ABSTRACT
Contemporary Social Stratification Research1
Introduction
This chapter presents an overview of Pareto’s morphological schema. Schumpeter (1951) grouped together under this term various aspects of Pareto’s work related to the distribution of income and social stratification and mobility, as well as the famous theory of circulation of elites. These materials pertain to various stages of Pareto’s intellectual evolution, from the early economic works around the Cours to the sociological synthesis of the Traité.2 While not forming a strictly chronological sequence these different themes of Pareto’s thought combine into coherent threads of theoretical development (Aron 1967; Busino 1967; Nielsen 1972, 2007). Consideration of these themes throughout Pareto’s entire work – economic as well as sociological – reveals four interconnected stages of Pareto’s thought on morphology, representing an overall contribution much more comprehensive than the sole discussion of the circulation of elites, the aspect of Pareto’s morphological schema best remembered today in sociology.
