the crowd

Friday, 29 January 2016

Witnessing deadly Hajj crush led to a degree at Sussex: “I cannot describe the horror of walking amongst the bodies of 346 dead pilgrims, with others injured and traumatized.”

Prof John Drury: Brighton, University of Sussex, United Kingdom; I am a Social Psychologist at the University of Sussex. My research is on the crowd. Crowd events are a locus of both psychological determination and transformation. My research examines how social identities both shape participants’ actions but also change their sense of self, with important psychological and political consequences. I am also studying mass emergency behaviour, in order to develop a model of collective resilience – for example by exploring experiences of crowd solidarity behaviour in the London bombings of 2005. With David Novelli and Steve Reicher, I have been examining the way that one's 'tolerance' for social density and 'personal space' varies in relation to whichever of one's social identities is salient in relation to the identities of others present. Crowds are routinely pathologized and/or criminalized. Such constructions have important implications for policy and practice. In my research, I have sought to problematize such accounts and hence suggest a language for the crowd that recognizes and indeed celebrates its positive potential in the social world.

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