Riane Tennenhaus Eisler is an Austrian-born American scholar, writer, and social activist. Born in Vienna ca. 1937, her familyfled from the Nazis to Cuba when she was a child; she later emigrated to the United States. She has degrees insociology and law from the University of California. She is the author of many popular books and articles, and president of the Center for Partnership Studies. Eisler has been described as a cultural historian and an evolutionary theorist.
Eisler proposes that we need new social categories that go beyond conventional ones such as religious vs. secular, right vs. left, capitalist vs. communist, Eastern vs. Western, and industrial vs. pre- or post- industrial, which she notes do not describe the whole of a society's beliefs and institutions.
She has coined the term dominator culture to describe a system of top-down rankings ultimately backed up by fear or force. One of the core components of this system of authoritarian rule in both the family and the state is the subordination of women ... whether in Nazi Germany, Khomeini's Iran today, or in earlier cultures where chronic violence and despotic rule were the norm. She analyzes the androcracy (governance of social organization dominated by males) of Indo-European and other societies, versus what she proposes was a partnership model (as distinct from matriarchy) for the social organization of Neolithic Europe and the later Minoan civilization that flourished in prehistoric Neolithic Crete.
To support the idea that neither men nor women dominated one another, Eisler cites archeological evidence from southeast Europe, especially Crete, drawing much from the research of Marija Gimbutas, James Mellaart, Nicolas Platon, and Vere Gordon Childe. Her hypothesis about prehistory also relies strongly on sources such as the Gnostic Gospels and on the history portrayed by the Ancient Greek poet Hesiod. To support her thesis for contemporary societies, she draws heavily from cross-cultural studies. She and others using her partnership/domination conceptual framework have applied her analysis to fields ranging from politics and economics to religion, business, and education.
Eisler's international bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future (Harper Collins San Francisco, 1987) was hailed by anthropologist Ashley Montagu as "the most important book since Darwin's Origin of Species." It has been translated into at least 22 languages, including most European languages and Chinese, Russian, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, and Arabic.
Her 2008 book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and the planet. It has been hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking,” by Peter Senge as “desperately needed,” and by Gloria Steinem as “revolutionary.”
Eisler's other books include the award-winning The Power of Partnership and Tomorrow’s Children, as well as Sacred Pleasure, a reexamination of sexuality and spirituality, and Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life, which statistically documents the key role of the status of women in a nation’s general quality of life.
Riane Eisler keynotes conferences worldwide, and is a consultant to business and government on applications of the partnership model introduced in her work. International venues have included Germany at the invitation of Prof. Rita Süssmuth, President of the Bundestag (the German Parliament) and Daniel Goeudevert (Chair of Volkswagen International); Colombia, invited by the Mayor of Bogota; and the Czech Republic, invited by Václav Havel, the (President of the Czech Republic).
Riane Eisler is a founding member of the General Evolution Research Group (GERG), a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and World Business Academy, and a commissioner of the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, along with the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and other spiritual leaders. She is also co-founder of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV). She is the president of the Center for Partnership Studies, dedicated to research and education.
She is the author of over 300 essays and articles in publications ranging from Behavioral Science, Futures, Political Psychology, and The UNESCO Courier to Brain and Mind, Yes!, the Human Rights Quarterly, The International Journal of Women's Studies, and the World Encyclopedia of Peace.
Eisler was one of the founders of the Women's Rights Law Reporter, the first legal periodical to focus exclusively on women's rights. She is also an active Global Council Member at the International Museum of Women.
Riane Eisler inspired Professor Min Jiayin of the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to edit The Chalice and the Blade in Chinese Culture (published in 1995 by China Social Sciences Publishing House). Jiayin's book tested Eisler's cultural transformation theory in Chinese culture, and found that there was also a shift from partnership to domination in Asian prehistory. In her 2008 book, Gender and Information Technology: Moving Beyond Access to Co-Create Global Partnership, Mary Kirk uses Eisler's cultural transformation theory to offer an interdisciplinary, social systems perspective on issues of access to technology. Gender and Information Technology explores how shifting from dominator towards partnership systems...as reflected in four primary social institutions (communication, media, education, and business)--might help us move beyond the simplistic notion of access to co-create a real digital revolution worldwide..
Dr. Eisler has received many honors, including the Humanist Pioneer Aaward and the first Alice Paul ERA award. She was the only woman selected for inclusion in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians for her work as a cultural historian and evolutionary theorist.
The Center for Partnership Studies (CPS), located in Pacific Grove, CA., was established in 1987 for the purpose of researching, developing, and disseminating education on the partnership model as developed by Riane Eisler.
