Abstract
While teaching the theoretical section of my undergraduate introductory social movement courses, I typically spend little time on the early theories of crowd behavior, using them more as a strawman leading to contemporary social movement theory. However, the underlying question at the root of crowd behavior is still valid. How do we theorize the seemingly spontaneous mobilization of mass movements? Benjamin Abrams's The Rise of the Masses: Spontaneous Mobilization and Contentious Politics fills this blank space between the episodic protests we don’t consider social movements and those organized or led by more formal social movement organizations. Are there patterns in spontaneous and relatively enduring mass mobilizations of typically ordinary people in protests? The author contributes to social movement scholarship with an intriguing theoretical perspective written in a highly readable and often riveting style.
This ambitious book outlines a theory to fill a gap in current social movement theorizing. While a significant degree of social movement theorizing in sociology focuses on how formal social movements mobilize supporters, Abrams is focused on protests and movements that emerged without formal organizing in what seem to be spontaneous eruptions of the population. In simple terms, he blends approaches from sociology and psychology, positing that those who join mass mobilizations are "self-aware agents nonetheless circumscribed by their social and psychological traits." The individual is motivated due to certain affinities—"personal traits that predispose them to the cause"—such as identity, perceived injustice, or ideology. Whether large numbers come to mobilize also depends on convergence, "social conditions that allow people to participate easily." Abrams subdivides this concept into different types of convergence, which create openings, unique and attractive conditions that ease mobilization, and the sense of the history-making significance of the protest.
Having built his theory, Abrams then applies it to four uprisings. Three are reasonably contemporary: Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In a fourth example, Abrams uses primary and secondary source research to apply his theory to a historical case: the French Revolution's early stages.
The strength of this book is its rich ethnographic detail and the wide range of research sources he taps, from interviews to social media to archival research. The well-researched cases provide convincing arguments in support of his theoretical perspective. Most notably, the examples of Tahrir Square and the Occupy movement provide examples of one aspect of convergence that particularly intrigued me—paramount convergence. This type of convergence motivates people to mobilize based on their sense of the event's great social and historical significance.
The ethnographic data from the Arab Spring supported the concept well, but paramount convergence specifically resonated with me in the Occupy Wall Street section. I was one of those motivated by paramount convergence in 2011 while doing research in North Carolina. What was happening in Zuccotti Park was so important to me that I jumped in my car on the evening of September 30, 2011 and drove to Manhattan, arriving on the morning of October 1 to experience Occupy Wall Street. Little did I know beforehand I would be one of the people forced off the Brooklyn Bridge by the police that day, lucky to be on the side of the police cordon that didn't get arrested.
The Black Lives Matter chapters provided another example of significant convergence in the specific social environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic. While paramount convergence influenced mobilizations nationwide in May and June of 2020, the unique conditions of the pandemic created both a disincentive for formal groups to organize and an incentive for ordinary people to mobilize themselves through social media. Moreover, when thinking about convergence, one often thinks of political opportunity theory (which I will touch on below) and how the loosening of repression can lead to mobilization. In the cases of Egypt, Occupy, and the George Floyd protests, actual repression by the police prompted further mobilization.
One of this book's true strengths is the author's narrative skills. Several parts were simply page-turners for an academic and theoretical book. Most notably in the Egypt and the George Floyd protests sections, the author showed a gift for compiling data and presenting it in a riveting chronicle of grassroots mobilization. Coupled with Abrams’s clarity in explaining the abstract theory, The Rise of the Masses was an enjoyable read.
Even considering this, I found a few aspects of the book less convincing. From early on in the book, I found it difficult to distinguish between many of his examples of convergence and the more familiar concept of political opportunity from classic social movement theory. Many of the examples of convergence are examples that I would use for political opportunity structures—external conditions that either ease or constrain social mobilization. Paramount convergence seemed to be the most substantial departure from political opportunity while still feeling similar. Possibly, one could define the distinction by arguing that these examples are more cognitive political opportunity structures.
Second was the theoretical breadth of the term “affinity.” While it is a very effective way to discuss incentives, the term is relied on for much work. For example, the author uses identity, status, and even emotion as examples of affinity. Many books have been written tracing these concepts to social movement mobilization. The three qualities I mentioned can be traced to various sources, from psychology and culture to discourse and symbolism. My concern is that employing the term so broadly takes away from the theory's strength.
Finally, the section on the French Revolution could have been a more convincing example of Abrams’s theory. This comes from my research on social movement communities formed in practice. From my reading of this section, there was less of a spontaneous eruption of popular will, considering the extended period between the Estates General's calling to the Bastille's storming. This period seemed to be a more incremental instance of identity formation by many soon-to-be revolutionaries, both through the regional legislative bodies as well as the "imagined communities” formed through the many periodicals and pamphlets that emerged during this period.
Nonetheless, Abrams has written an engaging and highly readable book that develops and employs an innovative and valuable theoretical perspective.