This book offers a new introduction to the thought of Gabriel Tarde, highlighting the continuing relevance, and even the novelty, of both his general theoretical approach and many of his specific analyses. Showing that Tarde elaborates a comprehension of the social that was received with difficulty in his time but is increasingly akin to ours, it demonstrates that the infinitesimal sociology offered to us by Tarde provides a framework through which we can understand a whole range of social phenomena. With attention to social networks, public opinion, innovation, diffusion, virality and virtuality—all of which were topics addressed by Tarde himself—the author clarifies and elaborates upon Tarde’s central theses on the multiple, differential, infinitesimal and infinite nature of both the social and the subjective. An examination of the importance of a figure whose work looked ahead to our own age, Reintroducing Gabriel Tarde will appeal to scholars and students of social sciences and social theory with interests in contemporary social thought.
Contents
INTRODUCTION | Hypothesis about an oblivion and remembrance plan
Where to locate Tarde’s work?
Three classical readings and a (neo) baroque one
Multitudes in heaven and Earth
The problem of the social and its pure sociology
CHAPTER 1 | Infinite and social theory
Infinitesimals or differentials
The labyrinth of the continuum
Leibniz’s universe
The composition of the infinite
Towards an infinitist social theory
Micro-mega
CHAPTER 2 | Individual, Society and Social Field
From the society to individuals
From points to lines
The social as skein, the individual as wool ball
Beliefs and desires as infinitesimal social forces
Infinitesimal sociology
CHAPTER 3 | The social as contagion, creation and fight
Social hypnosis (not everything is wakefulness with eyes wide open)
Contagion lines and social epidemics
Opposition, conflict, struggle
The social as a field of struggles
From doubt to war
Invention as social relation (and as engine of History)
Adaptation: difference and integration
Contingency and necessity / virtuality and actuality
Great and small / chance and reason
CHAPTER 4 | Sociology of flows and ensembles
The logic of social contagion
Social logic and persuasive syllogisms
Non-logic laws of imitation
The world within the home and vice versa
Social ensembles or systems
Social intelligence and general will
A science of intensive communication
CHAPTER 5 | The Continuity of the multitudes
The Crowd
The multitude as paradigm and laboratory
The individual, the crowd and its leaders
The corporation
The public, the mass-media
Evolution and metamorphosis
APPENDIX | Cartographical note
Tarde in Paris
Tarde in North-America
Back to France
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Biography
Sergio Tonkonoff is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, and Senior Professor of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires. He is the author of From Tarde to Deleuze and Foucault: The Infinitesimal Revolution.
