Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

405

Mass, Crowd and Individuality As Challenging Classical and Contemporary Concepts

RC35 Conceptual and Terminological Analysis (host committee)

Language: English and Spanish

Mass, crowd and individuality are key concepts for sociological theory. Without being obvious “fundamental concepts” of the discipline, mass and crowd appear linked to a sort of “dark side” of modern society and sociology: to imminent irruption of dangers, irrationality, chaos and collective pathologies and suggestions.
The problematization of these terms emerges in certain decisive crossroads of modern societies simultaneously both “central” and “peripherical” within their singular study traditions, for example, in the crisis of liberalism at the end of the 19th century and in the decade of the 1930s. In that way, because of being a shared concern for different spaces and times, the conceptual analysis of mass and crowd allows a theoretical and methodological approach that is not limited to “central” elaborations of Western Europe and the United States.
In contrast to the concepts of mass and crowd, individuality can be considered as a counter concept, since mass and crowd as forms of collectivity include the least involvement of the subjectivity of the individual actor. The mass we-relationship fugaciously and temporarily gets established, while the moral individual who can promise, feel guilty or regret gets suspended in mass collectivity. Collective mass action may appear independently of the possibility for the individual to interfere, leading to its potential dangerous, irrational and chaotic progression.
The session investigates the dynamic interrelationship of mass, crowd and individuality from a cross-cultural theoretical perspective, confronting concepts from diverging cultural viewpoints (European, North American, Asian, South American, etc.) to contest their validity independently of cultural differences. Posters: