ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to reconstruct the central features of Gabriel Tarde’s sociology in order to clarify his concepts of individual, society and social field. It seeks to show that this sociological perspective is still novel today for it implies a particular way of conceiving the social and its historical processes. Its peculiarity lies in not adjusting itself to the epistemological distributions that have dominated social sciences until today: individualism-holism, micro-macro, agency-structure. Based on a philosophy and an epistemology of infinitesimal difference, this sociology does not have individuals or social systems as the foundation of social life. Instead, its starting point is the field of inter-mental beliefs and desires where individuals, groups and social systems are made and un-made.
