Coming together for a cause - Benjamin Abrams, The Rise of the Masses: Spontaneous Mobilization and Contentious Politics (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2023, 307 p.)

The past two decades have been punctuated by instances of mass mobilization.2011 saw the start of the revolutionary wave in the Middle East and North Africa.Later that same year, the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged in New York City and became a global phenomenon.The 2013 Gezi Park protests erupted in Istanbul, but quickly spread throughout the country with solidarity protests occurring around the world.In 2020, millions of people mobilized on almost every continent to protest police violence after George Floyd was murdered by officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis while three other police officers looked on.These and other similar events have reshaped social and political landscapes.While the initial triggers of these protests are often evident, explaining how they gained momentum to become mass mobilizations has proven more challenging, raising the question: how does mass mobilization occur?In his book, "Rise of the Masses: Spontaneous Mass Mobilization and Contentious Politics", Benjamin Abrams proposes a compelling answer to this question in the form of affinity-convergence theory.At the heart of affinity-convergence theory is the notion that whether a person mobilizes for a cause depends on their affinity for the cause in question.Abrams defines affinity as a predisposition to participate in a cause, and identifies several types of affinities.He distinguishes broadly between social affinities-which are based on patterns of activity, social status, resources and obligations-and psychological affinities--which refer to internal dispositions and drivers including identities, attitudes, perceptions, interests and needs.Together, these various affinities form the basis for common ground among people engaged in mass mobilization.Affinities are, however, necessary but insufficient conditions for mass mobilization: whether people mobilize in mass depends on the presence of certain social conditions that make it both possible and desirable for large groups of people to come together.Abrams refers to these as convergence conditions.Drawing on existing literature on contentious politics, he identifies three different subtypes of convergence conditions: convergence can take the form of opportunities that make protest more 1