Scipio Sighele Research Articles

Blind Spots in Crowds, Masses, and Multitudes

The brief historical overview comprises an account of classical crowd theories and their contemporary metamorphoses to contextualize the thematic section of the journal. Regarding the proverbial “age of the crowd” of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, a variety of attempts of conceptualization proved controversial but productive. Hyppolite Taine, Scipio Sighele, or Gustave Le Bon approached the phenomenon dominantly in psychological terms foregrounding the destructive elements of mass dynamics. In the interwar period, however, a first wave of differentiation might be detected, insofar as younger academic sub-disciplines, i.e., social statistics, seek to grasp the crowd as a structure with its intricate and partly paradoxical qualities. In recent scholarship, however, the diversification of the concept seems to have become even more complex: by shifting the focus from the “object crowd” to the “subject crowd”, descriptions of the multitude, the network, the swarm, or the assembly reflect the need to think of the crowd as an autonomous agency with emancipatory potentials.

Strike and tangle: Crowd control in the digital media environment

To better understand crowds and crowd control practices in the digital media environment, this article briefly probes two institutions that practice ‘crowd control’ online: a cybersecurity company called CrowdStrike and a social media analytics service called CrowdTangle. These two firms continue the discourses of crowd theory in the traditions of criminologist Scipio Sighele and crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon, adjusted for the new affordances of digital technology. The digital media environment affords infrastructure for forensically individualizing and influencing mass behaviour in the styles of Foucauldian and Deleuzian discipline, control and ‘moulding’. The probe concludes by emphasizing the political stakes of increasingly sophisticated crowd control infrastructures made possible through digital media environments.

Il popolo dei lombrosiani. Scienze sociali e classi subalterne in Italia fra Otto e Novecento

The article analyzes the representation of the “subaltern” in studies carried out between the late 19th and the early 20th centuries by two of Cesare Lombroso’s pupils, Alfredo Niceforo and Scipio Sighele. The two works focus on Lombroso’s theories and devote a particular attention to psychological and cultural hierarchies.

Criminal crowds: Responsibility attribution and social control in Sighele and Le Bon

Social control and responsibility attribution as fundamental concepts for a comparative analysis between the "Psychology of Crowds" (1895) by Gustave Le Bon and "The Criminal Crowd" (1891) by Scipio Sighele. The present study attempts to demonstrate the limitation of the distancing of the French thinker from the work of the Italian criminologist. Pioneering examples of psychology of crowds in a sociological/philosophical (for Le Bon) and criminological/forensic (for Sighele) interpretation, the texts follow some common reflections, overshadowed by the different background of the two authors and a different authorial purpose. In fact, for the eminent theoretician of positive law of Lombrosian inspiration the objective is to establish a criminal responsibility commensurate with the crimes of the members of the crowd, through the criterion of the temibility of the offender, for Le Bon instead (at least according to certain points of view) it is about providing the tools of control to the individual who does not want to be overwhelmed by the power of the crowd, while not neglecting even the latter some interesting suggestions of criminal law. This different perspective makes it easier for the reader to see the differences in thought and less easy to glimpse moments of conceptual harmony. At the same time, it will be attempted to demonstrate how it is not possible, even in spite of the title attributed by Sighele to his own work, to limit the reflection of the criminologist to the crimes of the crowds and not even flatten it on the controversial theories of criminal anthropology.

Pioneers in the Study of Crowds in Foreign Psychology: Scipio Sighele and Henry Fournial

Introduction. By the end of the 19th century the society had to adapt to new threats—namely, increasing the number and activity of the proletariat masses and spreading socialist and anarchist ideas. Many researchers concentrated their study on characteristics of crowds. Scipio Sighele and Henry Fournial have been pioneers in this field.
 Theoretical Basis. The paper describes two concepts which provided a starting point for studying crowds in foreign psychology. The main issues considered by Scipio Sighele and Henry Fournial were as follows: characteristics of the crowd as a social institution, its properties, activization factors, characteristics of leaders, personality changes within crowds, and the problem of criminal liability for mass crimes. The paper presents an innovative view of (a) the origin of excessive generalization of the crowd concept, (b) its uncritical acceptance in defining a number of social organizations, (c) and wrongful attributing characteristics of individual women to the crowd as the subject of mass action.
 Results. The revealed tendencies and a clearly distorted perception of crowds among representatives of the anthropological and criminalistic approach determined the critical attitude towards new science of temporary social groups.
 Discussion. A distinct trend towards isolated cognitive constructs and almost complete disregard for the study of the past contribute to a distorted understanding of the phenomenon of crowds in modern social psychology of spontaneous groups. The ideas of researchers of the past seem to be a necessary precondition for developing a holistic approach to this problem.
 Highlights
 
 Sighele and H. Fournial created the background for scientific understanding of the phenomenon of crowds until the mid 20th century; they considered the characteristics of the crowd as a social institution, its properties, activization factors, characteristics of leaders, personality changes within crowds, the problem of criminal responsibility for mass crimes.
 Methodological weaknesses in S. Sighele’s and H. Fournial’s studies included: (a) attributing negative traits of criminal crowds to other crowd types, (b) attributing a reduced intellectual potential to any meeting, and (c) attributing characteristics of women in the crowd to the crowd as the subject of mass action.
 The heritage of S. Sighele, H. Fournial, and other researchers of the initial period can help in overcoming excessive individualism and rationalism in modern crowd psychology.
 

Scipio Sighele: senatores boni viri, senatus mala bestia

The article examines Scipio Sighele’s critical analysis of parliamentarianism outlined in a pamphlet of 1895. The importance of this work (which absolutely does not contrast parliamentary democracy and dictatorship, in which he does not believes) is twofold. More than one hundred years on, this pamphlet displays the entire truth of its prophetical criticisms of parliamentary system. At the same time, it is methodologically interesting, as well controversial, because it consists of the application of the author’s theory of crowd to the parliamentarianism viewed as a special (however small) case of crowd.

La letteratura dei processi

In 1906 Scipio Sighele – a well-known lawyer and jurist – publishes a book whose main topic is the literary thematization of the crime. We republish here some excerpts.

The Pinocchio effect: on making Italians (1860-1920)

Soon after the disparate states of the Italian peninsula unified in the 1860s to create a single nation, the nationalist Massimo D'Azeglio is said to have remarked, We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians. The Pinocchio Effect draws on a remarkably broad array of sources to trace this making of a modern national identity in Italy, a subject that remains strikingly understudied in the English-speaking world of Italian studies. Taking as her guiding metaphor the character of Pinocchio - a national icon made famous in 1881 by the eponymous children's book - Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg argues that just like the renowned puppet, modern Italians were caught in a complex interplay between freely chosen submission and submission demanded by an outside force. In doing so, she explores all the ways that identity was constructed through newly formed attachments, voluntary and otherwise, to the young nation. Featuring deft readings of the period's most important Italian cultural and social thinkers - including the theorist of mass psychology Scipio Sighele, the authors Matilde Serao and Edmondo De Amicis, the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, and the pedagogue Maria Montessori - Stewart-Steinberg's richly multidisciplinary book will set a new standard in Italian studies.

Rise or Decadence of Societies and Civilizations: A Theoretical Knot between Psychology and Politics

This article explores the emergence of collective psychology at the turn of the twentieth century. It reviews the divergent responses of turn-of-the century scholars to the quest of the rise and fall of societies. The paper presents an overview of the analyses of existing society, proposed by authors as Gabriel Tarde, Cesare Lombroso, Scipio Sighele, Gustave Le Bon and George Sorel, particularly around the notion of 'innovation' and 'misoneism'. The conclusion reached is that this complex, resourceful and fascinating group posed the crucial question of temporal horizons in the foundation of the political obligation. The same question from which, in the eighties of the twentieth century, Gianfranco Miglio's hypothesis of a 'psychology of politics' and Assunto Quadrio's researches about the connection of politics and psychology, moved.

The Secret Power of Suggestion: Scipio Sighele and the Postliberal Subject

The Secret Power of Suggestion: Scipio Sighele and the Postliberal Subject

The crowd and the mob: from Plato to Canetti

1. The Crowd in the Ancient World 2. Some Medieval Crowds and Machiavelli on the Roman People 3. The Crowd and Liberty: Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and America 4. Some Historians on the Crowd before and after the French Revolution: Gibbon, Carlyle, Michelet and Taine 5. The Crowd as a Clue to the Mystery of the Modern World: Taine Against the Enlightenment 6. From the Criminal Crowd to a Social Theory: Scipio Sighele and Gabriel Tarde 7. Crowd Theory Makes its Way in the World: The Le Bon Phenomenon 8. The Leader and his Crowd: Freud's Group Psychology (1921) 9. The Triumph of the Crowd: Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (1924-5) 10. The Sanity of Crowds and the Madness of Power: Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1960)

The 1895 debate on the origins of crowd psychology.

The relations among the early authors and works on crowd psychology have remained largely obscure. The most well-known of these theorists, Gustave Le Bon, seems to have derived a number of his key concepts from earlier authors without properly crediting them. Specifically, Scipio Sighele, who first tried to integrate the various fragmentary analyses on crowd behavior; Gabriel Tarde, who played an intermediary role which can be reconstructed from the unpublished correspondence; and Henry Fournial, an obscure author, all contributed to Le Bon's thought.

Sociology in Italy

T HE development of sociology in Italy has been marked by illustrious achievements and notable disappointments. A proper evaluation of both is essential to a valid appraisal and is of critical importance to an appreciation of the place of Italian sociology within the compass of international Italian scholars have made significant contributions to the development of sociology as a serious Long before Comte had coined the term, Italy had contributed a number of her illustrious sons to the ranks of those who prepared Western science for the advent of systematic sociology. As early as Niccolo Machiavelli we have, in Italy, the lines cast for a nomothetic discipline which concerned itself with the laws of society. Similarly, the Scienza nuova of Giambattista Vico is unequivocally a treatise in historical sociology.' In more recent time the names of Cesare Lombroso, Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Roberto Michels immediately come to mind. Many others could be added to their number. Any such enumeration would necessarily be arbitrary-but it would certainly include such notables as Scipio Sighele, Achille Loria, Luigi Sturzo, and Alfredo Niceforo.2 The disappointments which have attended the evolution of sociology in Italy have been a consequence of the fact that its growth has been sporadic rather than constant. The development of sociology in Italy lacks the continuity so necessary for the maturation of a science. This disability, undoubtedly, arises from the fact that