Bio: (1843-1904) French sociologist and criminologist. Gabriel Tarde (Jean-Gabriel De Tarde) studied law and worked as a lawyer and director of the Department of Criminal Statistics at the Ministry of Justice, and later lectured at the Collège de France. Tarde is best known for his contribution to the development of criminology and for his attempt to build a school of sociology that would match Durkheim's sociology. Although he studied the works of Italian criminologists Lombroso, Raffaele Garofalo, and Enrico Ferri, Tarde rejected their views on the deterministic influence of biology and the environment on criminal behavior. Tarde believed that the process of imitation (predisposition to act acquired during socialization), is a factor that can explain the difference between high or low crime rates in a given population. Social factors that encourage the imitation of criminal behavior are living in overcrowded suburbs or staying in prison. Tarde introduced the categories of professional criminal and juvenile delinquent into criminological terminology.

Tarde extended the process of imitation to the whole of society and thus came to methodological individualism which serves as the basis for his macro-social theory. Tarde explains social phenomena by permanent, socially shaped, psychological predispositions. Innovations occur in certain social groups and then spread further through social groups, and then to the whole society. If there were no social barriers, innovation would spread quickly and evenly, but in real situations, there are always barriers. The speed and patterns of the spread of innovation depend on these social circumstances. Individuals, themselves, are not able to resist this spread, but fall under the influence of social groups with which they are connected by interactions.

There is a difference, between rural and urban areas, in the way innovations are spreading. In the city, innovations spread like fashion, and when they reach the countryside, innovations are maintained through imitation, which has the form of a habit. Tarde singles out pride, closeness, and racial and class prejudice as psychological barriers to the spread of innovation. Psychological barriers especially reflect social divisions and inequalities. Political power has a special influence, because individuals imitate those who have more power, and avoid imitating those less powerful than themselves. Social consensus is formed when the attitudes adopted by the elite are extended to the whole society. Once the process of spreading innovation begins, it spreads with geometric progression. The spread of social consensus to the whole society is limited by barriers in communication, as well as in situations in which a large number of people find themselves in a crowd because then people reject the views of the politically more powerful and accept the views of those like them.

Main works

La criminalité comparée (1886);

La philosophie pénale (1890);

Les lois de l'imitation (1890);

Les transformations du droit. Étude sociologique (1891);

Monadologie et sociologie (1893);

La logique sociale (1895);

Fragment d'histoire future (1896);

 L’opposition universelle. Essai d'une théorie des contraires (1897);

Écrits de psychologie sociale (1898a);

Les lois sociales. Esquisse d'une sociologie (1898b);

L'opinion et la foule (1901);

La psychologie économique, 2 vols. (1902-1903).

Works translated into English:

Penal Philosophy (2015, in French 1890);

Monadology and Sociology (2012, in French 1893);

Underground Man (2021, in French 1896);

Social Laws - an Outline of Sociology (1899, in French 1898b);  

The Laws of Imitation (2013, in French (1890);

Communication and Social Influence: Selected Papers (2011).