Typical Collective Re-actions

Typified Triggers and Associated Protests

Abstract

] This article is based on the construction and analysis of a database of 286 mobilizations that occurred in France from 1997 to 2000 and were relayed in a daily newspaper. It highlights the role of “typical collective reactions” in the outburst of collective protests. When repertoires of contention theories suggest a more or less constrained range of choice in the protest techniques available to a group, we will emphasize that in many cases there is a main method of action linked to a typical situation and which exerts on it an unparalleled constraint: the strike in the case of employees’ protests, the petition for district mobilizations, or other examples that vary over time and cultural contexts. This typical collective reaction, as point of convergence regarding players’ expectations, appears to them as strongly binding evidence despite the diversity of their calculations, expectations, concerns, and interactions.