Essay About Crowds And Crowd Of Other Type

Crowds and Politics
Essay Preview: Crowds and Politics
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What is a crowd?
A crowd can be termed as a temporary collection of people within a
limited space responding to a stimuli or an object of attention. A
sustainable number of people gathered in a fish market to sell or
purchase the commodities can be termed as a crowd or a group of
audience gathered at a movie or a play theater waiting for their
relevant movie or a play to begin is a crowd or even a collection of
people who gathered at a roadside to witness a roadside circus can also
be termed as a crowd. Fundamentally, crowds are not congregations of
people but are loose textured groups. The social interactions over here
are usually caused due to the physical closeness. Even though the
members of the crowd actually always try to avoid the interpersonal
contact, they are compelled to be bound by it. Crowds generally vary
greatly in character and behavior. This translates that the crowd of one
type can be very much different for the crowd of other type. For
example crowd gathered for a cricket match is totally different form the
crowd gathered for catching their respective bus. In the same way
crowds gathered in a queue to get the movie tickets is entirely different
from the crowd standing in a queue for casting their vote for an
election. Most crowds generally have some characteristics in common.
Four such characteristics may be noted as suggestibility, anonymity,
spontaneity and invulnerability. People in a crowd are highly
suggestable due to their susceptible nature to the interstimulation of
suggestions. There exists heightened emotions and intense excitements
in a crowd. An individual in a crowd always feel that he / she could
remain unrecognized. Crowds always have a very irresponsible
behavior towards its members. This irresponsibility is solely due to the
anonymity in the crowd. The individuals in the crowd feel that theiridentities would remain Anonymous. Crowds usually behave impulsive.
The members in the crowd usually tend to behave more spontaneous
than they would when they are on their own. Hence it is no wrong to
say that crowds are spontaneously formed and is highly temporary. The
one thing that is predominantly lacking in a crowd is social control
mechanism. They just don’t bother about it. This happens because they
constantly feel that they can behave freely and deprived of any
inhibitions. On the whole they completely lack self consciousness. In a
democracy there are active citizens and passive citizens. Active citizens
have an agenda and they want something to happen. They have greater
motivation to change things, greater emotion and more energy. Usually
they want to change things, but sometimes they might be motivated by
sympathy / ideological commitment. Passionate voices bring change,
but it isnt always the most logical. The moderate majority that dislikes
passion also lacking the energy to oppose the ideological lobbies. The
casual crowds usually gather around a specific event, and its members
have a little interaction with one another. The casual crowds are the
most loosely packed. They are very much temporary and vulnerable.
While on the other hand the conventional and the expressive crowds
are deliberately planned and relatively structured. These types of
crowds usually follow some established social norms and conventions.
Expressive crowds gather specifically for the purpose of letting out the
emotions. The acting crowds focuses its attention on a specific action or
goal. They are the crowds in action mobbing, rioting, or engaging in
other forms of behavior. The members of the group are usually angry at
some force or person outside of the group and want to act against it.
Comparatively it is the most common one. But, actually it is the most
significant of the basic crowd types. This is the type of the crowds that
we commonly come across in the political and public agitations. We
have all seen the pictures or videos of people carrying signs, chantingand listening to speeches. At a successful rally, we can witness the
energy and excitement even through the television screen. It is very
much true to say that the passions, feelings and emotions of the
individual in the crowd have become constituent categories of crowd
identity and also socially circulate to form and transform crowds
collectively. For example, it is hard to picture the crowds of Telangana
succeeding in the separate Telangana agitation movement, if the
collective feelings of the crowds were not present to motivate and
sustain the individual gathered there. However we can not expect the
same amount of passion, feelings and emotions from every crowd and