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This chapter integrates both structural and symbolic interactionist perspectives used in the study of collective behavior to provide a thorough examination of the campus culture and student–police interactions that precipitated a riot near James Madison University (JMU). While the analysis is anchored by Smelser’s (1971 [1962]) “value-added” model, it also accounts for cultural conditions common on college campuses. Importantly, the dynamics associated with this case may be similar to other riots – at sporting events, at religious processionals, etc. – occurring when authorities disrupt gatherings that have strong cultural resonance among participants. In these cases, attempts at disruption may be seen as an assault on norms strongly associated with a group’s identity. The study also used a unique data source – 39 YouTube videos posted of the riot event – that made it possible to capture the interactive and emergent quality of rioting behavior in real time from multiple vantage points.

In the past several years, economic sociology has grown into a new speciality within sociology. Numerous edited volumes, survey articles and handbooks herald its arrival and mark out its place in the sociological firmament (see, e.g. Granovetter and Swedberg, 1992; Swedberg, 1991; Smelser and Swedberg, 1994). Although classic social theorists like Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel frequently pondered the structure and conditions of industrial society and the problems its emergence generated, it was not until neoclassical economists recently began to study nonmarket social phenomena that sociologists reacted by taking up the market as an object of study.

As has been widely recognized in the literature, the post‐war economic boom which drew to a close by the early 1970s has been followed by an intense period of industrial restructuring characterized by marked instability in all three major spheres of economic activity: production, distribution, and finance. This process has taken place both at the global level and at the level of national economies (Cardenas, 1990). It reflects a profound change in the mode of capitalist accumulation. Prior to the current round of restructuring, accumulation was taken to be principally the inward‐oriented task of each nation's own economy. Now, it seems that successful capital accumulation (i.e. development) depends most upon a nation's competitive integration into the world market for goods and services (Garrido, 1995). The present mode of accumulation implies an opening of national economies to international trade in commodities and capital, both among the advanced industrial nations and between the industrialized and the newly‐industrializing countries. This has generated a heightened degree of competition among countries and among firms, given that the easy movement of capital, goods, and services has allowed for real competition to emerge among dispersed places around the globe based upon their comparative financial and productive advantages.

A somewhat common view of social movements is that they are somehow associated with the vanguard, or that they are at least leading the way to new possibilities on what are frequently considered to be cutting edge issues, that is, topics that few others are currently concerned with or informed about in meaningful ways. This has often been the case historically, and when it is, it is also one of the reasons why social movements are so exciting to study and have attracted such sustained social scientific attention. Sometimes this added scholarly attention to the movement and its issues is another salient variable in pushing forward the social and political change that the movement is aiming for. But social movements are not always on the cutting edge; indeed, sometimes they aren’t close to it. Social movements frequently only mirror concerns, processes, or patterns that are swirling about or even dominating the society of which the movement is a part. In this sense social movements are reflectors and followers just as much as they may be leaders. Yet even this view is too simplistic since it is also true that social movements may lag behind – only adopting practices and processes long after they are already well established in other sectors of the society.

Financial service institutions design commercial lending mechanisms for small businesses with specific kinds of business owners in mind, that is, owners who already own or have access to both capital and productive resources. Given the conventional mechanisms devised by traditional lenders, individuals without productive capital appear to be costly, high risk borrowers. Today a new financial service institution called micro‐lending offers credit to just these high risk borrowers by constructing alternative lending mechanisms based on peer networks. These alternative mechanisms reduce the costs of lending to a higher risk population while providing access to business information and human capital skills, creating opportunities to build productive capabilities and other, less tangible resources, such as community networks. Using a case study of a neighborhood‐based inner‐city micro‐loan program in New England, I investigate how micro‐lending operates to reduce the costs of lending, as well as examine the group interaction that emerges among program participants.