Pareto, Parsons and the boundary between economics and sociology

Abstract

Recent discussions of the separation between economics and sociology in the United States highlight the way Talcott Parsons used Vilfredo Pareto’s Trattato di Sociologia Generale to propose that economics study logical actions and sociology study nonlogical actions. This article argues instead that in Pareto’s treatise: (1) sociology is a synthetic discipline concerned with the study of human society in general; (2) human behavior is nearly always logical from a subjective point of view; and (3) sociology studies both logical and nonlogical behavior judged from an objective viewpoint. Thus, Pareto is an important intellectual ancestor for economic sociology.