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2013 61: 584 originally published online 11 July 2013Current SociologyChristian Borch

Crowd theory and the management of crowds: A controversial relationship

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Crowd theory and themanagement of crowds: Acontroversial relationship

Christian BorchCopenhagen Business School, Denmark

Abstract

Sociologists of policing and collective protest have made a plea for eradicating frompolice literature and training programmes which aim to provide guidelines for crowdmanagement any references to classical crowd theory where crowds are depictedas irrational entities. Instead, these scholars suggest, rational conceptions of crowdsshould inform contemporary crowd management. This article questions this plea

on two grounds. First, it demonstrates that there is no unidirectional connectionbetween sociological crowd theory (whatever its content) and practical strategies forgoverning crowds. The tactical polyvalence of crowd theory is illustrated by showinghow the irrational conception of crowds has given rise to very different strategies forthe management of crowds (urban reform programmes in the Progressive Era andHitlers mobilization strategies, respectively). Second, the article argues that, in spiteof its current scholarly popularity, there is no guarantee that the call for a practicalemployment of the rational notion of crowds will necessarily be successful. This isdemonstrated by stressing, on the one hand, that irrational notions of crowds continueto thrive, thereby rendering a turn towards rational approaches difficult, and, on theother hand, that the rational approaches in their ignorance of collective emotionalarousal present an inadequate picture of crowds and consequently have limited scopeas guidelines for crowd management strategies.

Keywords

Collective emotions, crowd control, crowd theory, London riots, policing, tacticalpolyvalence of discourse

Corresponding author:

Christian Borch, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelnshaven 18A, Frederiksberg, 2000, Denmark.Email: [email protected]

CSI615-610.1177/0011392113486443Current SociologyBorch2013

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Borch 585

Introduction

The UK riots in 2011, which had their centre in London but soon spread to other British

cities such as Manchester and Liverpool, have stirred great debate in academic and polit-

ical circles. What were the reasons behind the events and how might such massive vio-lence and looting be prevented in the future? In a letter published in The Guardianon 11

August 2011, Professor John Brewer, then president of the British Sociological

Association (BSA), and Howard Wollman, vice-chair of BSA, argued that sociology as

a discipline has much to offer in terms of explaining the riots. Specifically, they asserted,

the sociology of crowds offers a valuable starting point for understanding such events:

Crime is a motive [for a minority of the rioters], but crowd behaviour is a more complex

process, and it is sociology as a discipline that best understands crowd behaviour. Crowds are

irrational. Crowds dont have motives thats far too calculating and rational. Crowd behaviour

is dynamic in unpredictable ways, and reason and motive disappear when crowds move

unpredictably. (Brewer and Wollman, 2011)

This reference to crowd theory as a resource for explaining the UK riots has not been

received positively by all sociologists. For example, Hugo Gorringe and Michael Rosie

(2011) have objected that by evoking classical images of crowds as irrational, conta-

gious entities beyond the reach of knowledge, Brewer and Wollman essentially recap-

tured a sociological tradition which has long been contested by sociologists. Since

especially the 1960s sociologists have argued that, rather than being paradigmatic of

irrationality, collective protest often has good reasons and is meaningful to the protest-ers themselves (say, as a legitimate response to perceived injustices). Yet, Gorringe and

Rosie admit, despite being severely criticized by the post-1960s wave of more rational-

ist approaches, the classical imagery of irrational crowds persists, and not just in the

Guardiancomment by Brewer and Wollman. Indeed, as studies of policing have shown,

the notion of irrational crowds has not least inspired police tactics for many years,

thereby in effect lending (performative) reality to this notion. More troubling, perhaps,

studies have demonstrated that police strategies that adopt this discourse might increase

tensions and escalate violence rather than reduce it (e.g. Goringe and Rosie, 2011;

Hoggett and Scott, 2010; Reicher et al., 2007). Consequently, scholars such as DavidSchweingruber have argued that this irrationalist conception of crowds (what

Schweingruber terms mob sociology), which is still present in [US] police literature

and training programs should be replaced by contemporary social science research

and theory, i.e. more rationalist notions of crowds and collective behaviour

(Schweingruber, 2000: 371). Indeed, for Schweingruber, the continued presence of

mob sociology in the police literature is an embarrassment (2000: 385; see also Reicher

et al., 2007; Schweingruber and Wohlstein, 2005).

The aim of the present article is to challenge this call for basing practical crowd con-

trol strategies on a rationalist understanding of crowds. The point is not so much todefend an irrationalist account, nor is it to argue that rationalist conceptions are necessar-

ily wrong. Rather, the central ambition is to demonstrate (1) that there is no unidirec-

tional or causal connection between sociological crowd discourse (whatever its content)

and practical strategies for governing crowds: the same discursive register might be

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586 Current Sociology 61(5-6)

employed for very different practical strategic purposes, thereby making manifest what

Michel Foucault referred to as the tactical polyvalence of discourses, i.e. the shifts and

reutilizations of identical ideas for contrary objectives (1990: 100); and (2) that in spite

of its scholarly popularity, there is no guarantee that the practical employment of a par-

ticular notion of crowds will necessarily turn out to be successful. That may sound evi-dent, but is nevertheless worth stressing in light of the current calls for rationalist

approaches.

The article seeks to make these points in two overall steps. In thefirst step(compris-

ing the articles first two parts), I demonstrate how the notion of irrational crowds has

given rise to profoundly different practical strategies for how to govern collectivities.

Thus, in the first part, I discuss a nexus of scientific discourses on crowds and practical

strategies of crowd control according to which the alleged ignorant nature of crowds

precludes attempts to address them through arguments and deliberate conversation.

Instead, it is asserted within this nexus, prophylactic strategies should be promotedwhich focus on the physical-spatial conditions that purportedly generate crowd behav-

iour. I discuss this nexus on the basis of what I see as one of its chief crystallizations,

namely the problematization of urban masses in the USA during the Progressive Era.

In the second part, I examine a nexus of crowd theory and practical strategies which

draws on the same theoretico-discursive register, but derives very different conclusions

from it. Here the underlying rationale is that, even if crowds are irrational, this does not

rule out some form of influence on their behaviour. To be sure, it is argued within this

nexus, crowds cannot be managed through rational deliberation; instead, they must be

controlled through appeals to their alleged emotional receptiveness. This idea, which isutilized for purposes of crowd mobilization, is examined on the basis of Adolf Hitlers

propaganda and spatial mass-mobilization strategies.

As can be seen from this, the first overall step revolves around the scientifically sanc-

tioned knowledge on allegedly irrational crowds that flourished in the late 19th and early

20th centuries, and which was at one buttressed by and lent widespread support to one of

classical crowd psychologys leading exponents, Gustave Le Bons famous claim that

the age we are about to enter will in truth be the ERA OF CROWDS (2002: x). In spite

of its immediate success, Le Bons and others image of the ignorant, irrational crowd

was soon contested. Eventually, as indicated above, a new discursive regime came toreplace this tradition of crowd psychology in the 1960s. This alternative position argued

that, rather than being irrational, crowds should be seen as a result of rational or purpo-

sive individual action. Thesecond overall stepof the article (comprising the third and

fourth parts) focuses on this more recent material that abandons the irrational conception

of crowds.

One might suspect that, insofar as the practical strategies retained a tight coupling to

the state-of-the-art scientific knowledge, the rational notion of crowds was likely to

induce a change in crowd control strategies, bending more towards rational-deliberative

approaches. While some have argued that this is indeed what has happened (e.g. Durrheim

and Foster, 1999), I propose when discussing the third nexus of crowd theory and prac-

tical strategies that this is not the whole story. First of all, as the third part of the article

will demonstrate, contemporary crowd management strategies oscillate between seeing

crowds as capable of rational deliberation and assuming that crowds are ignorant and



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should make blunt, simple statements and repeat them over and over again; this would

gradually mould the mind of the crowd (Le Bon, 2002: xiv, 72 ff.).

The general image of crowds propagated by Le Bon and Tarde received widespread

acclaim in industrialized and urbanized countries such as France and Germany in the late

19th century, but it was also soon adapted to the US American situation (Frezza, 2007).While the French discussions of crowds echoed a century with recurrent insurrections and

political turmoil, the American debates took a slightly different form. To be sure, the

country had its own revolutionary past and experienced recurrent uprisings throughout the

19th century. Still, the main concern in the USA was not with revolutionary crowds per se,

but rather with what was seen as their seedbed, namely the explosive urbanization of

American society which took off in the late 18th century. The problematization of urbani-

zation focused especially on the metropolitan way of life which, it was noted with anxiety,

had seemingly cut itself loose from the moral ties governing the communitarian village,

giving rise to all sorts of collective urban unrest (Boyer, 1978).Gradually, however, the problematization of this urban life became intertwined with

the European discourse of crowds. A series of prominent scholars took part in the discus-

sions of crowds, including William James, Robert E Park, Edward A Ross and Boris

Sidis (see Borch, 2012: Ch. 4). In the following, I focus on Ross, not only because he was

probably the most widely read social scientist of his day (Leach, 1986: 102), but more

importantly because he was the one who most powerfully incarnated the attempt, in the

Progressive Era (18901920), to link the problematization of urbanization to that of

crowds and to derive strategic recommendations on that basis.

Ross approached the topic of mobs (a term he preferred over that of crowds) on anumber of occasions (Ross, 1897, 1908). When describing their alleged negative charac-

teristics, he demonstrated a profound indebtedness to the crowd semantics propagated by

Le Bon and Tarde (e.g. Ross, 1897: 391). But Ross also went beyond Le Bon and Tarde,

arguing, for example, that the city provided a particular context in which crowd dynam-

ics were prone to flourish. Not dissimilar to Georg Simmels (1950) account of the

metropolis, Ross stated that The city overwhelms the mind with a myriad of impressions

which fray the nerves and weaken the power of concentration. City-bred populations

are liable to be hysterical, and to be hysterical is to be suggestible (1908: 87), meaning

that the behavior of city populations under excitement shows the familiar characteristicsof the mob quite apart from any thronging (1897: 393). Importantly, moreover, by iden-

tifying the socio-spatial locale of these intensified crowd/mob dynamics, Ross acquired

a practical-strategic starting point for what he called Prophylactics against Mob Mind

(1908: Ch. 5). Specifically, Ross suggested that urban mob dynamics could be prevented

through urban planning:

In the city some ways of living foster suggestibility, while others check it. It is bad for people

to be crowded into barrack-like tenement-houses, for such massing inspires the cheese-mite

consciousness, makes the self count for nothing. The best correctives for urban propinquity are

broad streets, numerous parks, and the individual domicile with a little space about it; for thesepreserve the selfhood of the family group and of the individual. (Ross, 1908: 88)

In short, Ross believed that the contagious, de-individualizing forces typical of and ema-

nating from crowds could be restrained by improving theliving conditions of the urban



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Borch 589

poor. By moulding urban space, the conditions conducive to the metropolitan mob mind

could be curtailed. The underlying assumption was that moral behaviour would ensue

from stimulating physical surroundings, and that this would form a bulwark against

mobs (for a more extensive discussion of this, see Borch, 2012: 125140).

Two things are important about Rosss suggestions. First, as intimated above, Rossplayed a key role in utilizing ideas derived from sociological crowd theory (as associated

especially with Le Bon and Tarde) to address US American concerns with urbanization.

More generally his ideas for practical intervention united then state-of-the-art scientific

discourse on crowds with larger ambitions in the Progressive Era to employ scientific

rationality for the benefit of social progress, in particular through urban reform (Frezza,

2007: Ch. 2). The progressive belief in scientific rationality Ross embodied therefore

anticipated the current calls for employing state-of-the-art scientific knowledge in practi-

cal strategies for the management of crowds although, of course, the irrationalist notion

Ross subscribed to when accounting for crowds is at odds with the rationalist notionswhich have gained currency since the 1960s. Second, as will be evident below, the con-

nection Ross established between academic discourse of a Le Bonian/Tardean fashion

and practical strategies for how to govern crowds was only one of several possible.

Mobilizing the ignorant

The positive reception that fell to early crowd psychologys share was not limited to the

sociological domain. For example, Sigmund Freuds nephew Edward L Bernays drew

heavily on crowd psychology when developing the nascent field of public relations in the1920s and 1930s (e.g. Bernays, 1923). But especially Le Bons account also attracted

admirers among politicians. Reportedly, Theodore Roosevelt was deeply fascinated by

Le Bons work, particularly the book on The Psychology of Peoples(Le Bon, 1974; Nye,

1975: 88). Benito Mussolini too was explicit on his indebtedness to Le Bon. In a 1927

interview he stated that, I have read all [Le Bons] works. And I dont know how many

times I have re-read hisPsychologie des Foules. It is an excellent work to which I fre-

quently refer (quoted in Nye, 1975: 178). Similarly, Hitler drew greatly upon Le Bon, as

has often been noted. Alfred Stein, for one, has argued that Le Bons influence on Hitler

can hardly be underestimated (Stein, 1955: 366). McClelland goes even further, assert-ing that crowd theory prepared the way for Nazism; the Nazis exploited it as a technique

of mass persuasion but more importantly, they fulfilled its doom-laden prophesies about

the barbarous Era of Crowds simply by taking them literally (1989: 292). In the same

vein, Borch-Jacobsen notes that it is not an exaggeration to say that The Crowdfinds its

political enactment in the Fascist mass (1988: 270, n. 37). That said, Hitlers objectives

differed from those of Le Bon. Hitlers main interest was not diagnostic; he was not

concerned with finding a striking formula to capture and criticize his era. He was much

keener on utilizing the crowd as the means through which to govern the kind of mass

society that would put him in power.

While the connection between Hitler and Le Bon has often been observed, it is rarely

analysed how, more specifically, this link materialized. For example, McClelland (1989:

Ch. 9) provides a convincing historical account of how Hitler came on the track of crowd

thinking, but he pays hardly any attention to the specific ways in which Hitler deployed



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the image of the ignorant crowd for his own purposes. In the following, I wish to delve

into precisely this aspect. The aim is not to offer a new interpretation of Hitler Germany,

but rather to show how Hitlers politics revolved around the problem of crowd igno-

rance. That is, I wish to show how Hitler adopted the psychology of ignorant crowds and

what strategies he envisioned so as to mobilize political support in light of this apparentignorance. I focus mainly but not exclusively on Mein Kampfand how it charted new

directions for forming and manipulating the masses for totalitarian political purposes.

One of the central parts ofMein Kampfis Hitlers reflections on propaganda. In the

book, Hitler notes how during the First World War he had come to realize the signifi-

cance of political propaganda. To emerge as the triumphant in political struggles one had

to carefully consider what messages one disseminated and how. When outlining specific

suggestions for the most effective use of propaganda, Hitlers ideas came surprisingly

close to some of Le Bons basic observations. For example, Hitler conceded that propa-

ganda must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses, and not to the scien-tifically trained intelligentsia (1992: 163). That is to say, political propaganda efforts

should target precisely those ignorant masses that could not be mobilized through rational

arguments. In a word, politics should revolve around and try to marshal the ignorant.

Due to the masses alleged incapacity to reason, however, the propaganda could not

assume just any form. The ignorance of the masses demanded targeted techniques. In

line with Le Bons recommendations, Hitler therefore argued that:

It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance. The

receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power offorgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited

to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public

understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. (1992: 165, see also 168)

The underlying separation between the ignorant mass and the rational intelligentsia/elite

had the further practical consequence that propaganda should focus on emotions rather

than on complex arguments. This was further emphasized by the gendering of the mass

Hitler put forward, and which once again echoed Le Bons position. Thus, argued Hitler,

The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that

sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling(1992: 167). Against this background, he put great faith in films and posters which, he

believed, were able to attract the attention of the crowd by form and colour, rather than

by displaying arguments (1992: 164, see also 427).

The significance of propaganda and oral or visual manipulation constituted only one

part of Hitlers political strategy. The material orchestration of crowds was attributed an

equally critical role. Whereas the general propaganda techniques were aimed at the broad

masses that did not need to be physically co-present, the objective of the material organi-

zation was to establish the spatial conditions for a distinctive crowd feeling. In practice,

Hitler posited, this could be realized through mass meetings. The reason for the need formass meetings where people were physically co-present was predicated on what Hitler

conceived as the two major weaknesses of much ordinary propaganda. First, written

propaganda faced the obvious limitation that people might not read it. Here the spoken



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Borch 591

word possessed great comparative advantages in terms of seizing peoples attention, he

believed. Second, while propaganda should revolve around emotions, the political aims

one strived to achieve might face a limit when confronted with counter-directed emo-

tions. To overcome this barrier of instinctive aversion, of emotional hatred, of preju-

diced rejection, is a thousand times harder than to correct a faulty or erroneous scientificopinion (1992: 428). That is, if sentiments are against you from the start, it is very dif-

ficult to change this affective opposition through propaganda. According to Hitler, the

mass meeting would enhance the probability that ones affective propaganda would be

accepted unanimously. When an individual:

steps for the first time into a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of people of the

same opinions around him, when, as a seeker, he is swept away by three or four thousand others

into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm, when the visible success and

agreement of thousands confirm to him the rightness of the new doctrine and for the first timearouse doubt in the truth of his previous conviction then he himself has succumbed to the

magic influence of what we might designate as mass suggestion. (1992: 435)

Hitler asserted that this mass suggestion itself rested on what one might call with Peter

Sloterdijk specific atmospheric conditions (Sloterdijk, 2004). For example, Hitler

argued, the intended mass effects were more likely to be achieved if the mass meeting

were held at night rather than during the day, since at night people experience a natural

weakening of their force of resistance (1992: 432). Hitler noted that a similar purpose

was served by the artificially made and yet mysterious twilight in Catholic churches, the

burning lamps, incense, censers, etc. (1992: 432).

The entire material dimension was not just theory for Hitler, but something which

attracted immense practical attention. Albert Speer, one of Hitlers main architects,

assumed a central role in designing the physical structures which could produce the

desired mass effects. For example, in 1934 Speer was asked to design the so-called

Zeppelin Field in Nuremberg where the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers

Party) held an annual rally. Speer drew deliberately on atmospheric elements in this

assignment that revolved around his famous cathedral of light, which consisted of the

beams emanating from 130 anti-aircraft searchlights that were placed around the field,

and which would have its fullest atmospheric effect at night. In his memoirs Speerrecalled that this design created the feeling of a vast room (1995: 101). More pre-

cisely, perhaps, the vast room was one that was, as Gernot Bhme (2006: 169) has

remarked in his analysis of Nazi architecture, horizontally delimited, but vertically virtu-

ally boundless, thereby resembling Gothic domes or the Catholic churches Hitler

referred to. In order to disseminate the desired mass feeling to more people than those

attending the mass meetings, Hitler asked Leni Riefenstahl to produce films of the rallies

(see Speer, 1995: 104; Tegel, 2006). In this way he attempted to combine the crowd

effect with the kind of visual mass propaganda he believed to be most efficient.

Even more spectacular were Speers plans for an entirely redesigned rally site inNuremberg. According to the plans, which Hitler approved in 1935, and in which the

Zeppelin Field took a central position, an immense field, the so-called Marchfield, was

planned which was intended for minor army manoeuvres and which measured 3400 by

2300 feet (or 1000 by 700 metres). From theMarchfield a 264-feet wide avenue would



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enable the army to process in 165-feet wide ranks. In addition to this, an enormous

stadium was projected which would hold some 400,000 spectators (for details, see

Speer, 1995: 112114). Although the plans were never fully implemented, they give an

idea of how architecture was seen as a means to gather the ignorant crowds and prepare

them for the leaders propaganda. Indeed, Speer stated, the demagogic element inHitlers speeches found support in and was emphasized by Speers scenic arrange-

ments (1995: 106).

To be sure, the emphasis on the material side of mass meetings was not an invention

of the Nazi regime. As Sloterdijk has shown, the architectural staging of the crowd and

its affective collectivity also played a crucial role in post-1789 France when a grand Fte

de la Fdration, counting around 400,000 people, was organized at the Champs de Mars

in Paris in 1790 to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the French Revolution (Sloterdijk,

2008). According to Sloterdijk:

The preparation and implementation of the Fte de la Fdration of 1790 and subsequent events

make it evident that the crowd, the nation or the people as a collective subject can only

exist to the extent that the physical assembling of these quantities is the object of artful

orchestration from mobilization through participation to directed effects in the stadium and

the enthralling of crowd attention byfascinogenicspectacles right through to the civil guard

breaking up the crowd on its way home. (2008: 54, italics in original)

There are two central points to be made here. First, Sloterdijk demonstrates, the Fte de

la Fdration instigated a political order of ignorance, in the sense that the collectivity

gathered at the Champs de Mars was united not through knowledge, but rather on the

basis of affective measures such as the use of noise (Sloterdijk, 2008: 55). Second, Speer

was familiar with the events at the Champs de Mars, and the name of the Marchfield

alluded, among other things, to the Champs de Mars. This suggests that Sloterdijk is right

in assuming that the Fte de la Fdration marked the birth of modern mass-culture as

event orchestration, later to be imitated for various other political objectives, including

totalitarian ones (Sloterdijk, 2008: 54; Speer, 1995: 106).

I have tried to show that and how Hitlers heralding of the notion of ignorant crowds

gave rise to a series of strategies that conceived of the collective irrationality as a produc-

tive condition of, rather than a devastating problem for, politics. Interestingly, the Hitlercase is less exceptional than it might appear at first sight. True, Hitler embodied a par-

ticular approach to the problematization of crowds and collective ignorance. But many

others, from both totalitarian and democratic camps, have pursued similar if less radical

mobilization strategies over the course of time. Furthermore, Hitlers ideas grew out of

an existing discourse, which has led John Carey to argue that The tragedy of Mein

Kampf is that it was not, in many respects, a deviant work but one firmly rooted in

European intellectual orthodoxy (Carey, 1992: 208).

Oscillating between communication and containment

The orthodoxy that both Ross and Hitler relied on was the vernacular of early crowd

psychology, in particular its notion that crowds are ignorant and irrational. In spite of

immediate academic acclaim at the turn of the19th century, this image of crowds was



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Borch 593

increasingly contested by historians, psychologists and sociologists in the early 20th

century. Much of the critique of crowd psychology revolved around its key explanatory

concept of hypnotic suggestion which was deemed more and more problematic (Borch,

2006, 2012). In the present context, I am interested not so much in the specific critiques

that were articulated but rather in the kind of theorizing that came to replace the sugges-tion-based crowd psychology. Although several alternatives to this tradition might be

identified, the most unified body of substitute thinking transpired in the 1950s and 1960s

when a series of more rational approaches to collective behaviour gained footing. The

central claim propagated in this literature was that, rather than being emblematic of igno-

rance, crowds in fact emerge as a rational means through which specific goals can be

achieved such as the rectification of perceived injustices. This view, which can be associ-

ated with scholars such as Clark McPhail (1991), Neil J Smelser (1962) and Charles Tilly

(1978), found its most far-reaching expression in Richard Berks game-theoretical

approach to crowd behaviour. According to Berk, crowd participants (1) exercise a sub-stantial degree of rational decision-making and (2) are not defined a priori as less rational

than in other contexts (Berk, 1974: 356). So, to repeat, in contrast to the classical image

of collective irrationality, this alternative position in effect held that, due to their founda-

tion in rational, purposive individual action, crowds are anything but ignorant entities.

This rational alternative to classical crowd psychology remains the prevailing per-

spective in contemporary theorizing on crowds (e.g. McPhail, 2006; Waddington,

2008). According to Kevin Durrheim and Don Foster (1999), this new approach has not

just been confined to theoretical circles; it has also laid the foundation for new types of

crowd management. Durrheim and Foster show this on the basis of a series of newmeasures that were introduced as part of the transition from Apartheid in South Africa

in the 1990s, which linked new modes of governing crowds with an ethics of peace (for

a discussion of this emphasis on peace and its relation to reconciliation, see Smith,

2011). What happened here, the authors contend, was that rather than viewing crowds

as eruptions of ignorance, irrationality and barbarism, crowd control strategies were

reconfigured and adapted to the image of purposive assemblies. For example, crowds

were now depicted as entities capable of self-government and as consisting of a differ-

entiated body of crowd members, where some could speak on behalf of the others.

Consequently, crowd management strategies ensued that advocated negotiations withcrowds, just as democratic strategies of self-policing, not repression were effected

(1999: 68). This change in crowd management strategies from former repression to

subsequent liberal democratic forms was made possible, Durrheim and Foster posit, by

the new rational images of crowds that sociologists and social psychologists have prop-

agated since the 1950s and 1960s.

A similar change can be identified in British crowd control strategies where, from the

1960s and 1970s on, the police gradually began to see crowd eruptions more as rational

responses to particular socioeconomic problems than manifestations of collective irra-

tionality, and where new means of dealing with crowds such as dialogue, under-enforce-

ment and negotiation have become more common (Gorringe and Rosie, 2011: 3; 2008).

One recent materialization of this new approach appeared in 2010 when the British

National Policing Improvement Agency published aManual of Guidance on Keeping the

Peaceon behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). This report, which



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was presented as an essential reference for all officers involved in public order policing

(and hence also during the 2011 riots), started out by noting that The world of protest

has changed and public order practice and training must change with it (ACPO, 2010:

7). This was another way of saying that the perception of crowds had changed and that

the strategies for managing crowds had to change accordingly.The ACPO report was explicit in its reliance on crowd theory of a more rational bent

than the Le Bon tradition. Thus, it referred to especially a paper by Reicher et al. (2007)

as the theoretical platform on which its practical guidelines were developed (ACPO,

2010: 87). Among other things, the paper by Reicher et al. had argued for a shift away

from basing policing on the notion of irrational crowds to advocating a much more

rational approach, focusing on issues such as the formation of social identity, establish-

ing communication with crowd members, etc. This approach was adopted in the ACPO

report. For example, it was argued that Planning for public order and public safety

events should never start from the premise that crowds are inherently irrational or dan-gerous (ACPO, 2010: 87). It was further acknowledged that, by discarding the concep-

tion of irrational crowds, negative spirals of escalating violence might be prevented.

Indeed, By adopting policing tactics that take account of modern theory on crowd

dynamics, the police may be able to create a crowd environment which is conducive to

positive individual and group behaviour (ACPO, 2010: 87). Further, and also resonant

with the position advanced by Reicher et al., which emphasized the centrality of [both

visual and oral] communication with crowd members (Reicher et al., 2007: 410), the

ACPO report argued that The key to policing a crowd depends on which voices within

the crowd are given prominence (ACPO, 2010: 87). This point inspired a comprehen-sive communications strategy which, similar to what Durrheim and Foster (1999) have

demonstrated for South Africa, was based on the idea that some form of negotiation or

(deliberative) communication with the crowd is actually possible.

The ACPO report might lend the impression that contemporary crowd control has

finally abandoned the notion of irrational crowds and that a new nexus of crowd dis-

course and practical strategies for how to govern crowds has become dominant one in

which the practical guidelines are based on current-day crowd theory rather than classi-

cal perspectives. Yet things turn out to be more complex. Indeed, as Gorringe and Rosie

point out on the basis of interviews with senior public order commanders, the 2011 UKriots dealt a blow to some of the key assumptions guiding the ACPO manual. Most

importantly, perhaps, the idea that it is possible to establish some form of communication

with the crowd and to use this as a means of guiding it in a positive direction proved

unsuccessful (Gorringe and Rosie, 2011: 5; see also Monaghan and Walby, 2012: 665).

While Gorringe and Rosie are in no way in favour of basing strategies of crowd man-

agement on a return to classical crowd discourse, their analysis does indicate that, even

if a more rational conception of crowds seems to have been adopted in policing manuals,

competing ideas still flourish which exhibit a more ambiguous relation to the notion of

rational crowds. Indeed, as I show below, the practical adaptation of a rational approach

to crowds exists alongside other developments that tend to maintain, if only implicitly, a

notion of the ignorant crowd. This becomes apparent in reports such as Crowd Control

Technologies: An Appraisal of Technologies for Political Control, written in 2000 by the

British Omega Research Foundation, and prepared for the Science and Technology



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Borch 595

Options Assessment (STOA) Panel, which is an official organ of the European Parliament

that provides expert advice to the Parliament on a variety of policy issues.

Compared to the strategic recommendations that were identified in the work of Ross

and Hitler or in the ACPO report, the Crowd Control Technologiesreport does not show

any obvious links to academic discourses on crowds. There is no definition of crowds inthe report, nor does it contain any explicit reflections on the social dynamics in or behind

crowds. Instead, it is more or less taken for granted what crowd control entails (there are

references to public order offences, riots, etc.), and on that basis a wide array of spe-

cific technologies are assessed. The discussion of these technologies makes clear that,

while the report is apparently detached from contemporary sociological crowd discourse,

other semantic registers are evoked. Most significantly, and in clear contrast to the peace

discourse being flagged in the title of the ACPO report, the problem of crowds is associ-

ated with a vocabulary of warfare, and crowd control technologies are consistently con-

ceived of as weapons. According to one of the reports overviews, which gives anindication of the variety of existing technologies:

The current market in crowd control weapons covers everything from basic truncheons; side-

handle batons; riot shields; kinetic impact weapons such as rubber and PVC plastic baton

rounds; single and multi-shot riot guns; water cannon which have been enhanced to fire slugs

or bullets of water, marker dye and a range of chemical irritants for punishing demonstrators;

stun grenades; a wide variety of chemical irritant grenades; tear gas projectiles; aerosols; and

bulk sprayers ; a range of electro-shock weapons including 50,000 volt riot shields and hand

held shock batons varying from 50,000 to 400,000 volts. (STOA, 2000: xix)

One might be struck by the inventiveness exhibited by these and similar technologies

(the report notes that South Africa has explored the use of MDMA (Ecstasy) as a crowd

control incapacitant, STOA, 2000: xxi). More importantly, these technologies depict the

crowd as an experimental site, a minor laboratory for all sorts of stimuliresponse sche-

mata. Here the ambiguous legacy of the rationalist sociological approach to crowds

becomes visible. Whereas for Le Bon, the crowd constituted asubjectendowed with its

own mind (e.g. 2002: 23) an image which was retained in Ross and Hitler, although

with very different accents and implications (prophylactics vs mobilization) the ration-

alist-individualist notion of the crowd denies the existence of a collective subject.1In linewith this, the above catalogue of crowd control technologies does not target a collective

subjectivity. Nor, however, do these technologies imply a conception of the unruly crowd

as a collectivity of rational subjects as portrayed by the rationalistic view. Rather, the

notion underpinning these technologies is that of the crowd as an object. This adds to the

ignorance attributed to crowds. While the crowd signified an ignorant entity in Le Bons

universe, but one which could be addressed through affective techniques (as detailed by

Hitler), it is reduced in the promotion of these contemporary crowd control technologies

to an entity which the authorities should only address with batons, chemicals, etc. That

is, in the STOA report no deliberative communication with crowds is advocated, nor areany underlying factors targeted that are believed to cause crowd behaviour. Crowds are

simply conceived as enemy entities to be fought and contained.

I have drawn attention to the Crowd Control Technologiesreport mainly to emphasize

that while negotiation and communication may be valued as key crowd management



14/19


strategies by scholars subscribing to a rationalist understanding of crowds, they are by no

means the only approaches to crowd management in the contemporary landscape where

images of irrational crowds can still be identified, with corresponding strategic implica-

tions. It is therefore warranted to speak of a certain oscillation in contemporary crowd

management guidelines between adhering to rational and irrational images of crowds.This is, of course, not in itself an argument against the endorsement of a rationalist

understanding of crowds in practical strategies, but the identified oscillation does sug-

gest that the current state-of-the-art (rationalist) crowd theorizing is not easily translated

into practical strategies, as irrational images continue to flourish. But what is perhaps

more important, as I discuss below, the present calls for eradicating such irrational

notions in policing strategies may well encounter other obstacles than the persistent

revivals of precisely these notions.

Limitations to strategies informed by rationalist crowd

theory

As mentioned above, Gorringe and Rosies analysis of the 2011 London riots makes

clear that in this particular event, managing the crowds on the basis of negotiation and

communication turned out to be infeasible. Instead, it appeared (and resonant with a

strategy of containment of irrational crowds), what worked when confronted with mas-

sive disorder was the deployment of very large numbers of officers on the street

(Gorringe and Rosie, 2011: 5). This observation is related to three intertwined points, all

of which question the present calls for basing the government of crowds on state-of-the-art rationalist crowd theory.

First, as previous studies have demonstrated, there is no causal link between the

guidelines presented in police literature and training programmes, on the one hand, and

actual police behaviour, on the other. This is not to deny any relation between the two,

but simply to emphasize that other factors may be no less important than what is stated

in various manuals. Gorringe and Rosie (2008) make this point in a study of the policing

of protest related to the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland. When interviewed about the polic-

ing of these G8 protests, police respondents noted that their interventions were based as

much on previous experienceas on theoretically informed guidelines. As Gorringe andRosie stress, the fact that the police in principleadhered to strategies of communication

and negotiation did not ensure their observance in practice (2008: 696). What this sug-

gests in more general terms is that the importance of the contents of police training

materials should not be overstated. In fact, if experience is really the key issue for the

police, then it may not matter that much if irrationalist or rationalist conceptions are

dominant in police manuals.

Second, and once again returning to the London riots, Gorringe and Rosie (2011) dif-

ferentiate between different types of rioting crowds. More specifically, they suggest that

negotiation and communication strategies may only be successful when applied vis--viscrowds that articulate clear political demands, whereas crowds of looters may not be

governable through such rationalist-based strategies. As Gorringe and Rosie put it,

Facilitation is irrelevant where individual and crowd objectives are theft and arson

rather than political demands, so do we need totear up the rule book (again)? (2011: 5).



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Borch 597

This suggests that the rationalist approach may only be successful when applied to spe-

cific kinds of crowds.

The problem with Gorringe and Rosies differentiation is that it can be difficult to

assess the objectives of crowds. Theft and arson can easily be presented (or retrospec-

tively reconstructed) as expressions of political action. Still, the distinction they intro-duce is important in that it addresses an inability within the rationalist approach to deal

with aspects of crowd behaviour that are not recognized as rational. Thus, third, the

rational approaches typically ignore the possible influence of what Le Bon and other

classical crowd theorists had a keen eye to, namely internal crowd dynamics such as

emotional arousal. As a response to this ignorance, John Lofland, himself associated

with the rationalist framework, back in the early 1980s argued for taking seriously the

emotional aspects of crowd behaviour. According to Lofland, We encounter, that is,

among contemporary collective behaviorists the anomaly that what seems to be a quite

conspicuous feature of the topic aroused emotions is at the same time one that is mostsuppressed from explicit consideration (1982: 377). In order to remedy this weakness,

Lofland suggested a taxonomy of collective joy, and proposed that we bring joy back

into the study of collective behavior and elevate it once again to a prominent place

(1982: 355356). Of course, joy is not the only collective emotion. Anger may be another

one, which in a collective setting may lead to violence. Randall Collins too has criticized

rationalist-individualist explanations of violence, arguing for the need to consider the

entire situation in which violence occurs (Collins, 2013). That point is somewhat similar

to what is being argued here: in order to understand (and manage) collective violence it

is insufficient to see violence as an outcome of rational behaviour; it is likely to be gener-ated rather (or just as much) by the emotional arousal which the crowd dynamic itself

produces (see also Collins, 2013: 143).

For present purposes the central issue is not whether crowd theorists should once

again address emotional states of crowd behaviour, although Loflands point is still valid,

in my view. Rather, the key point is that as long as they do not, calls for basing crowd

management strategies on rationalist approaches fall short in the sense that they leave

unaddressed the possibility that collective action may emerge which is triggered by inter-

nal crowd dynamics, rather than, say, by perceived injustices. Consequently, the rational-

ist approaches offer only a limited guideline for how to manage crowds: it offers nomodels for how to manage self-reinforcing emotional crowd dynamics that cannot be

reduced to rational action.

Conclusion

This article has questioned the call for replacing, in strategies for the management of

crowds, irrationalist conceptions of crowds with rationalist crowd theorizing. My argu-

ment has had two dimensions. First, I have demonstrated the tactical polyvalence of

sociological crowd theory by showing how the same theoretical register (the theory of

irrational crowds) has given rise to highly different practical strategies for the manage-

ment of crowds, namely urban reform programmes and totalitarian mobilization pro-

grammes, respectively. Of course, other examples could have been analysed, adding

further to the tactical polyvalence. The central conclusion to be drawn from this is that,



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since the irrational conception of crowds has triggered different strategic responses, it is

quite likely that the rationalist approach may also lead to different perhaps conflicting

strategies for crowd management. In other words, the tactical polyvalence may well

apply to the rationalist approach too.

Second, I have argued that the rationalist framework fails to offer a fully convincingmodel for crowd management on both internal and external grounds, so to speak. Not

only do analyses of the 2011 London riots suggest that rationalist strategies of negotia-

tion and communication with crowds failed in practice; conceptions of irrational, igno-

rant crowds still thrive, which suggests that obstacles to the replacement of irrational

with rational notions continue to exist. Finally, and more importantly, I have argued

that the rational approach fails to adequately address how internal crowd dynamics

may lead to emotional arousal, and that this ignorance may produce an important

blindness in strategies for the proper management of crowds. The overall conclusion

of this is not that the rationalist approach should be abandoned in crowd managementstrategies. However, it may not be as univocally applicable as some of its proponents

would have it.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the anonymous referees and the Editor for valuable comments and suggestions.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or

not-for-profit sectors.

Note

1. As one reviewer rightly pointed out, the neat distinction I draw here between Le Bon and

rational-individualist approaches does not rule out alternative ways of conceiving of collec-

tive subjects. For example, a Marxist take may well stress the possibility of some kind of

rational collective subjectivity, based on belonging to a particular class. Compared to class,

however, the notion of crowds traditionally refers to a pre-class entity, i.e. a group of people

not yet sharing a class consciousness (see Borch, 2012: 8990).

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Author biography

Christian Borch is Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy,Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research focuses on crowd theory, economic sociol-

ogy, architecture and political sociology. Recent books includeNiklas Luhmann (Key Sociologists)

(Routledge, 2011) and The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology(Cambridge

University Press, 2012).

Rsum

Les sociologues du maintien de lordre et des manifestations publiques ont longtempsplaid en faveur du retrait de toutes rfrences aux thories classiques de la foule fon-des sur lirrationalit des foules dans les documents et les programmes de formationde la police. Ces spcialiste suggrent quune conception rationnelle des foules devraientguider la gestion contemporaine de foules. Cet article remet en question deux aspectscette affirmation. En premier lieu, il dmontre quil ny a pas de relation unidirectionnelleentre la thorie sociologique de la foule (quelque soit son contenu) et les stratgiesmises en oeuvre dans la gestion de foules. La variabilit tactique de la thorie de la fouleest mise en vidence par les stratgies trs diffrentes toutes inspires dune concep-tion base sur lirrationalit des foules employes dans la gestion de foules (pro-grammes de rforme urbaine de lre progressiste aux tats-unis et stratgies de mobi-lisation de Hitler, respectivement). En second lieu, larticle soutient que, en dpit de sapopularit actuelle auprs des spcialistes, il ny a aucune garantie que la mise en oeuvrede la rationalit des foules rencontre le succs espr. Cela est dmontr en soulignantque la notion dirrationalit des foules continue prosprer, rendant difficile ladoptiondes approches rationnelles alors mme que les approches rationnelles, dans leur igno-rance de lexcitation motionnelle collective, proposent une reprsentation insuffisantedes foules et quelles ont donc une porte limite comme ligne de conduite dans lesstratgies de gestion de foules.

Mot-cls

contrle de la foule, meutes de Londres polyvalence tactique du discours police, mo-tions collectives, thorie de la foule valence tactique du discours police

Resumen

Los socilogos de la vigilancia y la protesta colectiva han abogado por eliminar de laliteratura policial y los programas de entrenamiento (que intentan proveer instrucciones



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Borch 601

para el control de multitudes) cualquier referencia a la teora clsica de la multitud, en laque las multitudes son descriptas como entidades irracionales. En cambio, sugieren estosinvestigadores, concepciones racionales de las multitudes deberan informar el controlcontemporneo de las multitudes. Este artculo cuestiona esta peticin por dos razones.

Primero, demuestra que no existe una conexin unilateral entre una teora sociolgicade la multitud (sea cual sea su contenido) y las estrategias prcticas para gobernar mul-titudes. La polivalencia tctica de la teora de la multitud queda patente al mostrar cmola concepcin irracional de las multitudes ha dado paso a estrategias muy diferentespara el control de multitudes (los programas de reforma urbana en la Era Progresista ylas estrategias de movilizacin de Hitler, respectivamente). Segundo, el artculo argu-menta que, a pesar de su popularidad actual entre investigadores, no hay garanta de quela advocacin por un empleo prctico de la nocin racional de las multitudes vaya aresultar exitosa. Esto se demuestra subrayando, en parte, que las nociones irracionalesde las multitudes continan prosperando, dificultando as un giro hacia los enfoques

racionales; y, en parte, que los enfoques racionales, en su ignorancia de la agitacinemocional colectiva, presentan un retrato inadecuado de las multitudes, y, en consecuen-cia, tienen un alcance limitado como directrices para estrategias de control demultitudes.

Palabras clave

Control de la multitud, disturbios de Londres, emociones colectivas, polica, polivalenciatctica del discurso, teora de la multitud
http://csi.sagepub.com/

crowd theory and management of crowd

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