De Schiedamse rel. Een exploratief onderzoek naar enkele organisatie-aspecten bij collectief geweld

Samenvatting

In Aug 1976, in Schiedam, a Dutch town, a violent encounter took place between two Turkish & at least five Dutch youngsters. One of the Dutch boys was killed by one of the Turks, who then escaped & could not be traced by the police. For five days afterwards, groups of Dutch youngsters attacked Turkish property & some persons. The Schiedam riot was studied to collect some information about a neglected aspect of collective behavior: the organizational part of it. Two questions were posed: (1) How does a collectivity get its form? (2) Is there a division of tasks to achieve the objectives of a collectivity, & if so, what is the nature of these tasks? Data were collected in 96 interviews with people who were involved in the riot (mostly Dutch youngsters) who participated in the collective actions, but also policemen & members of the Turkish community. The most important aim was to formulate some hypotheses at the end of the study. A detailed description of the events of the riot is presented. Findings are confronted with a number of theoretical orientations in the field of collective behavior. Several hypotheses are formulated: (A) if a group thinks its norms are seriously violated by a member of another community & that there is little chance that the violator will be punished by the authorities, the aggrieved group will take action to punish him or have him punished; (B) if a collectivity has the intention of punishing a person held responsible for serious violation of norms, & it it is composed of persons who traditionally are physically violent, this collectivity will punish the violator with physical violence; (C) if an aggrieved collectivity undertakes action to punish a norm violator, the recruiting will be based on friendship & acquaintance preexistent to the riot; (D) if a collectivity is composed of subgroups preexistent to a riot, the leadership group will be recruited from members of these subgroups, & then the leaders will do most of the tasks themselves; (E) if the leadership group of a collectivity is mainly recruited from subgroups, the general leader (acceptable for all participants) is not a member of one of these groups; & (F) if the original objectives of a riot have been achieved, then the expressive objectives will grow more important than the instrumental ones, to make the riot last, & further, as the riot endures, the objectives & tasks will be more bound to the subgroups & also more directed against the controlling agencies. 1 Table. Modified AA