Abstract: As a contribution to the study of elementary collective behavior, this paper
summarizes our research on emergent behaviors and groups in the crisis time of
disasters. Although disaster researchers have observed emergent social phenomenon
since the initial development of the field in the 1950s, until recently there has not been
systematic study of the topic. In the 1960s, researchers at the Disaster Research
Center (DRC) developed a sociologically grounded fourfold typology of organized
behavior in disasters. Building on that work, we undertook to study the full range
of possible emergent phenomenon. The most important finding by far was that even
in organizations and groups that were not emergent, there was within them
nonetheless considerable behavioral emergence. We use this observation to develop a new typology of emergence that places emergent behaviors within the same
analytical framework as emergent groups. Although our research focused on the
characteristics of emergent phenomena, we also advance general hypotheses about the
social factors involved in emergence. Among our concluding remarks is the
observation that although disaster research on emergence has both informed and been
informed by the sociological subfield of collective behavior, an even stronger link
would be desirable.
