The Criminal Crowd and Other Writings on Mass Society
By Scipio Sighele
Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Nicoletta Pireddu
Translated by Nicoletta Pireddu and Andrew Robbins
With a Foreword by Tom Huhn © 2018
Page Count: 496 pages
Cloth PUBLISHED AUG 2018 $115.00 . ISBN 9781487503185
eBook PUBLISHED AUG 2018 $115.00
The Criminal Crowd and Other Writings on Mass Society is the first English collection of writings by Italian jurist, sociologist, cultural and literary critic Scipio Sighele. Sighele is largely responsible for providing post-unification Italy with a new outlook on issues ranging from the blurring line between individual and collective accountability, the role of urbanization in the development of criminality, and the emancipation of women.
This work draws a multifaceted portrait of a provocative thinker and public intellectual caught between tradition and modernity during the European fin de siècle. Containing a comprehensive introduction by the editor, The Criminal Crowd and Other Writings on Mass Society includes Sighele’s seminal work, The Criminal Crowd, as well as his formative studies on group behaviour. Nicoletta Pireddu contextualizes Sighele’s contribution to the so-called ‘age-of crowds,’ from the fierce polemic with his French rivals Gustave LeBon and Gabriel Tarde to the scientific, literary, and cultural developments of his conceptualization of mass behaviours as a legitimate object of psychological investigation into a new century.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Tom Huhn
Introduction: "Alchemies of the Collective Soul: Scipio Sighele’s Crimes and Punishments" By Nicoletta Pireddu
A Note on the Texts and their Translations
The Criminal Crowd. An Essay on Collective Psychology
From The Criminal Couple. A Study in Morbid Psychology
From Sectarian Criminality
From The Intelligence of the Crowd
From The New Woman
From Modern Eve
From Tragic Literature
From In Art and in Science
Index
Nicoletta Pireddu (Ph.D. Comparative Literature, UCLA; Dottorato, English and American Literatures, Ca' Foscari University, Venice) is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on European literary and cultural relations, intellectual history, critical theories, and translation studies, and has been supported by NEH, Howard Foundation, and Borchard Foundation fellowships. She received the American Association for Italian Studies book prize (2002), the "Mario Soldati" award for criticism, the Georgetown FLL Distinguished Service Award, and the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching.