Mass action (sociology)

Mass action in sociology refers to the situations where large number of people behave simultaneously in similar way but individually and without coordination.

For example, at any given moment, many thousands of people are biting their nails - without any coordination between themselves, they are nonetheless performing the same mass action. Another, more complicated example would be one based on Max Weber's (famous 19th century German sociologist) work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber wrote that capitalism evolved when the Protestant ethic influenced large number of people to create their own enterprises and engage in trade and gathering of wealth. In other words, the Protestant ethic was a force behind an unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that led to the development of capitalism.

More developed forms of mass actions are group behavior and group action.

See also

• social action
• collective behavior
• Collective Effervescence