Ellen Meiksins Wood facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ellen Meiksins Wood
FRSC
|
|
|---|---|
Meiksins Wood in 2012
|
|
| Born |
Ellen Meiksins
April 12, 1942 New York City, New York, US
|
| Died | January 14, 2016 (aged 73) |
| Nationality |
|
| Other names | Ellen Wood |
| Alma mater | |
|
Notable work
|
|
| Spouse(s) |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | York University |
| Thesis | Epistemological Foundations of Individualism (1970) |
| Influenced | Gáspár Miklós Tamás |
Ellen Meiksins Wood (April 12, 1942 – January 14, 2016) was an important American-Canadian thinker and historian. She studied how societies and politics change over time. She was known for her ideas about how history and social classes shape our world.
Contents
About Ellen Meiksins Wood
Ellen Meiksins Wood was born in New York City on April 12, 1942. Her parents were Latvian Jews who came to New York as refugees. They had to leave Europe because of political problems. Ellen grew up in both the United States and Europe.
She went to the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a degree in Slavic languages in 1962. Later, she studied political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her highest degree, a Doctor of Philosophy, in 1970.
From 1967 to 1996, she taught political science at Glendon College, which is part of York University in Toronto, Canada.
Her Main Ideas
Ellen Meiksins Wood, along with another scholar named Robert Brenner, helped create a way of thinking called Political Marxism. This idea focuses on how history shapes society. It looks at how people's actions and struggles change things over time. This was different from other ideas that thought history followed a set path.
Ellen Meiksins Wood wrote many books and articles. Sometimes, she worked with her husband, Neal Wood (1922–2003). Her writings have been translated into many languages. This shows how important her ideas were around the world.
One of her books, The Retreat from Class, won the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1988. She also worked on the editorial team for important magazines. She was on the committee for the British journal New Left Review from 1984 to 1993. Later, she was an editor for Monthly Review, a socialist magazine, from 1997 to 2000.
In 1996, she became a member of the Royal Society of Canada. This is a special honor for top scholars in Canada. She and Neal Wood lived in both England and Canada until he passed away in 2003.
In 2014, she married Ed Broadbent. He was a former leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada. They lived in Ottawa and London. Ellen Meiksins Wood passed away from cancer in 2016, at the age of 73.
Her Books
Ellen Meiksins Wood wrote many influential books. Here are some of her most well-known works:
Books by Herself
- Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism. University of California Press, 1972.
- The Retreat from Class: A New 'True' Socialism. Schocken Books, 1986. ISBN: 0-8052-7280-1.
- The Pristine Culture of Capitalism. Verso, 1992. ISBN: 0-86091-572-7.
- Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-521-47682-8.
- Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy. Verso, 1997. ISBN: 0-86091-911-0.
- The Origin of Capitalism. Monthly Review Press, 1999. ISBN: 1-58367-000-9. A revised edition came out in 2002.
- Empire of Capital. Verso, 2003. ISBN: 978-1-85984-502-8.
- Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Verso, 2008. ISBN: 978-1-84467-243-1.
- Liberty & Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Renaissance to Enlightenment. Verso, 2012. ISBN: 978-1-84467-752-8.
Books with Neal Wood
- Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Social Context. Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN: 0195201000
- A Trumpet of Sedition: Political Theory and the Rise of Capitalism, 1509-1688. New York University Press, 1997. ISBN: 0745311768
Books She Helped Edit
- In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda, edited with John Bellamy Foster. Monthly Review Press, 1997. ISBN: 0853459835
- Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution, edited with Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster. Monthly Review Press, 1998. ISBN: 0853459894
- Rising from the Ashes? Labor in the Age of "Global" Capitalism, edited with Peter Meiksins and Michael Yates. Monthly Review Press, 1998. ISBN: 0853459398
See also
- Brenner debate
