ABSTRACT
In the practice of comparative research, the problem of incommensurability emerges already in the phase of data gathering. Northern Ireland and Eastern Turkey have been excluded from the scope of the research as these areas are policed with extraordinary policing methods. Interviewing is a vital first hand source of information about a particular area. It usually takes place between two people, sometimes three, occasionally more. It must be noted that an interview is not merely conversation and that not all the talk that goes on between people is an interview. Permanent membership of the Economic and Social Research Council seminar series has also been a source of invaluable knowledge and inspiration. In The Crowd Le Bon boldly states that all crowds exert a profound and inherently negative influence on people. Crowd behaviour is perhaps one of the most meaningful of collective human activities. Structural conduciveness is the most general value-added determinant of collective behaviour.
