Contract and Domination

by Carole Pateman, Charles W. Mills

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Feminism, Academia, Theory, Race

Paperback

First published November 12, 2007

About the author

Carole Pateman is a feminist and political theorist. She is known as a critic of liberal democracy.

Reviews

[Madeline]

CP But without generalization structures of power tend to disappear into a sea of differences with few criteria to hand to decide which are the more important.
CM Yes, "difference" rules - with commonality banished! But as someone who started out on the Marxist left and retains many of those ideological sympathies, I completely agree that we need to be able to generalize and to develop abstractions, even if they're only approximately true. The challenge is how to do this, given the complexity of social reality. (13)

[Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Charles mills so much

[Paul Crider · Rating 4 out of 5]

I respect the inspiration Mills drew from Pateman, but I found myself anticipating getting to the next Mills chapter in this book. Their introductory dialogue was definitely edifying however. And while I wasn't drawn into Pateman's contributions, the Mills chapters added a lot of technical detail to arguments I've seen in some of his other books.

[C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some decent stuff in here, but I much preferred their separate books (hesitated over three stars).