The Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader

by Patriquin, Larry

• ISBN13: 9789004230088
• ISBN10: 9004230084
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-10-01
• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub

Summary

Ellen Meiksins Wood is a leading contemporary political theorist who has elaborated an innovative approach to the history of political thought, the 'social history of political theory'. She has been described as the founder, together with the historian Robert Brenner, of 'Political Marxism', a distinct version of historical materialism which has inspired a research program that spans a number of academic disciplines. Organized thematically, this Reader brings together selections from Wood's groundbreaking scholarship, published over three decades, providing an overview of her original interpretations of capitalism, precapitalist societies, the state, political theory, democracy, citizenship, liberalism, civil society, the Enlightenment, globalization, imperialism, and socialism.

Excerpts

PrefaceEdited readers are becoming more important for both students and academics. Readers are ideal for those who are unable or unwilling to peruse thousands of pages of an author's output - and who would not know where to begin, even if they had the time. With the publication of eleven books (two co-authored) and dozens of articles, the writings of Ellen Meiksins Wood have reached a point where an edited collection is needed. This reader serves as an overview of her ideas; it will be helpful especially for those just beginning to encounter her works.Like similar texts, the excerpts are presented in thematic, rather than chronological, order. Unlike many readers, however, I have refrained from the common practice of incorporating whole chapters or entire articles from the author. This approach seems to me to defeat the purpose of a reader. At the same time, I have avoided, for the most part, cutting the original texts into small fragments, which would have given the work a 'prison-notebooks' feel. I have tried to strike a middle-ground, in effect incorporating Wood's 'greatest hits', consisting of pieces both long and (relatively) short. The result, I believe, is a showcase for Wood's groundbreaking scholarship, with important insights on every page. Those making use of this collection are obviously free to skip through the text, though I recommend that it be read from start to finish, as the material in the opening chapters on capitalism, precapitalist societies, and the state informs, in important ways, the theoretical arguments developed in later chapters.In the chapters, sections are taken from a variety of Wood's texts. Even when they are excerpted from the same book or article, however, the sections reprinted here often do not follow consecutively in the original works, so readers should assume the presence of an ellipsis before each sub-title. When excerpts do not begin at the start (or finish at the end) of a paragraph (as found in the original publication), these excerpts are preceded (or followed) by an ellipsis. Ellipses have also been used occasionally to remove sections of material, either large or small, though they have been employed typically to eliminate phrases such as 'in the previous chapter', 'as we have seen', and so on. Editorial interjections are made inside square-brackets. If information has been placed in square-brackets in the original works, '- EMW' appears before the closing bracket.Small changes were made to Wood's footnotes for consistency of style and to update information on cited works noted as forthcoming in the original publications. A few discursive notes were left out. One footnote was added in brackets, a brief explanation of the phrase 'New "True" Socialism'. I have also made slight changes to some sub-titles and added sub-titles when there were none in the original publications (for example, where Roman numerals were used in place of sub-titles).Some of the excerpts are from books co-authored with Neal Wood. However, in the case of Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory, the preface (p. x) indicates that while 'both of us have criticised and amended each other's works', Chapters Two and Four, from which material is included here, were written by Ellen Meiksins Wood. The other book is A Trumpet of Sedition, from which I have used a small excerpt on John Locke.The 'Bibliography of Works by Ellen Meiksins Wood, 1970-2012', found at the end of the reader, does not include translations (which have appeared in more than a dozen languages), though it does include a few works (in German and French) which have not yet been published in English. A number of the entries in the bibliography are reprints of earlier works, some expanded and further developed, others reproduced 'as is'. Many of the articles have been incorporated, typically with revisions, into Wood's books (see the relevant acknowledgements-pages of these books for further details).