This may be one of my new guys. The blogpost cited before (The Pinocchio Theory is a great summary of Tarde that winds up exactly where I’ve been trying to be, believe it or not! (I loved Ripley‘s as a kid.)
This article by Bruno Latour about Tarde is about interrupting repetitions – think problematic moments! (and Latour looks interesting in his own right: Making Things Public).
Wikipedia shows his work turned to unsavory purposes (Le Bon) but also taken up by others who may be less scary….I’m not sure yet, because Mattelart lumps him in with the psychopathologists and (despite dysfunctionality) I really don’t think humanity is hopelessly pathological, but more investigation is on the horizon. I wonder if I can get the Encyclopedia Brittanica article on him from school?