In France

I was delighted to participate in the conference on the thought of Gabriel Tarde at l’Université de Caen Basse-Normandie in France in April 2016.

This conference was organized by members of L’équipe Identité et Subjectivité [Identity and Subjectivity Research Centre] at l’Université de Caen Basse-Normandie.  Anne Devarieux was the main organizer.

The participants included Tarde scholars such as myself, Thierry Martin, Didier Debaise, Pierre Montebello, E. Alliez, and L. Salmon.

My paper was translated into French by Anne Devarieux.  The papers are being collected and published in a volume by a Cahiers at l’Universite de Caen.

I used this opportunity to write a follow up to my Chapter in The Social After Gabriel Tarde.  In that Chapter I argued that Tarde’s thought, representing a suppressed pole of philosophical debate with Durkheim, can be seen as a window to understanding the role of the disavowed non-sociological or ‘philosophical’ dimension of Sociology that Durkheim posited and which still influences the discipline today.  I developed the consequences of the idea of non-sociology for sociological explanations of phenomena such as sociability, particularly in the social media era.

Contact me if you are interested in a copy of my paper.