Why do crowds cause trouble?

Maíra Magalhães Lopes, Joel Hietanen and Jacob Östberg
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Maíra Magalhães Lopes: EM - EMLyon Business School
Joel Hietanen: Helsingin yliopisto = Helsingfors universitet = University of Helsinki
Jacob Östberg: Stockholm University

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Abstract: Through our ethnographic study of urban activism collectives in São Paulo, we propose another approach for exploring the process of collective formations and their longevity. Rather than seeking out the representational meanings of individualized communities, we approach collectivity from the perspective of crowds. Crowds are affective. Crowds are contagious. By adopting affect-based theorizing, we discuss affective intensities that bring about collectivity before the individuals awaken to narrate their meaning-makings. In our ethnographic context, collectives resist manifestations of gentrification (i.e., consumer culture in itself) and offer us a multifaceted site of being and becoming with the crowds. We explore how connections and disconnections affectively rekindle the social expression of collective bodies in consumer culture. This way, we add new dimensions to extant theorizing of consumer collectivity that tends to focus on individualized meaning, stability, and harmony.

Keywords: Gabriel Tarde; crowds; communities; collective bodies; Sara Ahmed; affective synchronization; Affect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-12-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05626250v1
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Published in Marketing Theory, 2021, 21 (4), pp.539 - 560. ⟨10.1177/14705931211034911⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05626250

DOI: 10.1177/14705931211034911

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