Collective Behaviour / Collective Action Theories (1950s)

Since most of the action taken by on or behalf of groups of individual is taken through organizations, it will be helpful to consider organization in a general or theoretical way. The logical place to begin any systematic study of organization is their purpose as some organization may fail to fulfill the interest of members and other may be enticed into serving only the ends of the leadership. But organizations perish if they fail to fulfill the interest of their members. These organizations are expected to further are for the most part common interests: the union member’s common interest in their higher wages, the farmers’ common interest in their legislation, stake holders’ common interest in higher dividends and stock prices etc. Purely personal or individual interests can be advanced, and usually advanced most efficiently by individual, unorganized action. There is obviously no purpose in having an organization when individual, unorganized action will fulfill the purpose of individual rather than the organization and there would be no point in forming the organization simply to play solitaire. But when a number of individuals have collection action or collective interest than individual will not be able to advance their single interest. Therefore, an organization can perform when there are common goals through collective action.

Relative Deprivation Theory (1960s)

The doctrine of relative deprivation sustained by American scholars (Gurr 1970) has led some projects on agitation and mass movements. Relative deprivation is described as player’s recognition of inconsistency between their value desires and their environment’s manifest value potentialities. Value prospects are the goods and conditions of life to which people suppose they are fairly entitled. The determinants of value potentialities are to be appeared extensively in the social and physical surroundings; they are the stipulations that decide people’s known possibilities of obtaining or retaining the norms they justifiably desire to achieve. Gurr comments: “The frustration – aggression and the related treat – aggression mechanisms provide the basic motivational link between Relative Deprivation and the potential for collective violence.” Gurr also tie three other points to relative deprivation, namely dissonance, anomie and conflict. The second of the concepts anomie is significant in its effect to estimate opportunities. Those who observe deprivation and as a consequence realize an impression of disappointment become violent. They are ‘jealous’ of those who possess more. They protest or revolt against those who have more. They do not take measures to resolve the problem related to the sources of deprivation. Gurr treats “deprivation” as primarily psychological; thus he does not handle the socio-economic framework, which is the origin of deprivation. If such sense of deprivation is confined to an individual against another individual it leads to crime. When it is transformed to collective transformation a deprivation of region, community or caste – it assumes the shape of collective activity. But it is not escorted with ideology for the social system; it lies to be a remonstration or agitation and rarely takes a form of social movement. Relative deprivation is an important but not an adequate factor for protest movements. M.S.A.Rao contends, ‘a sufficient level of understanding and reflection is required on the part of the participants, and the must be able to observe and perceive the contrast between the social and cultural conditions of the privileged and those of the deprived, and must realize that it is possible to do something about it.’

Relative deprivation theory has influenced the development of numerous fields in the social sciences including psychology, economics, and sociology. For example, the theory of relative deprivation has influenced psychological theory. In particular, relative deprivation theory is the foundation of multiple theories of social psychology including frustration-aggression theory, equity theory, social comparison theory, and reference group theory. The concept of relative deprivation and its measurement is used in the field of economics (Bossert and D’Ambrosio, 2007). Economics focuses on the measurement and quantification of relative deprivation using multiple summary indices of deprivation including the Gini coefficient, the maximum index, and the coefficient of variation (Chakravarty and Mukherjee, 1999). In the field of sociology, relative deprivation theory is used to explain the root causes of social movements and revolutions (Krahn and Harrison, 1992).