The Contract and Domination - Hardcover

Pateman, Carole; Mills, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745640036 ISBN 13: 9780745640037

Publisher: Polity, 2007

Synopsis

Contract and Domination offers a bold challenge to contemporary contract theory, arguing that it should either be fundamentally rethought or abandoned altogether. Since the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, contract theory has once again become central to the Western political tradition. But gender justice is neglected and racial justice almost completely ignored.

Carole Pateman and Charles Mills's earlier books, The Sexual Contract (1988) and The Racial Contract (1997), offered devastating critiques of gender and racial domination and the contemporary contract tradition's silence on them. Both books have become classics of revisionist radical democratic political theory. Now Pateman and Mills are collaborating for the first time in an interdisciplinary volume, drawing on their insights from political science and philosophy. They are building on but going beyond their earlier work to bring the sexual and racial contracts together.

In Contract and Domination, Pateman and Mills discuss their differences about contract theory and whether it has a useful future, excavate the (white) settler contract that created new civil societies in North America and Australia, argue via a non-ideal contract for reparations to black Americans, confront the evasions of contemporary contract theorists, explore the intersections of gender and race and the global sexual-racial contract, and reply to their critics.

This iconoclastic book throws the gauntlet down to mainstream white male contract theory. It is vital reading for anyone with an interest in political theory and political philosophy, and the systems of male and racial domination.

About this title

Book Description:

In 1988, Carole Pateman first published her groundbreaking work, The Sexual Contract. Almost a decade later Charles Mills published The Racial Contract, and both books have been hugely influential in the field of political theory ever since. Both took a new direction by confronting mainstream contract theory. This new book, written collaboratively by Pateman and Mills takes their respective arguments about contract theory a stage further. It answers questions raised by the various critics of the two volumes, debates the authorsrsquo; differences about contract theory and its future and also examines the intersection between race and gender and brings this together with scholarship on class. This is a one-off opportunity to explore the work of these two theorists in greater depth. It is also the only book currently available that addresses contract theory via issues of gender and race. This book will appeal to students and scholars in political science and theory, history, anthropology, gender studies, ethnic studies, post colonial theory and philosophy

About the Author:

Carole Pateman is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Charles W. Mills isJohn Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy at Northwestern University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Polity
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0745640036
• ISBN 13: 9780745640037
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320