ADVERTISEMENTS:
Meaning of Collective Behaviour:
Within the structure of a society and very near the group, though almost at the end of it, exists another type of social behaviour that is quite undefined and unpredictable, but quite concrete in its aspects. It is known as collective behaviour and, according to R.H.Turner and LM.Killian, such behaviour attracts the sociologists’ attention not because it is a well-structured, stable and organized activity in social life; interest grows in it rather because it is characterized by ‘change, uncertainty and disorganization’.
Turner and Killian maintain that many problems of a society may be dealt with in a traditional manner through the functioning of institutions. Occasionally, a problem may arise in the society for which it has no ready-made solutions. If the culture of a group is well known, predictions can be made about behaviour in the group, and the norms of the group are likely to continue for long periods even though there are feelings of dissatisfaction about them.
But when ‘crowds’ suddenly collect or when ‘public opinion’ is formed over a particular public issue, or when strange ‘fads’ or ‘fashions’ appear as a passing phase, no prediction as to behaviour based on understanding is possible. ‘Social movements’ all on a sudden crop up over sensitive issues and historically one cannot argue that all revolutions or all angry outbursts were pre-planned.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
These are instances of collective behaviour, and each single instance of such manifestations that tend to defeat, though temporarily, the bonds of cultural heritage in a group becomes intensely attractive to the sociologist as a subject of study.
Factors in Collective Behaviour:
Collective behaviour may have outrageous effects upon the usual mode of expressions of feelings of an individual. Strange are the sights of decent men and comely women throwing all decorum to the winds and crying themselves hoarse, while they widely gesticulate, either angrily in revolt against an issue, or lustily and cheeringly in support of a leader with a charisma or a matter of public importance that is being welcomed.
Fearful are the effects of panic when, for no apparent reason or, at least, for smoky ones, people run helter-skelter to save their own lives, unmindful of the weak, frail form that they have trampled upon. Collective behaviour, in any of its form, is weird and attractive to the student because it is so. It is an uncontrolled expression of feelings and sentiments, unbound by any system or order. It is a ‘hyrda’, as Shakespeare would put it, or a virtual Tower of Babel, speaking in many tongues.
Yet, different writers have been able to characterize such behaviour with certain predictable standards of wildness. According to these writers, Neil J. Smelser being one of them (refer to his Theories of Collective Behaviour), Collective behaviour is ‘episodic’, it is by no means a permanent type of behaviour and it cannot be predicted that a crowd that behaved in a manner today will repeat its performance identically on another occasion.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Secondly, such behaviour is unorganized and, being so, it is irrational to a considerable extent, although Smelser holds that grievances like injustice, religious harassment or cases of personal arrests may trigger off excitement. Thirdly, the outcome of such behaviour cannot be predicted. Smelser’s analysis shows that heterogeneity and anonymity of the individual is characteristic of a modern complex society and very much encourages collective behaviour.
Haphazard ideas grow in different segments of the society about a problem and the ways and means in tackling it and, when the outburst occurs, the traditional social controls become ineffective. The police, the courts, leadership in the community and the press all become a failure to cope with the situation.
McIver and Page observe that although no systematic analysis can be made of collective behaviour, gregariousness and conformity bring human beings together and the behaviour is not totally abrupt and unrelated to instincts. Whether in a crowd or in matters of fashions, fads, riots and any public reaction, human beings collect together with a ‘consciousness of kind’.
This consciousness of kind is an expression of the ‘herd sentiment’. McIver says that both animals and human beings have this sentiment which may be described as basically ‘animalistic’, as it is irrational. Man expresses this sentiment not merely by preferring human company to isolation; he manifests this instinctive quality in him by blindly adhering to traditions and beliefs. Animals merely herd with each other, but man tends to ‘follow the band wagon’.
Thus, we can say that whenever he responds to convention without examining an issue with his reason, he shows the herd sentiment in him. If a crowd gathers in the street, the members swell in a few minutes; and those that are on its fringes would not even know whey they have all collected there.
Similarly, if public opinion is scanned carefully, it will be found that a number of people have begun to think in a certain manner only because a number of others have similar thoughts. The herd sentiment is manifested again when some people offer a blind resistance to a change, be it a change in technology or in fashions; or again, when fashions become a sudden craze, groups of people are swayed away by their varieties, and no rational explanation can be given as to why something is in vogue.
We have had in recent years waves of fashions led by the Beatles or the hippies; mods, jam sessions and discotheques too are expressions of none other than the herd sentiment, the desire to follow the band wagon. On the more grim side of reality, too, waves of witchcraft, exorcism and witch-hunting are acts of irrationality indulged in by groups of persons who are actuated by the herd instinct.
McIver and Page submit that the herd instinct as reflected in collective behaviour is not devoid of any defined interest. Both the ‘like interest’ and the ‘common interest’ can be the incentive of social behaviour. Suggestions made by certain persons or certain ideas excite emulation and, according to the nature of circumstances in the society, others follow with the herd instinct in order to attain personal objectives. Like-interests have led to events like the gold rush in the United States earlier on in the country.
When common interest is combined with the herd sentiment, consciousness of the community may suddenly be stirred up and emotions threaten an upsurge, as in cases of a national humiliation or insult. The same is the case when political factions decide to bury the hatchet and to close ranks over foreign aggression, and community hatred for the aggressor is spontaneously expressed.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Similarly, we have seen in cities the fanatical behaviour of supporters of different soccer teams, and the victory or defeat of a favourite brings almost hysterical responses from the masses. The feeling that ‘our team’ is the victor can cause strange manifestations of moods of elation, and the impact of defeat of the champion can be almost in the nature of a mental derangement.
The sense of pride, or the trauma that is caused to one’s mental set-up, allows an individual to indulge in an expression of passions which are normally kept under control, and he gets additional satisfaction from the feeling that his fellows have joined in the emotional release. Even in cases where an individual looks for a release for his sense of pride coupled with his desire for glory, the herd expression suiting his interests, which become the common interest of the crowd, appears to be perfectly justified in the social situation.
McIver suggests that the herd instinct may indicate its origin that suggestions as to common dangers brought spontaneous responses and men collected for safety. Today’s crowd perhaps assembles with the same ‘subconscious’ suggestions but in the complex societies, the forms of collective behaviour have become more variegated than they were in the simple ones.
Types of Collective Behaviour:
Collective behaviour can be of different forms and, while some of them like mere jubilation over the victory of a favourite team can be inconsequential, a few of them do reflect the failure of the social system to function and regulate in adequate terms. If social behaviour is taken to have been regulated by norms, occasional collective outbursts like demonstrations and riots break the norms down and, in conditions of rapid social change, norms and standards face a virtual turmoil as the social system fails fully to accommodate itself to changed conditions. Crowds and mobs, riots and demonstrations, panics, rumours, fads and fashions, along with public opinion give to us the different forms of collective behaviour, and each of these may be dealt with separately.
(i) Crowds:
As a social aggregate, it is the most transitory and impermanent of all social groups. A crowd is a collection of persons whose attention has been focused on a particular matter that stimulates conception and action. Persons come together at random, and establish direct but temporary contact with each other in an unorganized manner; these persons surely belong to different primary groups, but the respective group affiliations now lose their immediate significance.
Crowds can gather on different occasions, depending upon long, hidden impulses in individuals as to a strong appreciation of any matter or a violent denunciation of an idea, object or person.’ Expressive crowds’, such as those who gather at a football stadium and express their appreciation of a game, stop with the expression of their moods and, to the sociologist, they are not the important objects of study.
The ‘acting crowd’ is the one that has its attention focused on an object other than itself and this crowd, being more likely to go out of control, is an important object of study. McIver and page, however, classifies crowds into two broad categories. The ‘like interest’ crowd has no sharing of a common interest between the individuals that compose it; the individuals have a similar interest, like curiosity, admiration or mere passive contempt. Persons watching a roadside accident, the fire brigade in action, or the Corporation men pulling down a dilapidated building constitute like interest crowds.
These crowds are not based on any active participation of interests on the part of their components. One may even term it as a ‘focused’ crowd since attention of the individuals in it is focused on any object that is outside it, as in cases of people watching national celebrations like the Republic Day Parade or the immersions during the Durga Puja festivals. It may also be ‘unfocused’, such as holiday crowds that gather either at the sea beach or mountain resorts. The ‘common interest’ crowd, according to McIver and page, is the acting crowd described above, mostly of the ‘focused type’, which has its attention focused on something exterior to it, and the crowd comes to form a conception of some action that is required.
The stimulus can be caused by a sudden need, a crisis or strong desires of protest. While in ‘like interest’ crowds, the psychological attributes inciting to some action above the degree of mere passive participation are absent, such attributes become a necessary a part of the ‘common interest’ crowd.
A sense of solidarity among its components distinguishes the crowd from other types and it is felt that desire of each individual in its is supported by the presence of others. Individual Judgment and direct group values that are relevant to every individual may be superseded when he is in a group, and heightened emotions and collective suggestibility as to action have a confusing effect and ‘common interest’ crowds become incapable of doing any constructive work.
Occasionally, release of an impulse to hate or to destroy can assume such degrees of violence that the crowd very quickly comes into conflict with established social codes of law and order which may deal with outbursts in severe terms.
Crowd feelings excite individual emotions and such stimulation is related to a definite process. In that process the desire to express one’s own feelings becomes more intense simply because rhythmically such impulse passes from one to the other. In other words, since different persons are in close physical proximity and contact, suggestions as to ideas and modes of behaviour are more readily made to the collectivity, and the collectivity more readily responds with imitation.
This process operates in quick interaction of stumuli and, as Le Bon states in his book entitled The Crowd, every individual loses his intellectual distinctions as also his entity in the group; intellectual and other personality and cultural differences disappear, and all are brought to the common level. Suggestibility is of a very high degree in a crowd, and any leader who has the powerful quality in him of attracting attention can quickly take command of the situation and whip up sentiments, each with his individual mannerism which may be mere tricks of articulation and intonation or gesticulation.
In different countries as also in our country, singsong speeches, passionate outbursts of hackneyed sentiments, with cliches and stereotyped expressions and phrases, are a very common device for a crowd leader to rivet attention upon him. Political leaders are not ignorant of the fact that wild remours, coloured and fanciful arguments based on perhaps a grain of truth may so hypnotize the individual in the group that he may lose his judgment and offer himself as a prey to crowd sentiments and mannerisms.
A sort of a loss of sense or responsibility follows, along with a breakdown of all inhibitions that may be very characteristic of a particular culture to which the individual belongs. There is an in deliberate lack of responsibility that one notices in the like interest crowd when, in a panic, with the only urge for self-preservation people rush aimlessly and become the cause of the death of others who get trampled under their feet.
But the loss of responsibility in the common interest crowd is more a conscious act of throwing all caution to the winds; educated people or persons who would otherwise be expected to remain docile go on a rampage pulling down roadside posters and hoardings, attacking buses and trams, lynching their victims and even engaging themselves in frenzied or orgiastic acts of community killing.
The crowd is temporary and it disperses in a relatively short span of time; but the participants continue to have in their memory of the momentary experiences, the act of letting themselves loose from the shackles of social codes and orderly behaviour. Different persons may have reactions of these incidents in different measures upon their psychological complexes.
At times, a dispassionate like interest crowd may in a flash switch over to the character of a violent common interest one; but as Smelser says, some pent-up emotions and some unrepressed grievances at once find as outlet, and every shade of orderly conduct is demolished.
On 1st January, 1967, at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta, a mammoth crowd collected to watch the Cricket Test between the West Indies and India. We shall not go into the reasons for the outburst, but suddenly it was all the fury of devils let loose and the guardians of law and order were found fleeing after giving a brief fight. Spectators of the day fled in panic, and all rational thinking took the Test as buried.
It was only a day in between and, on the 3rd January, the players were back and the spectators were back; and gone were the very inklings of ill-feelings. All cricket lovers know how much Sir Frank Worrell had contributed to the restoration of confidence among his boys and amity for all.
Le Bon has in his treatise on The Crowd laid emphasis upon the group mind theory, suggesting that the mentality of the individual in it gets negative and a group conscience as distinct from individual consciousness arises. McDougall does not accept the theory of group consciousness as such, but he very much entertains the idea that every society is capable of having a collective mind.
These writers observe that the group mind is an organized system of mental or purposive forces which become more a collective process than an individual one; the crowd mentality, according to them, reflects the group mind complex, particularly because individual thought-processes become inconsequential. Sigmund Freud’s analysis of group behaviour presents yet another picture and emphasizes the release of repressed drives, an idea that has been developed by Smelser in his writings.
According to Freud, ‘id’ impulses, which means our inherited primitive desires, are generally kept repressed by the ‘censor’ in our minds, that is, the restraints that are determined by our social norms and standards. But as soon as an individual finds himself in a crowd, the intensity of emotions violently sets aside the censor and the ‘id’ impulses come into play. Depending upon the circumstances and the nature of the thwarted desires that come into play, frenzied crowd behaviour may express even some elemental urge, which has also been looked upon as the primal aspect of human nature.
A later theory of crowd behaviour takes social conditions into consideration for explaining crowd sentiments. It is suggested, as by Smelser, that though folk societies had and still have the crowd phenomenon, crowd behaviour is more common and more complex in the developed societies. Even among developed and relatively undeveloped societies, difference in collective behaviour may be noted and it is not doubted that social conditions obtainable in each society has some importance in this regard.
Among Europeans, English people are found to be more orderly in their demonstrations than the French or the Italian. In Asia, the Japanese are made conspicuous by their instinct for orderliness even under conditions of protests; whereas Indians, as a general rule, get carried away by emotions when they assemble in a crowd.
The appearance of a national hero, a great cricketer or a film star at a city hotel gate might evoke such enthusiasm that the guardians of law and order find themselves in a dilemma as to whether the fans be allowed a glimpse of their idol or, in the interests of security and order, they be ‘batoned’ away.
A car accident in our major cities may imperil the life of the driver, and the yelling crowd would rather chase the man than think of speedily removing the knocked-down victim to a nearby hospital. Our sense of reprisals is stronger than our comprehension of the expediency of the times. Those, who make the crowd exhibit a kind of solidarity for the time being, can rarely help in the welfare of the community or the groups to which they belong.
The term ‘mob’ may be used for a violent crowd that directs its hostile attention to an object; and the degree of violence may even lead to the destruction of particular victims. When the crowd aimlessly and haphazardly directs its violence at random, and at no particular object, so that it’s general dis-satistion is expressed, it is termed as a ‘riot’. Mob and riot behaviour is age-old and a universal phenomenon.
No scientific study can be made in order to ascertain whether or not such behaviour is more common now than it was in pas times, for the mass media today brings home every incident round the corner and no adequate record holds back in memory the turbulent events of older days. Factors that cause mob and riot conditions may be different in different societies.
Western societies witness mob behaviour upon questions of ideology and the support for the same. Since these nations are economically developed, the finer impulses of civilized living actuate uncontrolled behaviour. Not that question of substance does not agitate the Western population but with the means of basic sustenance made secure, they have time to concentrate their attention upon amentias and ideologies. In a developing country like India, rioting is an expression of desperation over acquisition of means of sustenance. It does not need a direct cause to excite the economically deprived; day-to-day experiences of frustration form images of injustice and a very trivial matter may spark off hostile action.
For example, as Smelser outlines the process, the occasion may be the arrest of a few individuals. Emotions swell and, under conditions of loud protests, leaders appear. The rest is conceivable; in no time Government buildings, public transport and public utility services are in flames and the guardians of law and order are made the targets of vicious attacks.
The common people in our country hardly understand any ideology and, even when they parade the streets in ostensible defence of a particular political thought, they merely ventilate their grievances about basic necessities of life. In recent years, sociologists have made a thorough study of the Watts riot in the United States in 1965, in which hundreds of buildings in the coloured locality of Watts in riots Angeles were damaged. At least 30,000 residents of Watts participated in the riot and 4,000 of them were arrested.
The Watts riot spread to other parts of the country and took the shape of race riots and student unrest in support of a definite grievance that the black race was discriminated against and that they were subjected to economic exploitation.
‘Panic’ is a condition that creates fright in the minds of persons and, when the fear grips a collected crowd, the urge for moving into safety becomes the dominating motive and all other considerations are kept in abeyance. Panic can be created under different conditions; apart from natural calamities and disasters like an avalanche earthquake or flood, there may be manmade factors like insurrections, arson and looting and mob violence that may cause panic.
The fleeing populace concentrates their attention upon those occasions on only one thought, and that is the means of escape. If the means of egress and the prospects of rushing to safety are general and available under easy terms, there will be no panic unless people become so nonplussed with stunned feelings that they become unable to do the obvious.
But if means of escape are scarce and by and large a general understanding emerges that only competitive efforts can save the life of a few under such conditions, panic is likely to take a grip over a collection of desperate individuals. Occasionally, when earthquakes tend to linger a little longer than it is considered to be safe, people rush out of their homes and, in trying to avoid land that is cracking under the feet, jump into a river and get consumed in the heat of the waters under such conditions.
In the western countries, time and again people have scampered up mountains and hills out of fear that the much-apprehended end of the world before judgment day is about to arrive. Some have stayed for days together in the wild habitat before returning to their respective homes with an understanding that there was a false alarm.
The consequences of panic can be alarming but a person interested in human affairs can take comfort from the fact that it is hardly possible for an entire nation to be involved in any such irrational behaviour; panic as a collective behaviour remains limited, as a general rule, to small, isolated groups of people.
(ii) Fashions and Fads:
People in general, are prone to novelty and this proneness they exhibit in certain variations in manners, customs, modes of dress and in expressions used as speech. When styles of speech, dress or behaviour are determined by conscious planning, they may be termed as ‘fashions’, and when such styles mark something unexpected, brought in by a sense of freedom from the traditional, they may be termed as ‘fads’.
So far as fads are concerned, the emphasis is upon the desire of their followers to be different form their elders; and once it gets started, it may spread and impress even the elder. Mass communication systems may aggravate this tendency for mass media have this advantage that anything put forward through them carries conviction.
Fads indicate that type of dynamism in society which is brought about by doubts about the future or by a lack of harmony among different social classes in it; they spread like contagion and very soon they tend to become the fashion of the day. But a fad would better be kept distinct from fashion for the simple reason that it is comparatively more transitory than the fashion.
Suddenly when the trend appears that men weat long hair and over-grown whiskers the novelty catches on and the clean-shaven man is brushed aside as the static fossil or an unprogressive. But these fads can hardly stand the test of time and, within a short period; they seek to improve upon themselves by making suitable amendments. They appear simply as a craze for novelty and as soon as the very smell of the new becomes stale, innovations are sought for.
Contrast with this behaviour, the tenacity of the conventionalist who remains unchanged for years; and fashion seeks to preserve the customary modes of our behaviour, dress and speech with carefully adopted variations. One must admit that the sudden fad may modify the fashion somewhat slowly and imperceptibly over a considerable length of time so that the altered fashion never loses its element of permanence which is never the quality of a ‘fad’.
Fashions are different modes of attire, adornment, decoration and speech and such variations in standards of art, literature, music, opinions and beliefs as are based on custom and yet lack the rigidity of it. Custom can be taken as traditional behaviour; it represents the way of life of a group and gives a social basis of human social behaviour.
It is spontaneous and age-old, and seeks to develop the basic standards that social behaviour must conform to. Fashion is a variation in life style within the limits that are set by custom. That men should wear clothes that do not look like the feminine attire is certainly a customary rule that has come a long way since the time when people wore leaves or barks of trees. But fashion sets the style in order to make the clothes pleasing to the eye and, as such, we have styles for the trousers and shirts, and variations in the look of the skirts or the dress.
Once custom sets down the guidelines, fashions determine the propriety according to circumstances; for example, there are styles to suit occasions like weddings, formal dinner parties, the holiday gaiety or mourning. Custom forbids that we shall confuse one occasion with the other; but that constraint observed; minor variations marking the progress of ideas identify the change in fashions.
In the early decades of this century, even in our country, entry to a dinner party would be barred to a person who was not in the formal attire suiting the occasion. Today, the three-piece suit is no longer obligatory and even the Iriaian mode of dress is accepted. In Western countries too, rigid rules marking different occasions have been relaxed since the post-war days.
Fashions are to be distinguished from such customary rules which admit of little scope for variations, and these may be termed as ‘conventions’ or ‘etiquette’. A convention is an accepted custom that regulates behaviour on certain occasions, and these occasions are usually the more formal ones. For example, conventions determine the standards of behaviour of legislators, members of municipalities and several other officials.
The very word “convention” smacks of official use, and when similar rules of behaviour are related to occasions that are in no way official, like family weddings, funerals and the like, the term ‘custom’ would become more appropriate. Whether we call it the custom or the convention, their principal quality is their unchangeability since the groups that observe them find pride in their existence and their continuation. ‘Etiquette’ refers to very detailed formalities that suit ceremonious occasions.
For example, wearing a dinner jacket at a formal dinner is a matter of fashion, but for quite some time it was also a convention. But the behaviour at the table and over the partaking of the food that is offered to guests would be etiquette. Etiquette is highly superficial in character, for these rules are created simply for the purpose of observing some distinction for the group that cherish them. Etiquette can be demolished with change of fashions and, for this; one has merely to take into account the relaxations that the Americans have made to the formalities to be observed at the dining table.
McIver and Page observe that all fashions possess certain distinct characteristics as to their social importance and the role that they play in society. First of all fashions introduce a variety to what may be rendered monotonous by custom. On the one hand, fashions introduce innovations in style by giving the old a new outlook and, on the other they tend to maintain conformity with custom.
Over the last one hundred years the educated or the forward Indian girl has worn her sari in many different ways; and today she wears it in the modified Brahmika style, a mode that was devised in the late nineteenth century by the Brahmos of Calcutta who modelled the sari after the look of the Western long skirts. Secondly, it is normal group behaviour that the classes would look up to the elite for guidance in matters of fashions.
Whatever the higher classes introduce as the style will be the vogue for the society, at least upto the level of the social class that can afford the innovations. McIver stresses the point that fashions generally come from the higher classes particularly because these classes enjoy the financial advantages. In a class conscious society, fashions pick up in a competitive manner and, sooner or later, different sections of the society accept the new style.
In Shaw’s Pygmalion one gets an idea as to how the upper classes at times reverse the trend and seek to pick up styles or modes of speech that are more suitable to the lower classes. In our country, when the ‘stretchlon’ trousers were accepted by the higher classes, the lower classes followed in due course; but when these clothes became too general in the different groups, the upper classes discarded them and switched over to other materials in order to maintain their distinction.
Occasionally, fashions are trends set by national leaders or by other popular figures like film-stars and sportsmen. The Nehru coat was definitely inspired by the late Prime Minister; and the unbuttoned shirt is a craze after certain Bombay film-starts whose popular appeal is immense. Thirdly, according to McIver, the spread of fashion is very much linked with economic factors, the richer classes being more able to attune themselves with every change of fashion than the more modest ones.
In our country, however, we shall modify McIver’s statement by adding that the outlook of the group is as important as the finances. For quite some time even in the big cities, there was an attitude against the use of makeup by decent girls; make-up was associated with vulgarity by many, if not with immorality. Even today, the painted urban doll in rural settings may be sadly misinterpreted.
However, communications have bettered conditions and the diffusion of styles with the help of speedy means of transport is a distinct possibility. Today, one can travel beyond suburbs into small towns and distant villages and observe how the city modes of attire, decoration or mere speech and mannersims have spread far and wide, even though in an unrefined manner.
(iii) Public Opinion:
Turner and Killian state in their Collective Behaviour that when we talk of public opinion, and adjective ‘public’ is not taken as a type of collectivity that has a structure and dynamics. If people think that the term public includes all the persons in a society who are interested in matters of public importance, the impression would be a misleading one. Sociologists find that the term ‘public’ is capable or ramification and, in any society, groups can be found in -each of which some idea or the other has secured collective formulation.
Each such group can be termed as a ‘public’ and, in any given society, there can exist many ‘publics’. Ginsberg, however, takes public opinion to be the impressions and the views of the people as a collectivity they are active in society, are capable of definitive expression, and are by and large stable. Ginsberg’s view would be in favour of taking the community as a whole, but societies and communities always cut themselves into fragments as regards opinion over matters of public importance.
The later thinking, therefore, of ‘public’ rather than of ‘the public’ would appear to be more satisfying. For example, a man in Calcutta would have strong views about power problems that effect his world. A person living in a village in the interior is not concerned so much with power as he is with the construction of a bridge which will solve transportation and communication difficulties. Not that the former does not know of the latter’s problems, but each has with his fellowmen formed a public opinion that more directly concerns him and the locality. Publics differ in size and intensity of feelings, passions being sroused most when the need for action is felt to be very urgent.
A person may at the same time be a member of several publics since he may be interested in several matters of public importance, but it is very unlikely that he will actively concentrate attention upon all of them; some issues will be more dear and important to him than the other.
Outrages of standards universally accepted in the society arouse general feelings of indignation, but the person who stands nearest to the peril will have the strongest feelings, while the others will stand in a sympathetic mood mainly. International events, too, may arouse public opinion, thanks to the contribution of the mass media in this regard. Indians in India feel infuriated over the indignities heaped upon the coloured people in South Africa, but they cannot make it a more living issue than the problems and the hazards that they are facing at home.
Besides that, tensions and angry feelings subside with the passage of time and, today after a lapse of over twelve years, people in India do not feel very strongly about happenings in a neighbouring country that brought in an influx of refugees that nearly stifled the national economy in 1971. People living in industrialized societies will be found to be belonging to a variety of publics.
The city’s transport system, the conservancy and sanitation methods are of prime importance; and along with these there are interests centering on the education facilities, the employment condition and recreation grounds. The city population is also more likely than the rustics to be interested I international issues likes the banning of nuclear weapons and the prevention of global war.
Sociologists are interested in the growth and development of the different publics and the ways in which they define issues and seek to implement their goals. Now days, the mass media like the newspapers and the television help the sociologist: measuring public opinion by holding gallup polls, opinion surveys and debates. The gallup poll began as a newspaper stunt in the United States about fifty years ago for predicting the results of elections.
It became a success with the public and very sc some method was introduced into it for providing against ‘quacks’. Sampling is a very important factor in gallups and opinion surveys and the concept of probability is added to it. Only a cross section of the society or the electorate is chosen and high percentage of the rest are taken as ‘probable’s’ who will behave in the predicts manner.
Even the debates on public issues are of recent origin and they have been popularized much with the active assistance of the mass media. In 1960, in the United States, when Nixon and Kennedy appeared on the television as candidate for the President ship of the country and engaged in a debate on important issue they set in motion a new trend that would later become popular in shaping public opinion and helping the elector to make up his mind.
According to Turner and Killian, every public is a dispersed group of people who take up an issue, discuss its different aspects and form a collective opinion about it which helps them to decide upon the course of action to be taken by the group, or by every individual in it, in that regard.
One may find in each ‘public’ a few characteristic and a few of these are discussed below:
(1) A ‘public’ may comprise of factions, that is, people who differ in the action to be taken though they have a common interest in an issue. Besides these factions. I there are ‘core’ members and ‘fringe’ members. The core members take deep] interest in the matter and are active in taking decisions upon it, and fringe members take less interest in the matter and their eagerness also diminishes considerably. In fact, the composition of publics keeps changing through the induction of new members and the retreat of existing ones.
(2) An individual may be a member of member of many ‘publics’; he may have definite political interests, certain defined employment, educational or religious interests. We have already noted that in an industrialized society a person is more likely to be among several publics than in an agricultural one. Some of the issues may overlap and may not be exactly distinct, one from the other.
On matters affecting the freedom of the press, persons belonging to different religious publics may come together; and similar regroupings and rearrangements may be made in connection with the honesty of the advertiser, the conduct of the trader, the railway services and the like.
(3) In a democratic society, publics tend to appear in large number and discussions are made on multifarious issues. An average man remaining uninterested in public tissues is a sign of growing authoritarianism in the society, where decisions are taken by a few. If the society is totalitarian in nature, it will not encourage discussions upon matters of interest to its citizens or subjects, and publics will tend to disappear from such places. Decisions will then be made at the top and transmitted to the common man.
It is true that even in a democratic country, not all the people take a decision, and only a few really determine policies; but then the policies are shaped and moulded by public opinion and, under severe pressure, revised too. In an authoritarian country, public opinion is not allowed to be created and all processes leading to the formation of a public view are checked and suppressed.
(4) The formation of a public opinion is a process which consists of several stages. The first stage is described by certain sociologists as the ‘problem’ stage in which groups of people understand that there is an issue which requires some thought on their part. Next comes the ‘proposal’ stage, which stands for the consideration of certain remedies for the issue at hand and, it is only after the failure of some of these remedies, that the programme or the ‘policy’ stage arrives when some concrete proposal is accepted as the possible line of action.
If the adopted policies do not mitigate the concern of the group, if they prove to be inadequate, the ‘review’ stage can come up when suitable modifications and alterations are made in accepted programmes. It is for this reason that a public is often described as a ‘deliberative collectivity’.