Crowds and Crowd Psychology in Gino Germani's Psychosocial Studies: Theoretical Criticism and Disciplinary Renewal

Multitud y Psicología de las muchedumbres en los estudios psicosociales de Gino Germani: crítica teórica y renovación disciplinaria

This article aims to analyze the role Gino Germani gave to "crowd psychology" in his writings on social psychology and sociology. We argue that Germani did not ignore the differences arisen within the framework of social psychology emergence—during the second last turn of the century, between the psychologie des foules and the völkerpsychologie (the psychology of "people" or "collectivities"). We argue that the Italian-Argentinian sociologist —devoted to the renewal of libraries, theories, and psychosocial studies across Latin America—was against crowd psychology in his writings. His lack of interest was not solely (and perhaps not even primarily) due to ideological reasons —as a "bourgeois sociologist," afraid of the number and power of urban crowds, but rather to theoretical, methodological, and/or programmatic causes. We conclude that, while the psycho-sociological model positions itself close to ethno-psychology, Germani retrieved the contributions of the psychologie des foules in the field of political sociology, that is, the studies on domination, leadership, and public opinion.