ABSTRACT
The term collective behavior refers to "emergent and extra-institutional social forms and behavior"— panic-stricken, riotous, and ecstatic crowds being among the more dramatic of its myriad expressions. The most basic question of "form" is that of collective behavior itself as a form relative to other social forms. The idealized profile of collective behavior is unanimous and maximum suspension of the attitude of everyday life in a collectivity combined with uniform and maximal emotional arousal and universally adopted extraordinary activities. In many recent treatments, even the distinction between the crowd and the mass has been deemphasized in favor of addressing collective behavior per se. Within the area of crowd hostilities, empirical work has focused heavily on the two higher levels— interference with property and bodies. Crowd hostilities, especially the higher levels of arousal, have been extensively researched, but mass hostilities have hardly been speculated about, much less probed empirically.
