Gabriel Tarde
Definition
French sociologist and magistrate (1843 to 1904) who proposed that imitation is the basic unit of social life and that crime is an imitated behaviour rather than an inherited defect.
Related terms
- Daniel Glaser
- American criminologist who proposed differential identification theory in a 1956 article, reframing criminal learning around identification rather than direct contact.
- Differential Identification
- Glaser's theory that a person pursues criminal behaviour in proportion to their identification with real or imaginary people from whose perspective that...
- Law of Insertion
- Tarde's third law: a new imitation is inserted alongside an existing custom and either merges with it or displaces it once it...
- Laws of Imitation
- Tarde's three-part framework, set out in Les lois de l'imitation (1890), describing how imitation is patterned by contact, by the layering of...
- Law of Imitation of Superiors by Inferiors
- Tarde's second law: imitation moves downward from people of higher social standing to people of lower standing, so vices as well as...
- Law of Opposition
- A phase Tarde described where two competing imitations conflict before one displaces the other, closely tied to the logic of insertion.
- Reference Group
- The person or figure, real or imagined, that an individual identifies with and whose perspective they adopt when judging their own conduct.
- Symbolic Interactionism
- The sociological tradition holding that people act based on meanings built through social interaction, the broader current Glaser's identification concept draws on.
Explained in these topics
- Theory of Imitation and Differential IdentificationFrench magistrate and sociologist who argued in 1890 that crime spreads through imitation the way fashion or language spreads.
- Tarde's Theory of Imitation and Differential Identification Theory