Comments on: Forgetting Gabriel Tarde

By: Anthropology roundup: “Anthropology Blogs Update… | Erkan's Field Diary

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:40:56 +0000

[…] Forgetting Gabriel Tarde […]

By: Matthew Watson

Matthew Watson — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 21:18:56 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Mateo. To offer a bit more context, Spier supports the claim that the case of the sun dance among the Cheyenne and Arapaho is “at variance” with Tarde’s concept because he shows that their respective organizing ideas only make sense against their cultural backdrops, whereas objects or ritualized actions diffuse quite smoothly. It’s an argument consistent with what Kroeber, Bateson, and Benedict would come to call “configurations” or “patterns” of culture. The Boas piece that you point to, on the other hand, seems to be concerned much more narrowly with creativity, innovation, and imagination in the development of artistic motifs. His emphasis there on “psychic processes” (well before personality studies) and the inadequacy of more formal, top-down arguments for conventionalism or evolution of motifs does seem consistent with Tarde (though, importantly, it’s much more situated and empirical).

By: Mateo

Mateo — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 18:28:32 +0000

Matt, having never read Tarde, I wonder if you could help get me oriented by giving me an idea of whether the following quote from Boas’s Alskan needlecases piece is in line or at variance with Tarde’s concept of imitation?

I believe a considerable amount of other evidence can be brought forward sustaining the point of view that I have tried to develop, namely, that decorative forms may be largely explained as results of the play of the imagination under the restricting influence of a fixed conventional style.