Domination, Partnership, and the Social Response to Crisis

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.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Riane Eisler examine how domination and partnership systems shape responses to communal crisis. Using flooding, trauma, ancient migration, diplomacy, wartime sexual violence, and economic structures, they contrast scapegoating and denial with preparation, cooperation, practical problem-solving, and social arrangements that reduce harm during periods of collective stress.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Hello from Kyiv. We are back again with Riane Eisler.

People can have tough days. When they do, they can deal with them, in your framing, in domination-oriented ways or partnership-oriented ways. At the level of individual psychosociality, that is one dimension. On the other hand, these responses can occur within communities or societies experiencing national trauma, urgent community needs, or serious difficulties.

Take Fort Langley, British Columbia, as a local example. It developed around a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post on the Fraser River, in the traditional and unceded territories of several First Nations, including the Kwantlen. The Fraser floodplain has long been vulnerable to flooding. Later diking and flood-control infrastructure protected parts of the surrounding settler communities, while Kwantlen First Nation residents on McMillan Island have remained more exposed to seasonal flood risk.

So what do you do when a community faces flooding? How do you manage supplies? How do you stock them? How long might the flooding last?

These are frustrations. Then there are compounded frustrations. Community problems occur, and people begin reacting psychologically. You are back to individual psychosociality and people’s own coping mechanisms. How do domination and partnership systems manifest in either of these cases?

Riane Eisler: I think it depends on the individual. Culturally, domination systems have a standard way of dealing with frustration: blaming and shaming others. This often manifests in aggression, or at least in blaming or shaming an “outgroup.”

Whether that outgroup is defined by ethnicity, religion, nationality, or some other characteristic varies with the circumstances. But remember that part of the problem involves authoritarian religious traditions. In some patriarchal interpretations of the Genesis story, Eve, as the first woman in the narrative, has been assigned primary responsibility for humanity’s Fall, although the Genesis account depicts both Adam and Eve as culpable. Part of this pattern can involve hostility toward women and acting out verbally, physically, or otherwise against them.

Jews have also historically been subjected to exclusion, persecution, and scapegoating, particularly within European societies. But the targeted outgroup can also be immigrants or people who look different, speak different languages, or belong to other ethnic or religious groups.

Now let us move to the other side of the partnership-domination scale.

In a partnership system, you are socialized to deal with the situation rather than direct your frustration toward an outgroup. Being human, you will probably still experience difficulty and pain. In your river example, you might evacuate if necessary.

On the other hand, if the river is already rising, it may be too late to construct major flood-control infrastructure. Ideally, preparation, flood mitigation, evacuation planning, and protective infrastructure would already be in place.

Returning to the domination side, denial of problems and denial of “reality” can be responses associated with trauma. A severe flood can be traumatic in itself.

Jacobsen: The annual rising of the Nile was also something the ancient Egyptians had to manage in their agriculture. The flooding normally deposited fertile silt, although excessive flooding could cause damage, and irrigation could contribute to salinity problems.

Eisler: Yes, the periodic rising of the Nile.

Again, as I said, it would depend on the individual. But culturally, the in-group versus outgroup characteristic of a domination system would play a role.

In a partnership system, you would not have that same orientation. You would try to deal with the situation as it arises and, hopefully, prevent or reduce the consequences of flooding through flood-control infrastructure, planning, or moving the village to higher ground.

Jacobsen: Different communities can also have mutual concerns. Would you consider diplomacy a core component of partnership in human politics? Communities or countries can face shared frustrations and recognize they need to address them, even when cooperation is difficult.

Nelson Mandela’s famous statement from the dock during the 1964 Rivonia Trial comes to mind. He said that he had fought against both white domination and black domination, and described his ideal as a democratic and free society in which people could live together with equal opportunities, an ideal for which he was prepared to die.

Would you consider diplomacy a key means of dealing with these situations from a partnership-oriented perspective?

Eisler: The problem is that, to use the old phrase, it takes two to tango. Diplomacy can only go so far with someone committed to winning or dominating. That is the problem.

We can see related patterns going far back into prehistory. Around 5,000 years ago, large-scale migrations of steppe pastoralists associated with the Yamnaya and related populations transformed much of Europe’s genetic and cultural landscape and are associated with the spread of at least some Indo-European languages. Ancient DNA indicates a strongly sex-biased demographic process in some regions. In Iberia, for example, earlier Y-chromosome lineages were replaced dramatically, while substantial ancestry from earlier populations persisted in both women and men. The precise mechanisms behind this male-line turnover remain debated, so the genetic evidence by itself does not establish that incoming groups simply killed all or nearly all of the local men.

A film is being made about my life and work, and one archaeologist involved put it this way: “Well, it wasn’t entirely peaceful,” this takeover, shall we say.

Jacobsen: Certainly. We also have extensive international documentation of sexual violence during armed conflict. The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action addressed rape and other abuses of women during armed conflict and called for their investigation and punishment. Later UN Security Council resolutions, particularly Resolution 1820 in 2008, explicitly recognized that rape and other forms of sexual violence can be used as tactics of war.

If we are talking about these ancient periods, people obviously did not have anything resembling modern hormonal contraception or today’s reliable contraceptive technologies. Various contraceptive and barrier practices existed historically, including the later documented use of animal membranes, but claims about particular ancient devices need to be treated cautiously.

Again, this connects with social systems in which women could be treated as subordinate to men or, in some societies and legal systems, effectively as the property or dependants of men.

Eisler: Women were the prototypical outgroup, but they were expected to serve men, including invading or dominant men, sexually and otherwise.

Moving much further forward, you also find economic traditions that failed to give unpaid caring and household work the same economic recognition as market production. Adam Smith distinguished “productive” from “unproductive” labour and placed domestic service in the latter category, although he did recognize that such labour had value. Marx examined social reproduction but did not develop a comprehensive account of unpaid domestic and care work. Later Marxist and feminist scholars expanded that analysis considerably.

These patterns also intersect with rigid gender stereotypes. Men are taught not to be “weak,” with weakness coded as feminine in domination-oriented cultures. That is cultural. It is learned, isn’t it?

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.