ABSTRACT
Digital masses, flash-mobs, financial crowds are the protagonists of large social phenomena, but they do not seem to have a place in current theory of collective action because they are regarded as mere aggregations rather than collective agents. While the causal force of masses is recognized, their status as agents is questionable because they lack any normative arrangement. A widespread view is that collective agency results from distinctive forms of normative organization, such as joint commitments, shared intentions, and coordinative or cooperative regulatory schemes. This view captures some important forms of collective agency, but it excludes many collective phenomena, and the issue arises whether it sets normative conditions that are too demanding to be generalized. This chapter explores the hypothesis that different forms of collective agency tolerate different forms of alienation. In extreme cases, the mass emerges as a collective agent out of the deprivation of any normative arrangement rather than by adding to or augmenting individual normative self-organization. Contrary to other forms of local alienation, the condition of “radical alienation” is not experienced as disempowering. Rather, it enables individuals to act as mass. This hypothesis allows us to draw a more differentiated map of the ways in which individual agents can take responsibility for collective action.
