Contract and Domination

Carole Pateman and Charles Millss earlier books, The Sexual Contract (1988) and The Racial Contract (1997), offered devastating critiques of gender and racial domination and the contemporary contract traditions 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 male and racial domination.

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

• Contents

• Acknowledgments

• Introduction

• 1. Contract and Social Change: A Dialogue between Carole Pateman

• and Charles Mills

• 2. The Settler Contract (Carole Pateman)

• 3. The Domination Contract (Charles Mills)

• 4. Contract of Breach: Repairing the Racial Contract (Charles Mills)

• 5. Race, Sex, and Indifference (Carole Pateman)

• 6. Intersecting Contracts (Charles Mills)

• 7. On Critics and Contract (Carole Pateman)

• 8. Reply to Critics (Charles Mills)

• Notes

• References

• Index