Crowds, Psychology, and Politics, 1871–1899

An exploration of the history of the emergence of crowd psychology in the late nineteeenth century.

Jaap van Ginneken (Author)

9780521032490, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 November 2006

284 pages, 37 b/w illus. 7 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.411 kg

'This is an ambitious project, and one that is braodly successful … In all these fields, Van Ginneken shows an easy mastery both of the literature and of previously unexploited primary sources.' Nature

Jaap van Ginneken's study explores the social and intellectual history of the emergence of crowd psychology in the late nineteenth century. Both the popular work of the French physician LeBon and his predecessors are shown to be influenced and closely connected with both the dramatic events and academic debates of their day. Although LeBon is generally attributed as having created the field of crowd psychology, this study demonstrates how he derived most of his key concepts from immediate predecessors, yet refused to acknowlege his debt to them. Van Ginneken traces the descendants and heirs of the original authors throughout Europe, using unpublished correspondence to shed light on their mutual relations. Recognizing that LeBon's work was by far the most popular, the success of his work is shown to have a decisive influence on many major political leaders of the twentieth century, ranging from Theodore Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle to Mussolini and Hitler.

List of figures, maps and tables
Preface
Introduction
1. The revolutionary mob: Taine, psychohistory and regression
2. The criminal crowd: Sighele, criminology and semi-responsibility
3. A missing link: Fournial, anthropology and the priority debate
4. The era of the crowd: LeBon, psychopathology and suggestion
5. The era of the public: Tarde, social psychology and interaction
Summary and conclusions
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]