CROWDS AND RIOTStoward public protest and a corresponding relaxa-
tion of measures of social control is frequently
conducive to the development of protest behavior.
Two concrete examples of this political-opportuni-
ty principle include the proliferation of public
protest throughout Eastern Europe in 1989 and
1990 following the break-up of the Soviet Union,
and prison riots, which research reveals are sparked
in part by the erosion of prison security systems
and the increased physical vulnerability of those
systems (Useem and Kimball 1989).
Precipitating Events and Conditions. Howev-
er conducive conditions might be for crowd behav-
ior, it will not occur in the absence of some precipi-
tating event or condition. Although the specific
precipitants underlying the emergence of crowd
behavior may be quite varied, most are variants of
two generic conditions: (1) ambiguity; and (2)
grievances against corporate entities, typically the
state or some governmental, administrative unit,
or against communal or status groups such as
ethnic, racial, and religious groups.
Ambiguity is generated by the disruption or
breakdown of everyday routines or expectancies,
and has long been linked theoretically to the emer-
gence of crowd behavior (Johnson and Feinberg
1990; Turner and Killian 1987). Evidence of its
empirical linkage to the emergence of crowd be-
havior is abundant, as with the materialization of
crowds of onlookers at the scene of accidents and
fires; the celebrations that sometimes follow high-
stakes, unanticipated athletic victories; the collec-
tive revelry sometimes associated with the disrup-
tion of interdependent networks of institutional-
ized roles, as in the case of power blackouts and
police strikes; and prison riots that frequently
follow on the heels of unanticipated change in
administrative personnel, procedures, and control.
The existence of grievances against the state
or some governmental, administrative unit, or
against communal or status groups, can be equally
facilitative of crowd behavior, particularly of the
protest variety. Grievances against the state or
other corporate actors are typically associated with
the existence of economic and political inequities
that are perceived as unjust or political decisions
and policies that are seen as morally bankrupt or
advantaging some interests to the exclusion of
others. Examples of protest crowds triggered in
part by such grievances include the hostile gather-
ings of hungry citizens and displaced workers in
industrializing Europe; the striking crowds of work-
ers associated with the labor movement; and the
mass demonstrations (marching, rallying, picket-
ing, vigiling) associated with the civil rights, stu-
dent, antiwar, and women’s movements of the
1960s and 1970s.Grievances against communal or status groups
appear to occur most often in a context of compe-
tition and conflict between two or more ethnic or
racial groups. A second generation of quantitative
research on urban racial rioting in the United
States has shown it to be associated with increasing
intergroup competition sparked by patterns of
hypersegregation of blacks (Olzak, Shanahan, and
McEneaney 1996), heightened nonwhite unem-
ployment (Myers 1997), and rapid ethnic succes-
sion (Bergesen and Herman 1998). Indeed, if
there is a single structural-based source of griev-
ance associated with intergroup rioting through-
out much of modern history, it is probably inter-
group competition triggered by ethnic/racial
displacement and succession.Crowd violence—’’riotous’’ task activities such
as property destruction, looting, fighting, and snip-
ing—has been an occasional corollary of protest
crowds, but it is not peculiar to such crowds.
Moreover, the occurrence of crowd violence, wheth-
er in association with protest demonstrations or
celebrations, is relatively infrequent in compari-
son to other crowd behaviors (Eisinger 1973;
Gamson 1990; Lewis 1982). When it does occur,
however, there are two discernible tendencies:
interpersonal violence most often results from the
dynamic interaction of protestors and police
(Kritzer 1977; MacCannell 1973); and property
violence, as in the case of riot looting, often tends
to be more selective and semi-organized than ran-
dom and chaotic (Berk and Aldrich 1972; Quarantelli
and Dynes 1968; Tierney 1994).Conditions for Mobilization. A precipitating
condition coupled with a high degree of
conduciveness is rarely sufficient to produce an
instance of crowd behavior. In addition, people
have to be assembled or brought into contact with
one another, and attention must be focused on the
accomplishment of some task. On some occasions
in everyday life the condition of assemblage is
already met, as in the case of the pedestrian crowd