Gabriel Tarde: The Future of the Artificial PDF
Preview Gabriel Tarde: The Future of the Artificial
“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 4ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN andbyRoutledge 605ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10158 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness ©2022DavidToews TherightofDavidToewstobeidentifiedasauthorsofthisworkhasbeen assertedinaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,Designs andPatentsAct1988. Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orin anyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwriting fromthepublishers. Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor registeredtrademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanation 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
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