CROWDS AND RIOTSVariation in Crowd Behaviors and ‘‘Riots.’’
Based on extensive field observation of crowds,
Sam Wright (1978) differentiated between two
broad categories of crowd behaviors: crowd activi-
ties and task activities. ‘‘Crowd activities’’ refer to
the redundant behavior seemingly common to all
incidents of crowd behavior, such as assemblage,
milling, and divergence. In their overview of em-
pirical research on behaviors within crowds, McPhail
and Ronald Wohlstein (1983) include collective
locomotion, collective orientation, collective ges-
ticulation, and collective vocalization among the
types of crowd behaviors ‘‘repeatedly observed
across a variety of gatherings, demonstrations, and
some riots’’ (p. 595).
Taking these observations together, one can
identify the following ‘‘crowd activities’’ (Wright
1978) or ‘‘elementary forms’’ of crowd behavior
(McPhail and Wohlstein 1983): assemblage/con-
vergence; milling; collective orientation (e.g., com-
mon or convergent gaze, focus, or attention); col-
lective locomotion (e.g., common or convergent
movement or surges); collective gesticulation (e.g.,
common or convergent nonverbal signaling); col-
lective vocalization (e.g., chanting, singing, booing,
cheering); and divergence/dispersal. Given the
recurrent and seemingly universal character of
these basic crowd behaviors, it is clear that they do
not distinguish between types of crowds, that is,
between demonstrations, celebrations, and riots.
To get at the variation in types of crowds,
attention must be turned to what Wright concep-
tualized as ‘‘task activities’’ (1978). These refer to
joint activities that are particular to and necessary
for the attainment of a specific goal or the resolu-
tion of a specific problem. It is these goal-directed
and problem-oriented activities that constitute the
primary object of attention and thus help give
meaning to the larger collective episode. Exam-
ples of task activities include parading or mass
marching, mass assembly with speechmaking, pick-
eting, proselytizing, temporary occupation of prem-
ises, lynching, taunting and harassment, property
destruction, looting, and sniping.
Several caveats should be kept in mind with
respect to crowd task activities. First, any listing of
task activities is unlikely to be exhaustive, because
they vary historically and culturally. Charles Tilly’s
(1978) concept of ‘‘repertories of collective ac-
tion’’ underscores this variation. Tilly has stressed
that while there are innumerable ways in which
people could pursue collective ends, alternatives
are in fact limited by sociohistorical forces. His
research suggests, for example, that the massed
march, mass assembly, and temporary occupation
of premises are all collective task activities specific
to the twentieth century.Second, crowd task activities are not mutually
exclusive but are typically combined in an interac-
tive fashion during the history of a crowd episode.
The mass assembly, for example, is often preceded
by the massed march, and property destruction
and looting often occur together. Indeed, whether
a crowd episode is constitutive of a protest demon-
stration, a celebration, or a riot depends, in part,
on the particular configuration of task activities
and, in part, on who or what is the object of
protest, celebration, or violence. Both of these
points can be illustrated with riots.It is generally agreed that riots involve some
level of collective violence against persons or prop-
erty, but that not all incidents of collective violence
are equally likely to be labeled riots. Collective
violence against the state or its social control agents
is more likely to be labeled riotous, for example,
than violence perpetrated by the police against
protesting demonstrators. Traditionally, what gets
defined as a riot involves interpretive discretion,
particularly by the state. But even when there is
agreement that riots are constituted by some seg-
ment of a crowd or gathering engaging in violence
against person(s) or property, distinctions are of-
ten made between types of riots, as evidenced by
Morris Janowitz’s (1979) distinction between ‘‘com-
munal riots’’ and ‘‘commodity riots,’’ Gary Marx’s
(1972) distinction between ‘‘protest riots’’ and
‘‘issueless riots,’’ and the Walker Report’s (1968)
reference to ‘‘police riots.’’ Communal riots in-
volve religious, ethnic, and/or racial intergroup
violence in which the members or property of one
group are violently assaulted by members of an-
other group, as occurred in the United States in
Miami in 1980 (Porter and Dunn 1984) and in
South Central Los Angeles in 1992 (Bergesen and
Herman 1998). Commodity or property riots, in
contrast, typically involve looting, arson, and van-
dalism against property, which has generally been
posited as one of the defining features of the many
urban riots that occurred across major U.S. cities