The Wild West

'An extremely accessible, well structured and imaginative reading of market and social theory in terms of the myth of the Wild West frontier'

New Formations



This book, written by the author of the celebrated volume Six Guns and Society, explains why the myth of the Wild West is popular around the world. It shows how the cultural icon of the Wild West speaks to deep desires of individualism and liberty and offers a vision of social contract theory in which a free and equal individual (the cowboy) emerges from the state of nature (the wilderness) to build a civil society (the frontier community). The metaphor of the Wild West retained a commitment to some limited government (law and order) but rejected the notion of the fully codified state as too oppressive (the corrupt sheriff).



Compelling and magnificently suggestive, the book unpacks one of the core icons of our time. It is a unique discussion of market and social theory using cultural myth. Will Wright fully explores how issues of individualism, freedom and inequality in the myth of the Wild West connect up with questions of white, male superiority and environmental degradation.

Introduction
The Individualist Cowboy
PART ONE: INDIVIDUALISM
The Social Contract
`Natural Individuals
The Invisible Hand
PART TWO: INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS
Marx
The Revolutionary and the Cowboy
Weber
Bureaucracy and the Cowboy
Durkheim
Endless `Frontiers
PART THREE: MYTHICAL INSIGHTS
Separating the Women
Removing the Indians
Sustaining the Wilderness
Conclusion
The Wild Individualist West