ABSTRACT
Vilfredo Pareto's The Mind and Society will be re-read here as a sociology of risk and uncertainty. The differentiation between uncertainty and risk allows the gulf between the mind of the decision-maker, and objective reality. Pareto's sociology can be read as linking risk and uncertainty in a particular way. The chapter suggests that Pareto's theory of non-logical conduct can help sociologists better understand the social and psychological processes through which the authors experience and deal with uncertainty. Pareto's sociology follows this pattern. It is about risk in as much as it is concerned with how broad societal change varies the riskscapes within which elites take decisions. It is about the subjective experience of uncertainty in as much as it highlights elite strategies, rooted in human nature which can provide heuristic guidance for each riskscape. Much of Pareto's discussion of the residues focuses upon strategies for managing social conflict between ruling elites, prospective elites and non-elite masses.
