Is Time a Flat Circle? On the Varieties of Cyclical Analysis in Sociological Theory


Clayton Fordahl, University of Akureryi

In the beginning, sociology was an obviously historical discipline. Foundational works in sociology, produced in the late 19th and early 20th century, were focused on grand historical processes and often deployed historical methodologies. This is true of the canonical works of Weber, Marx, and Durkheim, but also of those influential thinkers, like W.E.B. Du Bois and Jane Addams, who have been marginalized and neglected. Whether they were concerned with the rise of capitalism, the character of industrial society, or the nature of racism, these works all compared The grand historical narrative remained relevant into the 20th century through the work of thinkers like Elias and Habermas and continues to have an indirect influence over the discipline given the prominence of works like The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in sociological syllabi the world over. But if sociology remains a historically-oriented discipline today, it is in a form divergent and in many ways opposed to the historical vision of the discipline’s early practitioners. Historical sociologists today are varied in their empirical interests and theoretical orientations. But, from sociologists who practice genealogical critique to those who study path dependencies, one tendency seems to mark all contemporary historical sociology: contingency. Where once history was seen as a grand story, one which featured a definite narrative arc, today history is viewed as a matter of chance, a collection of random events that accumulate to form the present. In the first decades of the 21st century, the consensus on contingency as the animating force in history seemed near-universal and all but unassailable. That is, until the emergence of the upstart discipline of cliodynamics. Approaching history from the perspective of natural science and drawing on the proliferation of historical data in the internet age, practitioners of cliodynamics have challenged a contingent approach to historical analysis, arguing that recurring patterns in social life can be identified and specified to such a degree that the seemingly chaotic processes in politics, economics, and culture can now be subject to all-but-unassailable prediction. In their scientism and their emphasis on recurring historical patterns, the advocates of cliodynamics unconsciously resemble one of sociology’s great “black sheep”, the 20th century Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto is often consigned to the footnotes of sociological theory, but when he is discussed, it is often as a theorist of historical cycles. His work on elite cycles, captured by the striking bestial image of “lions” and “foxes”, has had a minor influence on contemporary elite theory and a more obvious, if often unstated, influence on cliodynamics. To what extent do the perspectives on history developed by cliodynamics and Pareto constitute a theoretical school or tradition? How does the cyclical approach to history vary—in both its core concepts and its normative implications—from both the grand narrative approach of earlier sociologists and the contingent methods of contemporary practitioners? In answering these questions, this article traces connections between a range of thinkers who have advocated cyclical approaches to history, including ancient thinkers like Polybius, “classical” thinkers like Marx and Pareto, modern thinkers like Eisenstadt, and contemporary movements like cliodynamics. The article demonstrates that there have been two divergent and competing approaches to cyclical history in social theory: one a fatalist vision based on a cynical reading of human nature, the other an optimistic and rationalist approach which pursues historical knowledge for technocratic ends.

This paper will be presented at the following session: