Abstract

The starting point of Tarde's sociology are individuals. That does not make it a methodological individualism. Instead, it is a sociology of infinitesimal difference which finds in individuals an adequate reference for addressing social life, and that ends up by turning problematic both the notion of individual and society. Imitation is here an elemental form of social relation, but it is not the only one: opposition and invention are elemental social relations as well. Social life, in what it has of proliferating and chaotic, is made up of these relations, differential relations that can however be organized, or better yet integrated, both logically and teleologically (without being totalized by this organization). By relying on pluralistic ontological and epistemological positions which privilege difference over identity, time over space, the infinite over the finite, this sociology shows itself as off-centered regarding formerly and today’s holisms and individualisms. Re-reading it as an infinitesimal sociology of flows and ensembles can open a way to go beyond the oppositions between individual and society, and between micro and macro approaches.