ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses relations between collective behavior and protest, and collective behavior per se. Collective behavior is conceived as a circumstance of collective, emotional arousal and nonroutine action in a situation defined as "something unusual happening" and as a variable, as something that is more or less present in specific instances. Conceiving collective behavior as variable also alerts us to what is perhaps most unique about protest. Protest is a device by which groups of people manipulate fear of disorder and violence while at the same time they protect themselves from paying the potentially extreme costs of acknowledging such a strategy. The transition aborning involves sharpening our perception of some basic units of human association or organization, irrespective of, initially, their relevance to collective behavior. Collective behavior can be not only emergent or extra-institutional behavior, but part and parcel of institutionalized life.
