1/19/2024 0 Comments Lt. col alfred dreyfus![]() Heralding « the era of the publics » and of modern public opinion However, one has to wait for his 18 articles in order to see a clear and effective presentation of the concepts of imitation as interaction and the public as a physically dispersed group -the Dreyfus affair returning to the centre of all conversations and marking its impact on French public opinion in such a way was above all, for Tarde, a terrain for :Ĭomprehending the sentiments and emotions of the public as « crimes of crowds » Ĭomprehending the « invention » processes of new objects of hatred by certain publicists and highlighting the emergence of public opinion through the dissemination of a newspaper ![]() ģIn light of these contemporary events, Gabriel Tarde distinguished between two forms of influence or social action: the crowd and its physical actions on the one hand, and the public and its actions at a distance, on the other-both entities being built on this elementary social rapport-the conversation-something quite neglected by sociologists 6. The Dreyfus affair could not be completely understandable if the Panama affair had not preceded it (…) To explain the persistence of the public in its wild juxtaposition of ideas, its usual stupidity and credulity in relation to newspapers may suffice-but to account for the ease with which all of the supporters of Dreyfus (Dreyfusards) were imputed to be corrupt, how these imputations spread and took deep root, it must be understood that the terrain had been admirably prepared by the Panama affair, which gave the world the spectacle of parliamentary and other corruption that was anything but imaginary 5. Tarde perceived the Dreyfus Affair as being part of a succession of tests of the Republic: he thus explained the rapid dissemination of the Affair and its influence on a capricious and malleable public opinion. He based this on several contemporary events such as the bakers’ crisis (1889), the Panama financial scandal (1892) and the anarchist attacks (Ravachol-March 11 and 27, 1892, Emile Henry- November 3, 1892) 4. In a second article, « Foules et sectes au point de vue criminel » (Crowds and Sects in Criminal Terms), he enlarged his view and range of the penal responsibility of collective offenses. In an early article entitled « Les crimes des foules » (The Crimes of Crowds), he presented a still vague interpretation of « imitation » as a suggestion and of the crowd as a group physically gathered. ![]() Between 18 there was a rupture, or at least a turning point in Tarde’s perceptions of social phenomena relating to crowds-a turn from a penal to a sociological perspective.ĢFrom 1892, Gabriel Tarde began to apply his concept of « imitation » to « crowds » and « sects ». ![]() However, it is important to note that the first two articles-« The Crimes of Crowds » and « Crowds and Sects in Criminal Terms -were accounts of research by a criminologist concerned with pathological crowds, and that the final two-« The Public and the Crowd », « Opinion and Conversation »-were analyses of social events as made by a sociologist. The articles from 1893, 1898, and 1899 were re-published in his 1901 work L’opinion et la foule (Opinion and the Crowd). Indeed, between 18, Gabriel Tarde published four articles outlining the concepts of the crowd, the public and opinion-« Les crimes des foules » (The Crimes of Crowds), Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, 1892 « Foules et sectes au point de vue criminel » (Crowds and Sects in Criminal Terms), Revue des Deux Mondes, November 15, 1893 « Le public et la foule » (The Public and the Crowd), Revue de Paris, July 15 and August 1, 1898 « L’opinion et la conversation » (Opinion and Conversation), Revue de Paris, August 15 and September 1, 1899. However, more than the event itself, which mobilized passions and deeply divided the French, the Dreyfus Affair was above all, an important part of Tarde’s thinking about the relationship between the press and public opinion. Like his contemporaries, he was a witness to that new crisis of the Third Republic that started as a judicial error and quickly became an ideological conflict and a political crisis. 1From his apartment at 62 Saint Placide 1, Gabriel Tarde 2 was at a mid-point between the two principal geographic poles of the Dreyfus Affair 3 : the Military School and the Sorbonne.
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