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Feudal America: Elements of the Middle Ages in Contemporary Society, by Vladimir Shlapentokh and Joshua Woods. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2011. 170 pp. $ 54.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780271037813.
In Feudal America, Vladimir Shlapentokh and Joshua Woods analyze elements within contemporary American society that are similar to feudalism in medieval Europe, roughly from 800 AD to 1300 AD. From the beginning, the authors acknowledge that U. S. society is not completely feudal, but neither was feudal Europe. They state that no society is purely one type of political system and that all societies have elements of the liberal, authoritarian, and feudal.
The feudal system that the authors focus on is the political model based on Coulanges, Vinogradoff, Ganshof, and Bloch's theories of feudalism. In this model of feudal society, politics-not economics-determine socioeconomic phenomena. In the Middle...