Rediscovering Gabriel Tarde∗

∗A 50th anniversary edition of his first book, Personal Influence, with Paul Lazarsfeld, was published this year by Transaction Publishers.

Abstract

Gabriel Tarde (l843–1904) is thought to have “lost” his debates with Durkheim by insisting that sociology ought to occupy itself with observable interpersonal processes. Given contemporary interest in such processes—much abetted by the computer—Tarde's reputation is being rehabilitated. Terry Clark (1969) was first to notice that Tarde (1898) had anticipated Lazarzfeld's two-step flow of communication. Tarde's work has bearing on social networks, interpersonal influence, diffusion of innovation, and the aggregation of public opinion.

Keywords:

• communication theory
• public opinion
• classical tradition
• conversation
• political discourse

Notes

∗A 50th anniversary edition of his first book, Personal Influence, with Paul Lazarsfeld, was published this year by Transaction Publishers.

1. Jaap van Ginneken (1992) includes a brilliant chapter on Tarde in his Crowds, Psychology and Politics. Its publication follows on the heels of a new French edition of L'opinion et la foule, with an introduction by Dominick Reynie (1989).

2. In addition to the large excerpts in Clark (1969), we have been working from a full translation by Ruth Morris, as yet unpublished, for which we owe thanks for financial support to Peter Clarke, former dean of the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California.

3. Only after submitting the present paper for publication did I become aware that this typology appeared in print in a paper by my former associate, Herbert Hamilton (1971), giving due credit. It is reproduced here by permission of the Oxford University Press. It also appears in Gabriel Weimann (1994, p. 53).

4. Moscovici (1985, p. 38) cites an important passage from Tarde granting that, ostensibly, “there is nothing more intoxicating than the sense of freedom, of the non-necessity of any submission to others…. [However] the truth is that for most men there is an irresistible sweetness inherent in obedience, credulity, and almost lover-like servility.” Erich Fromm's (1941) Escape from Freedom echoes this assertion in discussing how the newly emancipated masses spurned their freedom to choose.

5. Tarde argued that the press created not only the public but the nation, and in this he was followed by Anderson. He believed that the press overthrew the king by displacing his coordinating functions, and by making one nation out of separate regions it achieved majority rule in the parliament. These points are discussed in Katz (1998).

6. See Katz et al. (2004) for discussions of canonization in communications research, especially the paper by Illouz (2004).

7. In their study of longevity of the reputations of artists, Lang and Lang (1990) discuss the advantages of having an advocate.

8. Mutz (1998) despairs of the salience of interpersonal influence in the political arena and believes that the media provide a better answer. Schudson (1997) despairs of both.

Kim, J. (1997). On the interactions of news media, interpersonal communication, opinion formation, and participation: Deliberative democracy and the public sphere. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.