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The authors examined the crowd sections of 20 introduction to sociology textbooks, coding them for the presence of seven crowds myths-claims about crowds that have no empirical support and have been rejected by scholars in the field. The number of myths per book ranges from five to one. The authors conclude by making suggestions for rewriting these chapters and for improving the book reviewing process.
TEACHING THE INTRODUCTION to sociology course poses a unique challenge because it requires a broad knowledge of a discipline characterized by specialization. The introductory textbook, then, assumes an importance in these courses that it does not in single-topic courses where the instructor has expertise and can easily evaluate, qualify, and contradict information in the texts for students.1
We suspect that when most sociologists review introductory textbooks for possible adoption, they approach the task much as we do-they begin by reading the chapter or chapters of their special interests and make their first judgment on that basis. Therefore, the first chapter we read is on collective behavior, crowds, and social movements.
We have been particularly distressed over the years by the poor quality of chapters that deal with crowds and other types of socalled collective behavior. These chapters usually serve as the ultimate or penultimate chapter and often also cover the topics of social movements and social change. They explain to students that the facts and principles described in the previous chapters are subject to change and posit crowds as one path to this change. Unfortunately, the information presented often suggests that social change occurs through irrationality, volatility, and extreme emotion. The images of crowds found in these books follow what Clark McPhail (1991) refers to as "the myth of the madding crowd."
It may be too much to expect authors of introductory textbooks to be up-to-date on the latest work in all fields of sociology, including collective behavior, but it would seem reasonable to assume they would be familiar with material that has had currency for over 30 years. We refer here to Carl Couch's (1968) assessment of what had become the predominant image of the acting crowd. His "Collective Behavior: An Examination of Some Stereotypes" (hereafter, "Stereotypes") was originally published in the journal Social Problems, but its largest...