Contract and Domination

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.