Democracy, Partnership Systems and Care

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, attorney, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She has received many honours, including the Republic of Austria’s Cross of Honour for Science and Art, the Nuclear Peace Leadership Award, earlier awarded to the Dalai Lama, the Center for Compassion Humanitarian Award, the Humanist Pioneer Award, and induction into the California Hall of Fame. She is President of the Center for Partnership Systems and Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies at the University of Minnesota. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade, now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). These contributions amount to a second series with Eisler.

Riane Eisler and Scott Douglas Jacobsen explore why democracy requires more than voting, examining partnership systems, domination norms and human rights. Eisler connects democratic resilience with childhood, gender equity, caring economics and inclusive education, emphasizing cultural stories, socialization and recognition of unpaid care as foundations for a more equitable society.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Could there be variations on current democratic structures that would be more robust within a partnership system? For instance, before the internet and computers, we needed representatives in part because communication and travel were much more difficult. What about direct democracy or something similar? It is still democratic governance, but without all the suits, ties, and dresses.

Riane Eisler: The point is not simply the vote. The point, as I said, is the norms. It is a question of what society’s norms are.

Yes, you can have a direct vote. In theory, that may be better in some respects, but it does not solve the underlying problem, because people will still vote according to partnership or domination norms.

Jacobsen: There is some research, which I am not an expert on, that looks at democratic responsiveness by comparing what the public wants with the policies that are actually adopted. The less closely those two are aligned, the less responsive the political system is to public preferences.

Eisler: But the will of the people is not the only criterion if you also have a criterion of human rights, and, yes, of how we relate to nature. If those are your critical questions, then you have a completely different conception of the system.

I mean, democracy, defining democracy, as I wrote in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies in the issue on caring democracy, cannot simply be reduced to voting. To equate democracy with voting is a big mistake.

Jacobsen: Does that mean, in some sense, that we have political structures that are democratically unresilient, explaining some of the current quagmires?

Eisler: What do you mean by unresilient?

Jacobsen: In the sense that they have the vote, but people end their participation at the ballot box. At the same time, gerrymandering and other political machinations can produce less representative or less fair outcomes.

Eisler: You can manipulate the electoral process, but that is still manipulating a democratic process in which votes are counted. My point is that people will vote for what they have been taught is the system they want.

If people are socialized to want a domination system, starting in the family, where violence by those who are stronger and bigger against weaker children is normalized, you are going to get what you got.

Now, the good thing is that many young people worldwide are beginning to realize that current forms of democracy are not enough. You need to change the system while also working on yourself, which was the first phase. Otherwise, it is like trying to go up on a down escalator because you are constantly being pushed back. I make that point in the book I’m revising now, The Power of Partnership.

And you have to pay attention to the four cornerstones: childhood and family, gender, economics, and, rather than simply moving from capitalism to socialism or socialism to capitalism, moving toward a caring economics that no longer devalues caring as “feminine,” but recognizes it as human. And then there are story and language.

Jacobsen: We are back to context, framing, and norms.

Eisler: And I will repeat that viewing democracy simply as one vote per person is historically inaccurate. Democracy was not originally applied equally to everyone. Historically, political participation was often restricted by sex, property, race, status, or citizenship. Even in ancient Athens, political participation was restricted to male citizens.

Jacobsen: Men are trying to make that argument now. The whole version of originalism that would bind modern society to eighteenth-century assumptions seems insane to me. To go back to the 1700s? I do not think the Amish or the Luddites go that far. The Amish selectively adopt modern technologies, and the original Luddites were not simply opposed to technology.

And what are they going to do even if they get that level of authority? They won’t know how to wield it. They’ll be incompetent with it. How do you break down the factors that make up democratic norms, though?

Eisler: We are trying. Many major progressive movements have challenged the same basic pattern: domination. From the challenge to the so-called divinely ordained right of kings to rule their subjects, to the feminist movement challenging the so-called divinely ordained right of men to rule over women and children within the “castles” of their homes.

From the claimed divinely ordained right of a “superior” race to rule over an “inferior” race or races, all the way to the environmental movement challenging what has been presented as humanity’s divinely ordained right to rule and dominate everything else on Earth.

We have a movement toward partnership, but it is not unified. It does not yet sufficiently recognize that all of these movements are challenging the same thing: the domination system. That is where language and story come in.

Jacobsen: Thank you. What type of language should one find in a democratically resilient society? That is part one. Part two, what are the stories, grounded in reality, that we should tell ourselves about ourselves in a democratically resilient society?

Eisler: Let us start with story. The story that we have been told is our story has too often been “his story,” the story of the men who made it to the top, who won and became kings, emperors, and so forth. Our education has to change. The book that is being revised now, Tomorrow’s Children, addresses that. It is not only multicultural, but also environmentally sensitive and gender-balanced.

Jacobsen: How can the concept of gender balance get misinterpreted?

Eisler: It gets misinterpreted all the time as women against men or men against women. That is not what we are talking about. We are not talking about blaming or shaming men. Men are also part of hierarchies of domination.

Jacobsen: All right.

Eisler: They get a sop. They get to be “kings of the castle” in their homes.

Jacobsen: Or of a small realm.

Eisler: Yes, a small realm. They may be socialized to feel entitled to women’s sexuality and to women themselves.

Jacobsen: That is a lot.

Eisler: Yes, but those are among the mechanisms that can help keep a domination system intact. It is an illusion that men may be taught that they are entitled in this way, because they are not. But many men are changing. They are re-examining their socialization and the ways they have been taught to fit into domination systems.

That is a process. There is the caring man. Care is key to much of this, and care is a human capacity. It is not inherently feminine, nor is caring inherently women’s work. That is why, in my book The Real Wealth of Nations, I introduced the concept of a caring economics, which we now also describe as a caring economics of Partnerism.

And there have been trends in that direction. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, which celebrated its tenth anniversary, is an online, peer-reviewed, open-access journal. The next issue celebrates my 95th birthday.

There is an article in it on caring economics, proposing that one of the first steps is changing our metrics and developing measures that show the value of work that is still largely excluded from conventional economic accounting, including the unpaid work of both women and men in caring for people and maintaining households and healthy environments. Women still perform substantially more of this work globally, spending more than two and a half times as many hours on unpaid care and domestic work as men.

And yes, our cultural language connects calling our planet “Mother Earth” with associating women with caring for and maintaining the home environment.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Riane.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer and Editor for The Good Men Project with more than 2,000 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719-6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing comprised of more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications, in more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic, media, and research institution fellowships, and currently serves on numerous international boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.