NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Political theorists Carole Pateman and Charles Mills will share their views on the roles that sex and race play in social contract theory during a joint presentation sponsored by the Warren Humanities Center at ²¤ÂÜÊÓƵ University.
“Contract and Domination: A Collaborative Debate on Social Contract Theory” will take place 4:15 p.m. Sept. 23 in the Moore Room of the ²¤ÂÜÊÓƵ Law School. A reception will follow.
Pateman, author of The Sexual Contact, and Mills, who was inspired by Pateman’s book to write The Racial Contract, are working together on a book tentatively titled Contract and Domination.
Pateman, a professor of political science at UCLA, and Mills, a philosophy professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, challenge as incomplete the social contract theory, which maintains that individuals’ moral and political rights and obligations are set out by a contract between them and society. Pateman argues that there is a sexual contract that allows for the male domination of women, and Mills maintains that the racial contract sets out who is considered a full moral and political person based on race.
Additional support for the program is being provided by ²¤ÂÜÊÓƵ’s departments of philosophy, political science and human and organizational development at Peabody College; the programs in African American and Diaspora Studies and in Women’s and Gender Studies; the ²¤ÂÜÊÓƵ Law School and the Bishop Johnson Black Cultural Center.
For more information, call the Warren Center at 615-343-6060.
Media contact: Elizabeth Latt, (615) 322-NEWS
Elizabeth.p.latt@vanderbilt.edu