| Abstract: | This study is a foray into a neglected but nevertheless important area in the intellectual history of the sociology of crime. Its focus is the writings of Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904), an elusive figure who was tremendously influential in his own time yet whose criminology was quickly lost in the even wider acclaim then accorded his contributions to political philosophy and social psychology. Three consistent lines of enquiry in Tarde's considerable discourse on crime are explained here, as follows: (1) his virulent opposition to biological positivism; (2) his attempt to transcend the crude scientism of the Franco-Belgian moral statisticians; and (3) his debate with Durkheim about the putative normality of crime. It is suggested that Tarde's engagement in these debates contributed to a protracted, neoclassical compromise in the domain of penality whereby the legal subject of classical jurisprudence was rescued from the positivist revolution in criminology. |
