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attainment of great wealth, demonstration of saintliness or superior morality, or mastery of an
aesthetic and civilized culture.
Tarde, with this interpretation of social leadership, provided a more integrated theoretical
underpinning for the structural and functional differentiation of elites than did, for example, even that
brilliant commentator on social stratification, Max Weber. In his threefold distinction of class, status,
and party, Weber helped advance thinking on social stratification far beyond the monolithic
conception of a unitary elite atop a single vertical hierarchy, as found in so many writers of the
period. 93 But Tarde, by systematically relating leadership patterns to the broader structures of a
society, moved social thinking even further toward an integrated theory of leadership and social
stratification.
VII. Social Control and Deviance
Tarde elaborated his ideas on social control and deviance in a number of different contexts, including
the discussions of imitation and mass communications, but his 1897 article on juvenile delinquency is
especially interesting in this area, as its analysis does not grow directly out of his general conceptual
framework. 94 Noting that misdemeanors had increased in several European countries as well as in
France over a period of several decades, Tarde attempted to unravel the underlying causes. The
increasing crime rate was a phenomenon that had concerned him ever since his early years as a
provincial judge; the attention Tarde devoted to this social problem was similar in many ways to his
concern, shared by Jacques Bertillon, Leroy-Beaulieu, and Durkheim, among others, about the
problem of depopulation. 95 It is interesting that both Tarde and Durkheim, when occupied with these
empirical problems instead of more general theoretical issues, came to strikingly similar conclusions.
Tarde distinguished five major factors, all related to one another but each somewhat distinct, which
he felt lay behind both the increasing crime rate and the declining birth rate. First was the breakdown
of traditional morality based on a Christian system of ethics. Numerous moral doctrines had
contributed to the destruction of Christian ethics, and in the process had weakened the moral strength
of the family without replacing these previously established beliefs with any firm alternatives.
In part as a consequence of this first factor, there developed among the middle and lower social
sectors of society an increased desire for social advancement as well as greater demand for new
luxury commodities. Partially released from the moral nexus of the family, rural farm workers and
small land owners were attracted to urban industrializing areas offering a higher standard of living
than that available in the rural areas. This geographical mobility, in turn, further weakened traditional
family ties.
But third, Tarde argued, despite the rising standard of living possible for the general population,
the proximity of recent urban migrants to far greater affluence than they had previously witnessed
generated demands that exceeded the possibilities offered by legitimate employment.
Out of these background factors emerges a deviant subculture, strengthened by alcohol, popular
newspapers, and the breakdown of traditional cultural patterns. “The little newspaper, supplementing
the little drink, alcoholizes the heart.” 96 The weakening of moral certainty in the lower and middle
sectors renders them increasingly unfit to resist the attractions of such a deviant subculture;
furthermore this malaise is increased by the shifting cultural patterns of the upper classes. 97
Attuned to unorthodox intellectual currents, the upper classes become less sure of themselves as a
model of social behavior for the lower sectors. Comtean positivism Tarde singled out along with
social Darwinism as especially unsettling. And social Darwinism in particular supports a