Feudalism: interpretative category or framework of life in the Medieval West?

As a term of some utility in describing political, social and economic institutions, 'feudalism' still has considerable currency beyond the field of the medieval European West.l Nevertheless, its use by historians of the medieval West suggests widespread disagreement over its essential implications, and betrays a tendency to concentrate discussion no longer on the term itself, or on a generalised notion of a 'feudal' society, but upon the various discrete institutions, social practices and customs that make up the medieval·· societies historians were once happy enough to call 'feudal'. The present review of scholarly usage in regard to 'medieval feudalism' contains two parts. In the first, I illustrate the various often overlapping and competing meanings that historians since the turn of the century have ascribed to the terms 'feudal' and 'feudalism', and in the second I offer some comments on this diversity of opinion.