The Contract and Domination

1. Auflage September 2007
320 Seiten, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Contract and Domination offers a bold challenge tocontemporary contract theory, arguing that it should either befundamentally rethought or abandoned altogether. Since thepublication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, contracttheory has once again become central to the Western politicaltradition. But gender justice is neglected and racial justicealmost completely ignored.
Carole Pateman and Charles Mills's earlier books, The SexualContract (1988) and The Racial Contract (1997), offereddevastating critiques of gender and racial domination and thecontemporary contract tradition's silence on them. Both books havebecome classics of revisionist radical democratic political theory.Now Pateman and Mills are collaborating for the first time in aninterdisciplinary volume, drawing on their insights from politicalscience and philosophy. They are building on but going beyond theirearlier work to bring the sexual and racial contractstogether.
In Contract and Domination, Pateman and Mills discusstheir differences about contract theory and whether it has a usefulfuture, excavate the (white) settler contract that created newcivil societies in North America and Australia, argue via anon-ideal contract for reparations to black Americans, confront theevasions of contemporary contract theorists, explore theintersections of gender and race and the global sexual-racialcontract, and reply to their critics.
This iconoclastic book throws the gauntlet down to mainstreamwhite male contract theory. It is vital reading for anyone with aninterest in political theory and political philosophy, and thesystems of male and racial domination.
Introduction 1
Carole Pateman and Charles W. Mills
1 Contract and Social Change 10
A Dialogue between Carole Pateman and Charles W. Mills
2 The Settler Contract 35
Carole Pateman
3 The Domination Contract 79
Charles W. Mills
4 Contract of Breach: Repairing the Racial Contract 106
Charles W. Mills
5 Race, Sex, and Indifference 134
Carole Pateman
6 Intersecting Contracts 165
Charles W. Mills
7 On Critics and Contract 200
Carole Pateman
8 Reply to Critics 230
Charles W. Mills
References 267
Index 296
Political Studies Review
"Charles Mills and Carole Pateman are two exemplary philosophersof freedom. This book is a grand contribution to our understandingof justice. Don't miss it!"
Cornel West, Princeton University
"A provocative book that hopefully will generate intense debateand discussion."
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
"Engaging and often thought-provoking ... [Contract andDomination] raises good questions and portends more researchinto the continued viability of contracts as a basis for thinkingabout law."
Law and Politics Book Review
"This is the most sustained intersectional analysis of race andgender to date, providing a theoretical account of how thesecategories connect, overlap, mediate one another, and comparativelystructure oppression. It is also a debate in political philosophyover the utility of the contract model for conceptualizing a morejust society. The disagreements between the authors will make thisbook especially fruitful for classroom use."
Lind Martin Alcoff, Syracuse University
Charles W. Mills isJohn Evans Professor of Moral andIntellectual Philosophy at Northwestern University.