COLLECTIVE BEHAVIORcentrally organized, with the bulk of the partici-
pants ‘‘mobilized’’ much as soldiers in an army are
mobilized and directed by their commanders. In
explaining the rise of collective protest they em-
phasize the availability of essential resources, such
as money, skills, disposable time, media access,
and access to power centers, and prior organiza-
tion as the base for effectively mobilizing the
resources. Resource mobilization theorists favor
the use of rational decision models to explain the
formulation of strategy and tactics, and emphasize
the role of social movement professionals in di-
recting protest.
There has been some convergence between
resource mobilization theorists and the theorists
they criticize. The broadened formulation of emer-
gent norm theory to incorporate resources (under
‘‘feasibility’’) and prior organization as determi-
nants of collective behavior takes account of the
resource mobilization contribution without, how-
ever, giving primacy to these elements. Similarly,
many resource mobilization theorists have incor-
porated social psychological variables in their models.
Alberto Melucci (1989) offers a constructivist
view of collective action which combines macro-
and micro-orientations. Collective action is the
product of purposeful negotiations whereby a plu-
rality of perspectives, meanings, and relationships
crystallize into a pattern of action. Action is con-
structed to take account of the goals of action, the
means to be utilized, and the environment within
which action takes place, which remain in a con-
tinual state of tension. The critical process is the
negotiation of collective identities for the partici-
pants. In the current post-industrial era, conflicts
leading to collective action develop in those areas
of communities and complex organizations in which
there is greatest pressure on individuals to con-
form to the institutions that produce and circulate
information and symbolic codes.
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Routledge.RALPH H. TURNERCOLONIZATION
See Imperialism, Colonialism, and
Decolonization.