Theory of Collective Behavior

The golden anniversary edition of THEORY OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR from Quid Pro Books is a modern take on a sociological and social psychology classic. Featuring a reflective new Preface by the author and an extensive, analytical Foreword by MIT's Gary Marx, it is an authorized and painstaking edition—not just scanned and forgotten like most such reprints today. As part of the Classics of the Social Sciences Series, it features quality formatting such as original notes, legible tables, complete index, and extensive bibliography (including updating references for the new Foreword). The original page numbers are embedded for continuity of citations and referencing.

Publisher's Note: Some retail sites use our description for others' OCR or photocopied versions without clarifying that it only applies to the anniversary edition by Quid Pro, LLC. Only the Quid Pro edition features proofread materials, fully-presented notes and bibliography, and new introductions by the author and Gary Marx. It is the authorized edition, prepared with care and pride, and has a cover painting by sociologist Jerome Carlin of revolutionary figures at a costume ball. Please look for this specific version and not rely on the description's location as indicating which one is sold for that page.

As Gary Marx notes in his Foreword, "The book is elegant, original, carefully crafted and forcefully argued. In its totality, it is a fine example of an effort to define a field, identify major types and systematically connect central variables. This is done to organize an amorphous collection of behaviors that seem to be intuitively linked, but which had not previously enjoyed an equivalent framework for identifying those links. His innovative treatment of the form known as the craze nicely illustrates this. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of economic history and applying stages of the value-added process, Smelser shows commonalities across areas previously seen as distinct—such as economic swings, expressive crowds and fads and fashion—and offers a systematic way to differentiate these from other forms. The sense of craftsmanship and the care in construction can serve as a model for theorizing and for the effort to both acknowledge and yet reduce the indeterminacy of social phenomena."

Marx concludes, "As 2011 events such as the Tsunami in Japan and the unexpected uprisings in the Middle East suggest, the importance of the field and the need to advance knowledge is not just historical. This book remains a rich contribution toward that advancement."

Now in its second printing, it is truly a standard, foundational work in the field, often adopted for classwork and research.

Neil J. Smelser is university professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned degrees from Harvard and Oxford, as well as his PhD from Harvard in 1958. He has served as director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Dr. Smelser has been recognized by election into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Association, and the National Academy of Sciences. He has served as President of the American Sociological Association. And in 2002 he received the first Mattei Dogan Award from the International Sociological Association, for a distinguished career in sociology.