Vilfredo Paretos Sociology (Rethinking Classical Sociology)

236 Pages·2007·0.78 MB·English

by  Alasdair J. Marshall

VILFREDO PARETO’S SOCIOLOGY
Rethinking Classical Sociology
Series Editor: David Chalcraft, University of Derby, UK
This series is designed to capture, reflect and promote the major changes that
are occurring in the burgeoning field of classical sociology. The series publishes
monographs, texts and reference volumes that critically engage with the established
figures in classical sociology as well as encouraging examination of thinkers and
texts from within the ever-widening canon of classical sociology. Engagement
derives from theoretical and substantive advances within sociology and involves
critical dialogue between contemporary and classical positions. The series reflects
new interests and concerns including feminist perspectives, linguistic and cultural
turns, the history of the discipline, the biographical and cultural milieux of texts,
authors and interpreters, and the interfaces between the sociological imagination and
other discourses including science, anthropology, history, theology and literature.
The series offers fresh readings and insights that will ensure the continued relevance
of the classical sociological imagination in contemporary work and maintain the
highest standards of scholarship and enquiry in this developing area of research.
Also in the series:
Crossing the Psycho-Social Divide
Freud, Weber, Adorno and Elias
George Cavalletto
ISBN 978 0 7546 4772 0
Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology
New Expanded Edition
Hans Henrik Bruun
ISBN 0 7546 4529 0
Defending the Durkheimian Tradition
Religion, Emotion and Morality
Jonathan S. Fish
ISBN 0 7546 4138 4
What Price the Poor?
William Booth, Karl Marx and the London Residuum
Ann M. Woodall
ISBN 0 7546 4203 8
Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
A Framework for Political Psychology
ALASDAIR J. MARSHALL
Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
© Alasdair J. Marshall 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Alasdair J. Marshall has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Marshall, Alasdair J.
Vilfredo Pareto’s sociology : a framework for political
psychology. - (Rethinking classical sociology)
1. Pareto, Vilfredo, 1848-1923 2. Social psychology
3. Political psychology
I. Title
02'.092
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marshall, Alasdair.
Vilfredo Pareto’s sociology : a framework for political psychology / by Alasdair J.
Marshall.
p. cm. -- (Rethinking classical sociology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-4978-6
1. Sociology--Philosophy. 2. Pareto, Vilfredo, 1848-1923. I. Title. II.
Title: Sociology
HM585.M3457 2007
301. 092--dc22
2007025146
ISBN-13: 978 0 7546 4978 6
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
Contents
List of Tables vii
Series Editor’s Preface ix
Author’s Preface xix
1 Introduction 1
2 Pareto’s ‘Psychologistic’ Sociology 9
2.1 Pareto and Marx 9
2.2 Pareto’s Elite Theory 10
2.3 A Brief Biography 10
2.4 Pareto’s Italy: Clientelismo and Trasformismo 13
2.5 Pareto and Machiavelli: Similar Theories of Human Nature 21
2.6 Pareto’s Historical Cycle and the Circulation of Elites 25
2.7 Pareto and Parsons: Similar Theories of Social System? 31
2.8 Pareto’s Residues 37
2.9 Conclusion: Pareto’s Political Sociology 41
3 Social Personality 43
3.1 Introduction 43
3.2 Social Personality 45
3.3 Cognitive Indeterminacy 51
3.4 Conservative and Liberal Heuristics under Conditions of
Cognitive Indeterminacy 59
3.5 The Evolution of Knowledge through Trial and Error
Experimentation 63
3.6 Social Complexity 67
3.7 Conclusion 77
4 Pareto’s Psychology 79
4.1 Introduction 79
4.2 Cultural Conservatism and Liberal Scepticism 83
4.3 Individualism and Collectivism 89
4.4 Creativity 99
4.5 Risk 108
4.6 Force and Fraud 116
4.6.1 Force 116
4.6.2 Fraud 123
4.6.3 The Dark Triad and Superego Strength 134
vi Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
4.6.4 The Rise of the Dark Triad? 136
4.7 Ideological Conviction-Relativism 142
5 Testing Pareto’s Theory 151
5.1 Introduction 151
5.2 The Student Study 152
5.3 The MP Study: Variable Selection 158
5.4 Scale Analysis 166
5.5 Population Diversity 167
5.6 Comparing the Three Parliamentary Parties 167
5.7 Seniority within Parliament 178
5.8 Do Findings Support Pareto’s Model of Personality? 183
5.8.1 Introduction 183
5.8.2 Conservatism-Liberalism 184
5.8.3 Individualism-Collectivism 184
5.8.4 Dissociation, Aggression and Aloofness 185
5.8.5 Do these Clusters form Broader Personality Configurations? 185
5.8.6 Demographic Analysis 189
5.9 Final Conclusion 191
Bibliography 195
Index 211
List of Tables
Table 5.6(a) Differences between the parliamentary parties on all
measures 168
Table 5.6(b) Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs
aged 35–55 173
Table 5.6(c) Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs
aged 55+ 173
Table 5.6(d) Differences between younger and older MPs of both Parties 174
Table 5.6(e) Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs who
have spent nine or less years in Parliament 175
Table 5.6(f) Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs who
have spent more than nine years in Parliament 175
Table 5.6(g) Differences between less and more politically
experienced MPs 176
Table 5.7 Differences between MPs by parliamentary seniority 179
Table 5.8(a) Factor analysis of personality variables 183
Table 5.8(b) Factor analysis of all variables 190
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Series Editor’s Preface
An 11 page handwritten manuscript, Un bel tacer fu mai scritton, by Vilfredo
Pareto (1848–1923), recently came under the hammer at Christies in London, as
part of a Lot that included a number of separate items held together by the theme of
mathematical social science. The manuscript – an extended book review, written in
Italian at Céligny in 1909 – formed part of the now famous Albin Schram collection
of autograph letters and manuscripts, which ran into over 500 lots and whose Sold
Total was in excess of £3.8 million. There were a number of items available of
interest to social science, including letters by Max Weber and by Adorno. These
items sold, often fetching twice their estimates, but, nonetheless, the final prices were
far behind those reached for other – mainly literary or historical or natural scientific
– items. The Pareto mss had probably found its way into the Schram collection via a
transaction in Italy in 2003.
I want to use this example of the ‘value’ of an historical sociological document to
examine the ‘value’ accorded to classical sociology within sociology and to consider
the extent to which the relation of sociology to the classical tradition is a dimension
of the history of the discipline or a theoretical enterprise in its own right in which
past and present are more or less closely interwoven. These concerns are clearly of
relevance to our series Rethinking Classical Sociology.
Is the fact that this Pareto manuscript, along with other social science autograph
letters, fetched far less than literary pieces – a letter of condolence by John Donne for
example – or indeed other historical or scientific lots – an indication of the lack of
public interest in sociology, or indeed a lack of a realisation of the historical impacts on
thought and institutions and policies of social science in the modern world? Of course,
even those items of a scientific nature that ‘did well’ – for example, Darwin always
commands a high price as does Freud – did not actually carry within their pages the
scientific theories for which these authors are responsible: rather the value came from
the aura of association: these were papers that had been seen and touched, and written
on by famous persons. And within the disciplines that Darwin and Freud ‘founded’
their legacies are not without severe criticism: that is, lack of contemporary esteem for
every idea they formulated does not correlate with the high value of their artefacts.
All these items were of differential ‘value’ to private collectors – this was not
an auction for academics, though some were no doubt in attendance; but common
denominators in determining value were notions of age, authenticity, and when relevant,
content (excellent examples of their genre for example). Rarity could play a role in
arriving at final price, but the collector is driven to own that which exists, not to be
familiar with the content and to intellectually ‘own’ that rather than the relic itself.
What principles of value operate in sociology in relation to the texts from the
past which date from the foundational eras of the discipline? There were no social