Benjamin Abrams’ The Rise of the Masses: Spontaneous Mobilization and Contentious Politics presents a synthetic theory that unifies the sociopolitical and sociopsychological dimensions of mass action, exploring how widely held individual characteristics interact in aggregate with large-scale structural shifts to produce mobilization. This “theory of mass action … demonstrates how individual predispositions toward participation in causes can be activated by emergent social conditions without the need for organized recruitment by movement networks” (p. 4). Abrams calls this aggregate theory “affinity-convergence theory.”

In focusing only on organizations or even mobilization after the intervention of organized groups, we often overlook much of the mobilization that happens earlier in spontaneous ways. As Abrams emphasizes, “Spontaneous mass mobilization occurs when large numbers of people partake in contentious politics without reliance on social movement organizations and their networks” (p. 3). The Rise of the Masses aims to recapture spontaneous collective action as an object of study in light of the considerable advances we have made in understanding its more organized analog.

Abrams reminds us that mobilization takes place due to the participation of different types of actors: organized groups, their supporting networks, and the masses. How and why do the masses take part in the complex story of mobilization? Answering this question suffices as an important motivation for us to study mass participation in mobilization. In this important task, we ought to avoid conventional analyses that reduce spontaneous collective action to atomized individual-level rational choices or psychological predilections.

Another mistake in examining the masses’ role is to reduce the analyses to purely structural accounts of the rise and fall of movements. Instead, we should favor a “theoretical approach that unifies the sociopolitical and sociopsychological dimensions of mass action, exploring how widely held individual characteristics interact in aggregate with large-scale structural shift is to produce mobilization” (p. 4). In simple terms, affinity-convergence theory concerns how an individual’s predisposition leads them to participate in a cause (affinity) and how certain social conditions interact with these affinities (to converge) to lead these individuals to participate in mobilization.

Abrams devotes Chapter 2 to thoroughly detailing the two main parts of his theory. He defines affinity as “the extent to which [individuals] possess a spectrum of personal traits that predispose them toward the cause” (p. 33). The term affinity is rooted in radical Spanish anarchism and has been popularized in the business world where managers invest in supporting the growth of affinity networks. Abrams brings the concept to the social sciences and suggests that affinity is either psychological or social. Psychological affinities include identity, perceived injustices, and attitudes, and these form individual dispositions. Some of the affinities that drive individuals to act and join a cause include interests and needs.

Social affinities refer to an individual or group’s conditions in the social world: their patterns of activity, social status, resources, and obligations. There are four key categories of social affinities: patterns of activity such as jobs, pastimes, duties, residence, and media exposure; social status such as race, class, unemployment, gender, age, and (dis)ability; resources such as wealth, information, transport, and tools; and obligations such as eating, sleeping, security (or its absence), child-rearing, and long work hours.

Abrams emphasizes that “the role played by particular social affinities is often contingent and contextually dependent. Certain causes may draw heavily upon participant resources, while others might more readily appeal to people’s everyday obligations” (p. 37). In contrast to the contingent nature of social affinities, psychological affinities “comprise those factors that predispose people to consciously seek to participate in or make contact with a given cause” (p. 37).

The other important part of this theory is convergence. Affinities need to be activated by social dynamics, which then catalyze participation in political or social contention. In simple terms, these activating dynamics are called conditions of convergence. Conditions of convergences refer to the situations, frames, and spaces that encourage some form of participation by individuals with affinities toward a given cause. The three main categories of convergences are structural (situations), cognitive (frames), and physical (spaces).

One of the most novel aspects of Abrams’ theory is the subtypes of these convergences or activating dynamics. These subtypes include those that are opportune, exceptional, and paramount. The opportune subtype makes participation in a cause more likely to yield positive results and less likely to inflict costs. Convergence with an exceptional subtype makes participation more available to those aligned with a cause. Convergence with a paramount subtype occurs when ordinary incentive structures are overcome or overridden.

The larger milieu of the different subtypes of convergence and their interactions is the context in which convergence occurs. Although experienced movements, organizations, and activist networks have their own ways of engendering mobilization, we cannot forget how mass mobilization takes place: namely, according to the logic of affinity-convergence. Abrams emphasizes that

In the main section of the book, Abrams selects four cases to examine affinity-convergence theory, which were all chosen because they “exhibited instances of spontaneous mass mobilization despite being highly distinct from one another” (p. 7). The first two cases are drawn from 2011, the so-called Year of the Protester: the Egyptian Revolution (January) and the Occupy Wall Street protests (September). The other two cases put the theory through the test of time, further assessing its generalizability: the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in the United States in 2020 and the French Revolution in 1789. The goal of including the latter is to assess the theory’s applicability in an early-modern context.

Abrams’ method in this comparison is based on what he describes as a “comparative history plus”—that is, “a comparative historical approach to cases further enriched by supplementary methods that increase the resolution of our analysis” (p. 6). Abrams admits that this methodological intervention is not novel, but rather an approach already endorsed by comparative and historical sociologists such as Lachmann and Calhoun and mixed methods ethnographers such as Fu and Simmons. Abrams affirms that “A ‘plus’ approach to comparative historical research begins from the premise that historical sociology constitutes an attempt to trace the dynamics and processes of social change, rather than the exclusive subordination of sociology to the strictures of traditional historical inquiry” (p. 6).

Obviously, the first three cases are more contemporary, and the French Revolution is a notable historical case. Abrams’ analysis in the latter case is guided by the wisdom and insight of the many existing historical studies. Abrams is wise to clearly state that, in this case, his goal is not to “uncover some utterly new, undiscovered segment of the French Revolution, nor does it attempt to retell the full history of the case” (p. 198). Rather, he analyzes the revolution as “a shadow case study, designed in the first place to test the generalizability of the theory … and, having passed that test, to further enrich theory building by drawing attention to contextual continuities and divergences” (p. 198).

The book is very rich with empirical details, figures, and tables to demonstrate the specificity of affinity-convergence theory through these cases. The analyses are incisive and based on highly extensive in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations, the interrogation of public and private archives, as well as the scouring of social media sources and live protest footage. The balance of these various methods of data collection is individually tuned to each case. Abrams provides a superb analysis in which he puts spontaneous mobilization in dialogue with empirical evidence, triangulating the analysis of small-scale personal participation and large-scale sociopolitical shifts in each case. The Rise of the Masses represents a much-needed synthesis of new critical works in social movements and revolution literature, bringing together cognitive and social structural approaches in one theory. In addition, affinity-convergence theory also brings advanced approaches to bear on understanding the role of agency and the theorization of space in contention.

Notwithstanding these strengths, I would like to raise three questions. First, I believe that Abrams presents a framework that gives proper attention to revolutionary mobilization. Yet, may it be possible that the book conflates the categories of mass protests, uprisings, and revolutionary crisis/situation under the rubric of affinity-convergence theory? I acknowledge that the definitions of these categories are not settled in the literature. But I invite Abrams to tell us more about the how affinity-convergence theory can attend to the revolutionary nature or intensity of the contentious episodes and the variations of his examined cases regarding these intensities. Perhaps the categories of opportune, exceptional, and paramount dynamics of convergence could speak to these, for example, exceptional to revolutionary moments more than others. But critical scholars would welcome more clarifications.

My second point relates to the question of demobilization, which Abrams rightfully acknowledges that his theory does not cover. One could argue that there is a causal connection between defeated revolutions and the rise of fascism or totalitarian regimes (cases of German revolution 1918–1919, and Egyptian Revolution of 2011 analyzed in The Rise of the Masses come to mind). Given the nuances of affinity-convergence theory in analyzing convergence, perhaps we need to come up with rigorous frameworks to analyze divergence or demobilization and the specificity of masses withdrawal from politics.

My third question relates to the role of space. Abrams’ work reminds us of the significance of streets and squares in revolutionary mobilization. While I totally agree with the significance of the battles on the ground in revolutionary mobilization, digital spaces also matter. In the context of changes in mobilization and the varying nature of the interplay between what is known as online activism and offline activism, the rise of the phenomenon of digital repression and AI technology in relation to contention, I invite Abrams to tell us more about affinity-convergence theory and the changing role of digital spaces in contention.

The Rise of the Masses is a multifaceted contribution that cuts across the disciplines of political sciences, sociology, and psychology. Both the theory and the detailed figures and anatomy of the selected cases will be highly useful in teaching graduate and undergraduate classes. And finally, if revolutions and uprisings are the work of the ordinary masses along with leaders and organizations, one ought to attend to the complex interplay between all three. The Rise of the Masses encourages us to reconsider the nuances of mass intervention in history and to think more carefully about the spontaneity of mass action.