that such actions are now acceptable.

Second, prevent them mobilizing support by acting particularly against their coordinated activity.

Third, prevent their actions from having a tangible impact – prevent them from turning their subjective identity into objective reality - by negating and cancelling out their effects with both words and actions.

And fourth, actively disempower them by asserting collective identities antagonistic to theirs. For example, well-organized and -attended groups and activities based on international class solidarity help to defeat racism and xenophobia on the streets by making such solidarity more feasible and realistic than the racist vision.

This blogpost was produced collectively with the Crowds & Identities research group: Anne Templeton, Sanj Choudhury, Patricio Saavedra, Khalifah Alfadhli, Sara Vestergren, and Evangelos Ntontis.

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[1] In line with this idea, a recent (unpublished) study we carried out on Chileans’ perceptions of the student movement found that the more that people saw the movement as having high efficacy the more likely they were to see collective action by the movement as legitimate.

Why do crowds of vigilantes kill innocent people?

I was recently asked by journalists to explain why ‘mob mentality’ occurs. They were referring to the recent tragic killing of an innocent man by neighbours who accused him of being a paedophile. Though I don't know all the details of the case, I was able to comment on a parallel example I had investigated, the ‘anti-paedophile’ crowd events that took place in Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, in the Summer of 2000. What I found in that case was a series of contrasts in terms of psychological process between the dominant representation of the behaviour of the crowd and what actually happened. The dominant representation was one of mindlessness, stupidity and irrational brutality brought about simply by people being part of a crowd. The only alternative to this in the mainstream media was a version which attributed the brutality to the (working class) culture of the individuals making up the crowd – they were already uncivilized barbarians.

As part of the evidence for the supposed stupidity of the crowd, the media cited the fact that the local residents in Paulsgrove ignored information from police telling them that the people they were persecuting were not actually paedophiles. In actual fact, however, these locals ignored this police information not out of stupidity or mindlessness at all but because they simply didn't trust the police. They believed, on the basis of past experiences, that the police sided with paedophiles and others and against ‘the local community’. Where there was trust was within ‘the local community’. So when one local resident seen as prototypical, or standing for ‘the community’, said she had a list of ‘known paedophiles’ they trusted her account over that of the police.

But then, I was asked, why would people go to such extremes? Driving people out of their homes, even killing them – that isn't something perhaps that these individuals would not have done alone. What is it about crowds?

My answer is power. While the lone individual may have a set of beliefs according to which paedophiles are at large in ‘the community’, are dangerous and need to be banished or killed, it is often only in the crowd that they can put these beliefs into practice. When people are with those they trust – others who feel the same way as them and who they believe will back them up when they act – then they can instantiate their values. Shared identity empowers.

Finally I was asked about the beliefs themselves. Aren’t these unreasonable, even wicked? Well, I agree. The ideas that paedophilia is widespread, is primarily located in the ‘other’, is particularly associated with those who are ‘odd’ or ‘different’ in some way, the denial of the family’s role in child abuse, and the use of summary justice without hearing the accused’s defence – these are all deeply ideological. But that ideology is not a matter of crowd psychology and is not specific to collectives. It is a set of beliefs also held by many lone individuals. And in 2000, it was a very prominent individual, not a crowd, who promoted and legitimized these attacks on supposed paedophiles through a concerted media campaign. That prominent individual was the then editor of the News of the World, Rebecca Brooks, who is on trial today for phone-hacking.

Reference

Drury, J. (2002). ‘When the mobs are looking for witches to burn, nobody's safe’: Talking about the reactionary crowd. Discourse & Society, 13, 41-73.

Collective joy and the power of the crowd

A social psychological perspective on

Melanie Manchot’s exhibition ‘Gathering’

Fabrica gallery, Brighton, 8 October - 27 November 2011

http://fabrica.org.uk/exhibitions/

Psychology has much to say about crowds, their power, and the strong emotions that arise from participation in them. This article describes recent research that addresses the themes on display in Melanie Manchot’s two video installations, ‘Celebration (Cyprus Street)’ and ‘Walk (Square)’.

Coming together

Celebration (Cyprus Street) is inspired by the tradition of street parties in London’s East End and was developed over a period of six months with the residents of Cyprus Street. It was filmed as a single continuous event, through the technique of tracking through the streets and the crowds. The participants could be described as diverse; but they are also together, as one, and it is obvious that they are present on the street to be with one another and that this is a joyful experience.

The film draws our attention to an apparent paradox of everyday experience. On the one hand, we seek out and enjoy crowds. When we celebrate we want to do so with others. We enjoy festivals, music and sports events when there is an atmosphere that only a big crowd can provide. But we also find some crowding aversive. We value our ‘personal space’. Recent research has addressed this apparent paradox. (1) This research suggests that, in order to understand why being in a crowd can produce such varied reactions in the same person, we need to conceptualize the self as multiple and variable, based on our various group memberships. The same degree of density or proximity is experienced positively or negatively depending upon which of our group identities is salient.

This argument can be illustrated with a recent experimental study.(2) Participants were each invited to pull up a chair to wherever they felt most comfortable, in anticipation of discussion with a stranger. Prior to this, they had been given a bogus ‘test’ of their ‘communication styles’. They were told either that the stranger was of the same ‘communication style’ as them or a different style. In fact the test and hence the two ‘groups’ were meaningless. But the participants didn’t know this, and reliably positioned the chair closer to the expected ‘in-group’ member than the ‘out-group’ member. This result suggests that our enjoyment (or dislike) of closeness with others, whether interpersonally or in a crowd, is shaped by whichever of our various identities is salient, rather than by a fixed ‘personal space’ boundary.

The effect shown in this experiment has been replicated with a range of other measures,(3) including self-reported preferences, negative and positive emotions, and even expressions of disgust: people report less disgust for exactly the same body odour when it is categorized as ‘us’ than when it is ‘them’!

Studies of actual crowds provide some real-world validation for this analysis. In November 2007, a march and rally was organized by UNISON, the public sector workers’ union, to protest against the then government’s attempts to privatize the NHS. We surveyed over 100 demonstrators, and found that those who identified most with the crowd sought a more central (i.e., more crowded) physical location, and hence closer proximity, to their fellow crowd members. In addition, immersion in the crowd was associated with collective joy. Specifically, those who identified most with the crowd reported a more positive experience, in part due to being in close physical proximity to their fellow crowd members.(4)

Taken together therefore, the recent research says something about why we gather together with others (because they identify in the same way that we do), and why it feels good when we are in a crowd with these others.(5) But when we come together as a crowd, we often move and act together. What are the psychological effects of such collective coordination?

Acting together

In Melanie Manchot’s video installation ‘Walk (Square)’, 1000 school children are shown moving in lines toward a city square, where they merge to become part of a huge choreographed crowd. They then move together, synchronizing their walking to form patterns that change, dissolve and re-form.

Walk (Square) is the result of an event constructed by Manchot but inspired by real situations involving walking as a form of expression: processions, parades, pilgrimages and protest marches, such as those in the recent wave of mass demonstrations from the UK to the Middle East.

If the striking choreography leads the viewer to see the performers as a single entity, it is possible that the performers themselves may do the same, for this is what recent research in social psychology has found. In the NHS demonstration study described above, we found that participants’ sense of being psychologically part of the crowd – their social identity – increased through participation in the event. Collective joy also increased over the course of the event, and was partly due to this shared social identity.

Our explanation for these results was that physical co-action in a group or crowd can dissolve the psychological boundary between individual and collective, while intensifying our positive emotional responses. But a field study like this cannot rule out the possibility that some other factor was responsible (such as passing of time, or communication, or changing relations with outside groups).

A follow-up study was carried out in the psychology laboratory, which enabled us to control all the conditions and so identify any causal relations, rather than simply infer them as in the demonstration study.(6) Participants arranged at close physical proximity in small groups were asked to learn clapping patterns of the type heard in football crowds. They performed the patterns in the group, either in synchrony or individually. As predicted, only participants who synchronized their movement came to see themselves as part of their group and experienced increased positive emotion.

These studies therefore show that moving together as one in time can serve to construct a collective identity. This is why rallies and marches are important in building social movements. It is no coincidence that Melanie Manchot’s two works are inspired not only by mass pilgrimages, processions, and parades, but also by recent mass demonstrations across both the Arab world and the UK.

A marching crowd is not only expressive, and therefore rich in meanings and symbols, but is also purposive. That purpose may be social change. Of course, most crowds do not aim to bring about social change. Many crowds in fact only exist to reproduce or validate the status quo – for example through religious ritual or national ceremony. But social change very often involves crowds.(7) Even crowd events that are supposed to have a cathartic function may also include a rebellious undertone, threatening to the status quo. Early carnivals had this dual quality;(8) and riots are often described as having a ‘carnival atmosphere’, by both participants and those who observe them.(9)

Crowds and power therefore have a long association. Recent research has examined the psychology of power-change – empowerment – in people’s experience of crowd events. Studies of riots, anti-capitalist demonstrations, anti-roads direct actions, Reclaim the Streets parties, anti-war marches, as well as numerous experimental simulations, have each shown the same pattern. We feel more able to take collective actions that we define as legitimate, yet which may not be permitted by others outside the crowd (such as the authorities and police), when we perceive that others in the crowd support us in our aims and action.(10)

Comparative studies of protest movements add that a sense of collective agency can be both cause and consequence of such collective action.(11) In order to act, we need to believe we are capable of such action. But, through our action and its impact on the world, we authenticate and confirm our own collective agency; the material results of our collective actions stand as evidence of the power of our collective identities.

Finally, research on activists’ experiences shows that collective actions that shift or challenge existing power relations feel joyful, exhilarating and even euphoric. (12) They feel good; and they may even be good for us, since the sense of agency and social support associated with collective action are established predictors of wellbeing.(13)

Melanie Manchot’s two works ‘Celebration (Cyprus Street)’ and ‘Walk (Square)’ are about the relationship between individual and crowd, about our collective identities, and about how we behave in public space. A central message is that, through its action, the crowd can both express and construct our sense of self. Recent research in social psychology suggests that the power of the crowd – the collective support, collective agency and collective joy it affords – comes not from a loss of self, but from the augmentation of the self. To paraphrase John Turner, a founder of the social identity approach in group psychology, the psychological crowd ‘is precisely the adaptive mechanism that frees human beings from the restrictions of, and allows them to be more than just, individual persons’ (Turner, 1987, p. 67).(14)

John Drury and David Novelli

This article was commissioned by Fabrica and part funded by the European Union Two Seas Programme. It extends work that the gallery has carried out since 2009 linking artists’ perspectives with current scientific research at leading Universities in the UK.

Dr John Drury is senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Sussex. His research interests include crowd empowerment, solidarity in mass emergencies, and positive experiences of ‘crowding’. His research includes studies of anti-poll tax riots and anti-roads direct action and survivor responses to the London bombings. He has just edited, with Dr Clifford Stott, a special issue of the journal Contemporary Social Science on the topic of crowds. He is currently supervising research projects on the Hajj to Mecca, collective action and wellbeing, and crowd communication by the emergency services.

Dr David Novelli is a social psychologist at the University of Sussex, specialising in crowds. His research focuses on how social identities and group memberships influence the ways in which we experience being in crowds, and how acting together in crowds can affect positive emotions and feelings of solidarity. This year David was awarded the annual prize for the country’s most outstanding doctoral thesis by the British Psychological Society. He is currently looking at how our (positive and negative) experiences at large-scale music events can be shaped by assumptions about crowds held by those who organize and manage such events.

References

1.        Novelli, D. (2010). The social psychology of spatiality and crowding. Unpublished DPhil thesis. University of Sussex. Available online at http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/6275/1/Novelli,_David_Lee.pdf

2.       Novelli, D., Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (2010). Come together: Two studies concerning the impact of group relations on ‘personal space’. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 223–236.

3.      Novelli, D. (2010) op. cit.

4.       Novelli, D., Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (2011). The relationship between psychological and physical group processes and their impact on the experience of crowding: Evidence from a field study. Unpublished manuscript. University of Sussex.

5.        Novelli, D. (2010) op. cit.

6.       Novelli, D., Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (2011). Synchronized movement as a cause of social identity and positive emotion. Unpublished manuscript. University of Sussex.

7.       Ackerman, P., & Kruegler, C. (1994). Strategic nonviolent conflict: The dynamics of people power in the twentieth century. Westport, CT: Praeger.

8.       Davis, N. Z. (1971). The reasons of misrule: Youth groups and charivaris in sixteenth-century France. Past and Present, 50, 41-75.

9.       Reicher, S. & Potter, J. (1985). Psychological theory as intergroup perspective: A comparative analysis of ‘scientific’ and ‘lay’ accounts of crowd events. Human Relations, 38, 167-189.

10.   Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (2009). Collective psychological empowerment as a model of social change: Researching crowds and power. Journal of Social Issues, 65, 707-725.

11.   Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (2005). Explaining enduring empowerment: A comparative study of collective action and psychological outcomes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 35-58

12.   Drury, J., Cocking, C., Beale, J., Hanson, C., & Rapley, F. (2005). The phenomenology of empowerment in collective action. British Journal of Social Psychology, 44, 309-328

13.   Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2006). Stressing the group: Social identity and the unfolding dynamics of responses to stress. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1037-1052.
14.  Turner, J. (1987). A self-categorisation theory. In Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D. & Wetherell, M. S., Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory (pp. 42-67). Oxford: Blackwell.

Background

Melanie Manchot's 2010 film Celebration (Cyprus Street) is a portrait of an East End neighbourhood, for which Manchot worked closely with local residents to create a street party, which she filmed.  Her more recent work Walk (Square) invites young participants to walk together and undertake basic choreographed movements. Celebration (Cyprus Street) was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, and Walk (Square) by Deichtorhallen Museum in Hamburg; both were exhibited at Fabrica gallery in Brighton, in October / November 2011. The exhibition ran at the same time as White Night, an event that invited local residents to take part in cultural activity throughout the night and in so doing created a new kind of social space which connected the city in a new way. 

Manchot described the focus of these works for photography publication Vignette in October 2011: “Both Celebration (Cyprus Street) and Walk (Square) investigate a position between individual and collective experience, and aim to do so through group portraiture.  In these works I set up an event with participants who are, on the whole, strangers to me and to each other, and who come together through the processes of the work.  The notion of ‘event’ is central to these works as it is the event, the proposition of a performative situation that the participants engage with – and that they then fill with their action.  

Both works consciously chart a space – and a tension – between choreography and documentation, between construction and chaos.  And in many ways this applies to my practice in general, this interest in setting up situations, constructing a scenario, which then develops its very own dynamic, where the people then enact their motivations.

Celebration (Cyprus Street) and Walk (Square) are both based on real events, ‘real life’ so to speak: in one case on historic street parties and the social function they embodied and the other on the recent surge of demonstrations, marches, protests both in the UK and around the world.  But rather than being political as such, in the case of both works it is the making of art, of a moving image project, that brings people onto the streets.  And public space, the streets and squares we share as social space are another theme that runs through these works as well as through much of my practice”

Acknowledgements

Celebration (Cyprus Street) was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and supported by Arts Council England. Funded by Film London and the UK Film Council Digital Archive Film Fund and supported by the National Lottery.
Walk (Square) was commissioned by Deichtorhallen and Kulturforum 21, Hamburg for the exhibition Wunder. Walk (Square) received additional funding from Film and Video Umbrella. The activities connected to the exhibition are also supported by Brighton & Hove Council, the IRIS Contemporary Art Network and Interreg, a European Union funding programme aimed at dialogue between neighbouring European countries. 

Gathering – 8 October – 27 November 2011 – Fabrica, Brighton UK

PDF version of this paper available here: http://fabrica.org.uk/2011/11/collective-joy-and-the-power-of-the-crowd/