An insightful examination of how intersecting individual motivations and social structures mobilize spontaneous mass protests.
Between 15 and 26 million Americans participated in protests surrounding the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and others as part of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, which is only one of the most recent examples of an immense mobilization of citizens around a cause. In The Rise of the Masses, sociologist Benjamin Abrams addresses why and how people spontaneously protest, riot, and revolt en masse. While most uprisings of such a scale require tremendous resources and organizing, this book focuses on cases where people with no connection to organized movements take to the streets, largely of their own accord. Looking to the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Black Lives Uprising, as well as the historical case of the French Revolution, Abrams lays out a theory of how and why massive mobilizations arise without the large-scale planning that usually goes into staging protests.
Analyzing a breadth of historical and regional cases that provide insight into mass collective behavior, Abrams draws on first-person interviews and archival sources to argue that people organically mobilize when a movement speaks to their pre-existing dispositions and when structural and social conditions make it easier to get involved—what Abrams terms affinity-convergence theory. Shedding a light on the drivers behind large spontaneous protests, The Rise of the Masses offers a significant theory that could help predict movements to come.
By:
Benjamin Abrams
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 20mm
Weight: 426g
ISBN: 9780226826837
ISBN 10: 022682683X
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 11 August 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction Part I: Theorizing Mobilization 1. What We Know about Mobilization, and What We Need To 2. Affinity-Convergence Theory Part II: The Egyptian Revolution, 2011 3. Egypt on the Eve of Revolution 4. The Anatomy of a Revolutionary Moment 5. The Fall and Fall of Revolutionary Egypt Part III: Occupy Wall Street 6. Globalizing the Revolution 7. Enter the Occupiers 8. The End of the Extraordinary Part IV: The Black Lives Uprising, 2020 9. From Tragedy to Uprising 10. Mass Mobilization for Black Lives Part V: The French Revolution, 1789 11. Mass Mobilization against the Ancien Régime 12. The Development of Revolutionary Mobilization Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index
Benjamin Abrams is a lecturer in sociology at University College London.
Reviews for The Rise of the Masses: Spontaneous Mobilization and Contentious Politics
Skillfully drawing on and synthesizing an impressive range of theoretical perspectives, Benjamin Abrams has fashioned a highly original theory of spontaneous mass mobilization. As if that weren't enough, he goes on to make a compelling, empirically informed case for the application of his Affinity Convergence Theory to four iconic mass movements, ranging from the French Revolution to the George Floyd Protests of 2020. Anyone interested in the dynamics of spontaneous mass action will want to read this book. -- Doug McAdam, Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology, Stanford University Drawing on four diverse cycles of contention. . . . Abrams shows how much of the process of mobilization can be explained as the product of the combination of affinities and convergence on the part of unorganized groups-the masses in his title-while their failures can be explained as their inability to create viable and robust structures around their affinities. His book should be read by social movement specialists and by general readers concerned with the current waves of mass mobilization alike. -- Sidney Tarrow, author of Power in Movement
