Table Of Content“In this fine and accessible book, Toews not only presents some of the key
themes of Tarde’s sociological program, but he also demonstrates how they
might be brought into conversation with contemporary debates. This includes
showing how Tarde’s work can serve to readdress questions of nature. By
combining historical examinations with present-day theoretical concerns, this
books offers an at once useful and important contribution.”
Christian Borch, author of Social Avalanche
Gabriel Tarde
This book presents the core ideas of early sociologist Gabriel Tarde and sug-
gests a new pathway for sociology based on his foundational work. Rejecting
anthropocentrism, Tarde highlights the contrast between the natural and the
artificial, uniquely emphasizing the positive significance of the artificial in an
age in which people have come to distrust it profoundly. Recovering Tarde’s
theory today in the context of contemporary as well as classical scholarship
and recognizing how it fits with such phenomena as quantum physics and
digitalmedia,thisbookdevelopstheconceptofthecosmologicalimagination
asthecontextfora critical Tardiananalysisof artifice thatcan bringtogether
what we know about our contemporary future-oriented global societies.
How we know the universe, our place in it, the place of other animals and
objects in it, our global socialities, our human claims of power and privilege
within it, are pointed questions Tarde asks as he wonders whether a future
temporality conducive to constant artifice has become our normal human
way of life. Considering our ambivalence about modern products and mod-
ernity in general, our thinking about the future, and our tendency to forget
what nature used to signify in its presentation of problems beyond our con-
trol, such as illnesses and epidemics, Gabriel Tarde: The Future of the Artifi-
cial demonstrates the reasons for which we need to return to Tarde’s work to
rediscover its relevance for public debate aswe seek to think through the new
era and its societies in which culture and nature are no longer distinct.
This book will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with inter-
ests in our digital age, new sociologies of materials and objects, neomona-
dology, and the thought of Gabriel Tarde.
DavidToewsisaseniortutorandcoursecoordinatorintheSchoolofEnglish
and Media Studies at Massey University, New Zealand. He is the author of
Social Life and Political Life in the Era of Digital Media.
Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought
166 Max Weber and the Path from Political Economy to Economic Sociology
Christopher Adair-Toteff
167 Outlines of a Theory of Plural Habitus
Bourdieu Revisited
Miklós Hadas
168 Marcel Gauchet and the Crisis of Democratic Politics
Edited by Natalie J. Doyle and Sean McMorrow
169 Anatomies of Modern Discontent
Visions from the Human Sciences
Thomas S. Henricks
170 Critical Theory of Coloniality
Paulo Henrique Martins
171 Karl Polanyi and the Paradoxes of the Double Movement
John Vail
172 Nationalism and Hegemony
The Consolidation of the Nation in Social and Political Life
Michaelangelo Anastasiou
173 Lockean Property Ethics and Restitution
David Jarrett
174 Making Citizenship Work
Culture and Community
Edited by Rodolfo Rosales
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/
RSSPT
Gabriel Tarde
fi
The Future of the Arti cial
David Toews
Firstpublished2022
byRoutledge
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©2022DavidToews
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withoutintenttoinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-PublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Toews,David,author.
Title:GabrielTarde:thefutureoftheartificial/DavidToews.
Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2022.|
Series:Routledgestudiesinsocialandpoliticalthought|
Includesbibliographicalreferences.
Identifiers:LCCN2021056579(print)|LCCN2021056580(ebook)|
ISBN9781032012759(hardback)|ISBN9781032012797(paperback)|
ISBN9781003177982(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Tarde,Gabrielde,1843-1904.|Sociologists--France.|
Sociology.
Classification:LCCHM479.T37T642022(print)|
LCCHM479.T37(ebook)|DDC301--dc23/eng/20211118
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2021056579
LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2021056580
ISBN:978-1-032-01275-9(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-032-01279-7(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-003-17798-2(ebk)
DOI:10.4324/9781003177982
TypesetinTimesNewRoman
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
I refer here to the pure sociologist, who, through a necessary
although artificial abstraction, is distinguished from the nat-
uralist … they hear, in a certain way … the music without seeing
the orchestra.
Gabriel Tarde
Contents
Acknowledgements x
Prologue: Anti-Prediction xi
Introduction 1
1 The Rise of the Artificial 13
2 A Sociology of the Cosmos 28
3 The Artifice of the Self 40
4 Digital Mediation 56
5 The Return of Nature 70
6 Imagining the Future 82
Conclusion: The Realityof Life in the Future 98
References 104
Index 111
