Webinar: Urban Avalanche: Crowds, Cities and Financial Markets

Date and time:
24 March 2021
01.00 pm (GMT)/08.00 am (EST)/10.00 pm (JST)

As part of a webinar series of the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions, Christian Borch (Sociology, Copenhagen Business School) will talk about the relationship between crowds, cities and financial markets.

According to late nineteenth-century crowd theory, modern cities are overwhelmed by crowds that carry away the urban inhabitants. The main mechanism suggested by fin-de-siècle sociologists to explain crowd behaviour is that of hypnotic suggestion, with people essentially being hypnotized by the crowd leader. This explanatory framework later fell into disrepute and together with it, classical crowd ideas were consigned to the dustbin of social theory. In his talk, Borch argues for resuscitating parts of the fin-de-siècle crowd theorization.

For more details about the Zoom link please click here.