Notes on Riane Eisler & Partnership Societies

Riane Eisler's Key Insights

1. Two models of cultural organization: Power as domination (ranking) versus actualization (linking) The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, but rather partnership (gylany)

2. Eisler’s new terms to describe fundamental modes of cultural transformation:

Androcracy - a social system ruled through force or the threat of force by men.

Gylany- a social system organized through the linking together of male and female through equal partnership.

3. Two kinds of hierarchy:  dominator hierarchy - system of human ranking based on force and actualization hierarchy - systems based on ability to actualize. (105)

Discovery of Partnership Societies in Old Europe’s Neolithic Civilization

4. Remained invisible to mainstream patriarchal scholarship with its assumptions about male dominance (12) Confusion about how to interpret the neolithic Goddess iconography, as a ‘fertility cult.’ (23)

5. Archeological data supporting a different model of society: partnership - equal size graves, no evidence of war, idealizing of female power to give birth. Females in charge of religious rituals, agriculture, social maintenance. (14) Matrilineal order (24)

6. Civilization as beginning before Sumer - women as the original agriculturists, domesticators of plants and animals. (68)

7. Crete: an example of a long standing partnership civilization with a non-violent state, (equalitarian, sexual equality, peaceful, abundant, focussed on spiritual, artistic and technological development) in contrast to standard view of western civilization as starting in Sumer c. 5000 BCE in Mesopotamia characterized by social stratification, constant war and women as non-citizens. Crete gone by 1100 BCE. (53)

More Examples

8. "Socialism" - From each according to their abilities, To each according to their needs. (a society without bosses, without coercion)

Dominator version - Soviet-style socialism or "state capitalism" - Exploitation of workers by private capitalist bosses replaced by exploitation of workers by the State. The State replaces the private capitalists as the boss, maintaining domination.

Partnership version - Worker-owned cooperatives in which the employees of a company own and manage the company in partnership. 

9. Monetary Systems (a rational way to measure wealth and the Commonwelfare)

Dominator version - Privatized Money created by private banks which bears interest, concentrates power centrally and produces wide-spread debt peonage (slavery).

Partnership version - Money created by governments spent into existence to create new economic acitivity which produces no debt (does not need to be paid back.)

10. Retributive versus Restorative Justice

Dominator version - State-mandated criminal justice

Partnership version - Community-based restorative justice

Criminal Justice	Restorative Justice
Crime is a violation of the law and state	Crime is a violation of people and relationships
Violations create guilt	Violations create obligations
Justice requires the state to determine blame (guilt) and impose pain (punishment)	Justice involves victims, offenders, and community members in an effort to repair the harm and ‘put things right’
Central focus: offenders getting what they deserve.	Central focus: victim needs and offender responsibility for repairing harm.

11. Revenge is not Justice. 

A retributive-punishing system is rooted in the mistake of using emotional pain as a basis for public policy. This system does too much punishing (i.e. the mass incarceration phenomenon) and not enough protecting and “making right.” (e.g. Out of 1000 people who rape, 200 are reported, 20 are moved forward to trial, less 5 are convicted, out of those 1 ends up behind bars, while 83% get away with murder.)

12. Restorative Justice  

Based on an old, commonsense view of wrongdoing as a violation of people and interpersonal relationships. All indigenous cultures use restorative practices, as do many families. Whereas criminal justice sees humans as separate, autonomous beings, restorative justice sees individuals as part of an interconnected web of relationships. People who are harmed are centered in terms of their harm being seen and valued and addressed, bystanders are called in to encircle the person, the person who harmed is called in to take accountability for what was done.

13. Three different questions

Criminal Justice	Restorative Justice
What laws have been broken?	Who has been harmed?
Who did it?	What are their needs?
What do they deserve?	Whose obligations are these?

Common Justice in Brooklyn NY as a model of using restorative practices to deal with violent crime.

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ (All Are Related) - Lakota prayer. 

Are we separate from each other or are we inter-related and inter-connected? The concept of interrelatedness is key to understanding why needs, roles and obligations are so essential to restorative justice. “In this worldview, the problem of crime - and wrongdoing in general - is that it represents a wound in the community, a tear in the web of relationships. Crime represents damaged relationships. In fact, damaged relationships are both a cause and an effect of a crime. Many traditions have a saying that a harm to one is a harm to all.”