Collective Action for Social Change: Empowerment for Successful Change - Essay Sample

Introduction

Collective action is a common effort that occurs among people with similar tendencies and ideas and deviates from the social norms of a situation. An article that has addressed collective action for social change is "Collective Psychological Empowerment as a Model of Social Change: Researching Crowds and Power" by John Drury and Steve Reicher. The article indicates that empowerment in collective events influences how social change fails or succeeds in groups. Empowering groups indeed makes groups make significant social change in society as they have the numbers to drive change, can work in anonymity, makes people meet other individuals with the same goal and can make groups to be confident to engage in collective actions in future.

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Drury and Reicher (2009) indicate that people in groups often experience anonymity and it makes people change from individual to group identity and conform more to the situation of the group they join. It is supported by Van Zomeren, Postmes, and Spears, (2008)who claim that people engage in collective action to take full advantage of personal gains and reduce personal losses. People often receive social identity and motivation to act in groups as they are anonymous hence cannot be singled out and blamed for any actions that are done by the group. Social identity also influences how people in groups act in solidarity. For instance, some people become radical in groups and they often view the authorities as antagonists while those who are moderates are open to expressing their views to the authorities. People viewed as radical can challenge the authorities and be perceived as homogenously dangerous. Such as treatment can make them feel left out and have a negative attitude towards the authorities which may have not been the case before the authorities declare them dangerous and in the end, it may make the group go against the authorities.

People aim for and benefit from positive social identities that are linked with their membership groups (Van Zomeren, Postmes, and Spears, 2008). Shared identity among group members makes people focus on the issues they face and strive to succeed in their goals towards social change. For instance, people on low status or disadvantaged groups can join hands to protest for the problems they face and their common goal can lead to changes in the services are offered to them thus improving their lifestyle in the end. It has been highlighted by Drury and Reicher (2009) when addressing their study in 1999 where participants came together as a united force as they all experienced illegitimate exclusion from a council meeting and managed to have a committed team that fought for their misery (Drury and Reicher, 1999). Their shared identity pushed them to be in unison rather than been in small subgroups. One of the situations that can influence people to work in unison is police assumptions that all people in a group have the same intentions. The common aspects of a crowd often make them impose a common fate to all group members making a heterogeneous crowd, homogenous. In cases where the authorities deny a group to protest and use offensive approaches to disperse gatherings can make a group that supported the authorities oppose them hence leading to behavioral change. Such an act can make people have expectations of mutual support amongst each other as well as feelings of consensus which empowers them to take on the police when they are attacked and also express their radicalization. People today know their rights and freedoms and hence rarely get intimidated by authorities. They fight back using any means whether physical or virtue as long as it meets the needs of the crowd. It is therefore clear that the empowerment that people have gained over the years on understanding their rights has enabled them to join hands with like-minded people to make changes on issues they face in society.

Empowerment of groups makes them endure beyond collective events and makes people confident that they can engage in similar events in the future. When people engage in collective actions, they develop activist identities that build their courage and abilities to mobilize other issues later in life (Van Zomeren, Postmes, and Spears, 2008). The shared beliefs among group members give them a sense of collective power that makes them believe that they can transform the destiny and situation of their group. Once people change due to the beliefs they have when in a collective event, they carry on the changes to their personal lives hence affects how they interact with their partners and how they approach their future career plans. Also, empowerment makes people confident to take up more collective actions in the future such as social exchanges, social movement events, and demonstrations. I support this argument from Drury and Reicher (2009) as people gain confidence in handling issues after they implement them successfully or have support to conduct them. The support of other empowered people and the previous knowledge of handling social movements instills confidence in a person that one can handle the issue later in life. Collective actions, therefore, make people prepared for future events and makes them proactive towards handling them due to their past experiences.

Unison in a group is the major force towards social change from collective action. It builds people's confidence to act on current and future issues affecting them. It also enables people to meet like-minded people who join hands and ensure that any issue they face is solved regardless of whether they receive the support of authorities or not. Groups intending to make social changes should, therefore, make use of collective actions to succeed in their missions.

References

Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (1999). The intergroup dynamics of collective empowerment: Substantiating the social identity model of crowd behavior. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 2(4), 381-402.

Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (2009). Collective psychological empowerment as a model of social change: Researching crowds and power. Journal of Social Issues, 65(4), 707-725.

Van Zomeren, M., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2008). Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives. Psychological bulletin, 134(4), 504.