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In the 1950s and 1960s, students of collective behavior tended to classify under the same heading phenomena as diverse as crowds, movements, panic, manias, fashions, and so on. Two problems arose from this. On the one hand, although many of them defined movements as purposeful phenomena, students of collective behavior placed more attention on unexpected dynamics – such as circular reactions – rather than on deliberate organizational strategies or, more generally, on strategies devised by actors. As James Coleman recalled (1990, p. 479), the hypothesis that situations of frustration, rootlessness, deprivation and social crisis automatically produce revolts reduces collective action to an agglomeration of individual behaviors. Functionalism so ignores the dynamics by which feelings experienced at the (micro) level of the individual give rise to (macro) phenomena such as social movements or revolutions.

One response to these theoretical gaps has come from symbolic interactionists close to the so‐called Chicago School, credited with having developed the analysis of collective behavior as a specialist field within sociology. The concept of collective behavior – contrasted with that of collective psychology – indicated the shift of attention from the motivation of individuals to their observable actions. Already in the 1920s, the founders of this approach – among them, Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess – had stressed that collective phenomena do not simply reflect social crisis but rather produce new norms and new solidarities, and viewed social movements as engines of change, primarily in relation to values systems. Subsequently, other students of collective behavior were to make reference to the tenets of the Chicago School, focusing their attention on situations of rapid change in social structures and prescriptions (Blumer 1951; Gusfield 1963; Turner and Killian 1987 [1957]). Tendencies toward large‐scale organizations, population mobility, technological innovation, mass communications, and the decline of traditional cultural forms were all considered to be emerging conditions pushing individuals to search for new patterns of social organization. Collective behavior was in fact defined as behavior concerned with change (for example, Blumer 1951, p. 199), and social movements as both an integral part of the normal functioning of society and the expression of a wider process of transformation.

Rooted in symbolic interactionism, the contemporary school of collective behavior sees particular relevance in the meaning actors attribute to social structures; and the less structured the situations faced by the individual, the more relevant this aspect appears to be. When existing systems of meaning do not constitute a sufficient basis for social action, new norms emerge, defining the existing situation as unjust and providing a justification for action (Turner and Killian 1987, p. 259). As an activity born outside preestablished social definitions, collective behavior is located beyond existing norms and ordered social relations. The study of collective behavior thus concentrates on the transformation of institutional behaviors through the action of emergent normative definitions. These definitions appear when the traditional normative structure comes into conflict with a continually evolving situation. As Blumer (1951, p. 169) put it:

Sociology in general is interested in studying the social order and its constituents (customs, rule, institution, etc.) as they are. Collective behavior is concerned in studying the way in which the social order comes to existence in the sense of the emergence and solidification of new forms of collective behavior.

Change, in fact, is conceived of as part of the physiological functioning of the system: social movements are accompanied by the emergence of new rules and norms, and represent attempts to transform existing norms. For example, Gusfield (1963) saw the prohibitionist movement as an area of conflict between social systems, cultures and groups of different status.

The genesis of social movements is in the coexistence of contrasting values systems and of groups in conflict with each other. These are regarded as distinctive parts of social life (Killian 1964, p. 433). Changes in the social structure and in the normative order are interpreted within a process of cultural evolution through which new ideas emerge in the minds of individuals. When traditional norms no longer succeed in providing a satisfactory structure for behavior, the individual is forced to challenge the social order through various forms of nonconformity. A social movement develops when a feeling of dissatisfaction spreads, and insufficiently flexible institutions are unable to respond.

The sociology of social movements owes many of its insights to students of the collective behavior school. For the first time, collective movements are defined as meaningful acts, driving often necessary and beneficial social change. Observations of processes of interaction determined by collective action moreover constitute important foundations for those who, in more recent times, have taken on the task of understanding movement dynamics. The emphasis on empirical research has led to experimentation with new techniques, providing through various methods of field research a valid integration of archive data. Since the 1980s, the interactionist version of the theory of collective behavior has stressed the processes of symbolic production and of construction of identity, both of which are essential components of collective behavior. This has led to a research program that has lasted over time, as demonstrated by the work of scholars such as Joe Gusfield (1963), and that has become at the same time very influential and diversified (Eyerman and Jamison 1991; Melucci 1996; Oliver and Johnston 2000; Oliver and Snow 1995).

In the 1990s, however, some researchers grew dissatisfied with a view of the role of culture in collective action that they regarded as too strategic and rationalistic, in particular by scholars like Snow and Benford (1992) that were conversant with resource mobilization theory. They started to re‐emphasize again the part played by emotions in the production and reproduction of social movements. In their view, symbolic production is not only (or mainly) strategically oriented, but it involves feelings and emotions. Moral shocks developing when deeply held rules and norms are broken are often first step in the individual mobilization and, indeed, protest organizations work at transforming fear in moral indignation and anger (Jasper 1997: 107–114). Movements indeed produce condensing symbols and rhetoric oriented to rise various types of emotions in what has been defined as a libidinal economy of movements. As Jasper (1997, p. 220) observed, “Virtually, all the pleasures that humans derive from social life are found in protest movements: a sense of community and identity; ongoing companionship and bonds with others; the variety and challenge of conversation, cooperation and competition. Some of the pleasures are not available in the routines of life.”

The stress on social movement as agents of normative change, that was present in the Chicago School, has been revisited in recent times of accelerated transformation within an emerging concern in social movement studies with “great transformations” as well as protests that – such as the protest camps – triggered big mobilizations (della Porta 2018b). Especially, as protests spread, new norms tend to emerge in the open spaces created by the social movements themselves. Such spaces allow for the development of intense emotions as well as the spreading of alternative visions through various forms of prefigurative politics oriented to practice changes (Wagner‐Pacifici and Ruggiero 2018).

It is worth noting at least two main problems generated by the collective behavior perspective. On the one hand, despite defining movements as purposeful phenomena, many students of collective behavior placed more attention on unexpected dynamics – such as circular reactions – rather than on deliberate organizational strategies or, more generally, on strategies devised by rational, strategic actors. On the other hand, focusing on the empirical analysis of behavior, they are often limited to a description – albeit detailed – of reality, without devoting much attention to the structural origins of conflicts which subsequently well up in particular movements. While structuralist approaches like the new social movements dealt with the latter shortcoming, organizational perspective like the resource mobilization theory addressed the former. To its basic tenets we now turn.