Category Archives: Gabriel Tarde

Gabriel Tarde, Pierre Janet, resist, surface / depth, the reactive

The Reactive: Social Experiences of Surface and Depth – Chapter

9781138490642

“The Reactive” chapter now published in the Volume edited by Christian Borch (2019) Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion: On Mimesis and Society. (Routledge, 2019) https://www.crcpress.com/Imitation-Contagion-Suggestion-On-Mimesis-and-Society/Borch/p/book/9781138490642

PDF brighenti-2019-the-reactive

(( Based on a speech I gave at this 2015 conference in Copenhagen: http://www.capacitedaffect.net/?p=771 ))

Gabriel Tarde, measure, media, milieu, social manifolds, urban, value, visibility

The social life of measures

Now published in Theory, Culture & Society 35(1) http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/tcsa/35/1

Burroughs-noMetrics

Abstract

Issues of measure and measurement, and their relation to value and values, are of concern in several major threads in contemporary social theory and social research. In this paper, the notion of ‘measure-value environments’ is introduced as a theoretical lens through which the life of measures can be better understood. A number of points are made which represent both a continuation and a slight change in emphasis vis-à-vis the existing scholarship. First, it is argued that the relation between measure and value is necessarily circular – better, entangled. Second, a conceptualisation of measures as territorialising devices is advanced. Third, importance is given to the fact that measures are not simply tools in our hands, they are also environments in which we live. Fourth, attention is drawn to the fact that the unit (n=1) is not just a quantitative happening among others, but is qualitatively distinct.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263276416689028

The Social Life of Measures (pre-print version)