Cultural Transformation Theory Research Articles

Hierarchies of Actualization.

The concept of transforming power over to power with, the theme of this issue of Creative Nursing, comes from Riane Eisler's cultural transformation theory describing a continuum of domination and partnership along which cultures orient themselves. Hierarchies are important organizing principles in many systems; it is not their presence that is inhumane, but how they function. Domination systems display authoritarian rule in both the family and the state or tribe, with strict hierarchies of domination, and narratives that normalize domination and present the violence that maintains it as inevitable. Partnership systems are characterized by egalitarian structures in both the family and state or tribe, with hierarchies of actualization in which power is used to empower others rather than disempower, low levels of sanctioned violence (since it is not needed to maintain power), and narratives depicting mutual respect, accountability, and benefit as natural. All the articles in this issue of Creative Nursing depict empowerment: of patients, parents and other family members, foster parents, children from preschool age to near adulthood, providers of direct patient care at many levels in many areas, nurses seeking to publish their knowledge, and all people who seek to use language that demonstrates respect and value for all people while acknowledging the diverse cultures in which we abide.

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Health care is acutely aware that issues such as disengagement, burnout, and turnover are curbing the ability to deliver results in safety, quality, and patient experience. The purpose of this article is to showcase 1 health system’s relational strategy to meet these challenges based on the Quadruple Aim and founded on cultural transformation theory, which is focused on relationships and designed through the lens of love.

Media Review: 'Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives and Future,' by Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry

In Nurturing Our Humanity, Eisler and Fry address the neuroscientific-biological and social-relational aspects of brain development in human children, as well as the ways brain growth in children is either promoted or inhibited, depending upon the relative degrees of domination or partnership systems existing within the social structures of families and cultures. Fry brings an anthropological perspective covering human prehistory, history and present-day humans, while Eisler brings a dynamic social-relational and systems science perspective. The effect of joining these perspectives is the dawning of a deeper understanding from which a plan can be made and carried out to raise new and successive generations of kinder, more peaceful, creative and intelligent humans. Nurturing Our Humanity winds up with Eisler’s plan, developed out of her own Cultural Transformation Theory. The plan calls for instilling partnership system values and practices into family cultures during earliest childhood, so that partnership values and practices can grow, endure, and replace domination values and practices in the family. As the family goes, so follows all the rest: schools, towns, cities, states, and nations.

Serpenti, eroi e rose di maggio. La danza cosmica di femminile e maschile in Shakespeare

Abstract – Drawing from Riane Eisler’s Cultural Transformation Theory , this article focuses on some representative feminine figures in Shakespeare’s plays as manifestations of what the anthropologist Riane Eisler defines as the partnership paradigm as opposed to the dominator one. The chapter shows some relevant analogies between the Elizabethan world picture with its ‘order and degree’ and Eisler’s dominator model, and how Shakespeare challenges and subverts the ruling cultural paradigm of his time through the representations of ‘otherness’ in some women characters who clearly embody the partnership model. In partnership society, roles are not imposed through fear and violence but shared within a loving and caring community, more oriented towards what Krippendorff (2014) calls the “reign of freedom”. Here, each person self-regulates and modulates the limits of his/her individualism by respecting also the common good and happiness of all. While the male hero of the tragedy fails in his extreme individualism, this partnership community, found especially in the comedy, is women-oriented and shows how one can ‘govern’ with grace, irony, imagination, and wisdom, thus teaching how peoples of different colours and personalities can participate in the creative and ever-changing art of living in a true community. Female figures who show strong traits connected them to a partnership dimension are present also in the tragedy as a foil or an alternative to patriarchal rule.

When Push Comes to Love: Partnership and Social Justice

Despite major accomplishments of the modern era, the protection of women, children, and the environment remain vulnerable. In response, there has been increasing growth of social justice protests that use social media to express the need for social change. This article provides a discussion of the rise of several social movements and their attempts to address issues of injustice, particularly focusing on sexual violence and environmental destruction. The increased use of social media prompted a global response, within the context of popular culture, which was then followed by mainstream news coverage of the protests. This technological shift in news sharing promoted increased awareness about issues of sexual violence and environmental destruction. The lasting impact, however, is unknown. Yet there may be links between current social justice movements and Riane Eisler’s Cultural Transformation Theory that could foster social change. This article formulates a more direct connection between social movements and Eisler’s Cultural Transformation Theory in a manner that intentionally urges progressive social justice groups to understand and move toward partnership in general, and specifically toward a cultural transformation that protects the environment and eliminates violence against women and children.

The New Community Policing: Developing a Partnership-Based Theoretical Foundation

This paper presents a Partnership Model of Community Policing based on Partnership concepts developed by Riane Eisler and undergirded by Cultural Transformation Theory as a guiding principle (1987, 2010, 2013). This model is more reflective of the daily lived experiences of community police officers. It is culturally relevant and based on the whole of the police officer’s relationship with the community within the context in which the interactions occur. This "New Community Policing" is an extension of Riane Eisler’s Cultural Transformation Theory and is an attempt to answer her call for a movement towards a partnership model of social organization. Ultimately, "8 Pillars of the New Community Policing" are developed to aid in defining and implementing community policing.

Making the Choice Clear: Partnership and Domination Examples from Nursing Practice

Health care is in desperate need of transformation, which will require careful scrutiny of the current culture. Riane Eisler’s Cultural Transformation Theory (1987, 2007) and particularly its application in partnership-based health care (Eisler & Potter, 2014), offers nurses and other health care providers a framework to clarify choices regarding their organization’s culture. In this article, nursing leaders offer examples of common domination and partnership behaviors at play in health care today. The intent is to provide a clear choice and increase awareness of the stakes of failing to move towards partnership.

Themes in Health Care Culture: Application of Cultural Transformation Theory

Key aspects of culture change include familiarizing oneself with how relationships are structured and encouraging an awareness of how people relate to one another on a domination/partnership continuum (Eisler & Potter, 2014). In 2013, 200 nurse leaders were asked to rate their own cultures on a continuum of domination to partnership based on Eisler’s Cultural Transformation Theory (1987). Of those nurse leaders, 37.5% rated their organizations as being closer to a domination culture than a partnership culture. These findings prompted the development and delivery of a webinar series that applied Cultural Transformation Theory to healthcare culture. The attendees noted an overall change in self-rating of their healthcare culture as they learned about domination and partnership culture. This shift in rating could indicate Cultural Transformation Theory’s usefulness in understanding healthcare culture, and in identifying domination and partnership relationships. In discussions during the webinar three themes emerged: 1) Healthcare culture inclines toward domination and this has an impact on patients, 2) Leadership impacts organizational culture, and 3) Leaders are unaware of domination tendencies within their own cultures. Further discussion is needed to identify strategies that support cultural changes, ultimately leading to improvements in safety, quality, and patient experience within healthcare.

Bringing Partnership Home: A Model of Family Transformation

Eisler’s cultural transformation theory suggests that the global crises we face can be addressed only through movement to a partnership model of social organization. Drawing on cultural transformation theory and systems theory, a partnership model of family organization (PMFO) is outlined as a practical framework to guide families toward partnership relations. Eight components of PMFO are presented and expanded on as a path toward furthering familial and societal transformation. The eight tenets of a PMFO are: 1) cooperative adult leadership, 2) connecting orientation, 3) caretaking emphasis, 4) collaborative roles and rules, 5) celebration of unique contributions, 6) compassionate communication, 7) conscious language use, and 8) collection and creation of partnership stories. Finally, specific strategies of application of the PMFO will be discussed.

Designing to Partner/Partnering to Design: Exploring Synergies between Cultural Transformation and Design toward a Partnership Society

What is Cultural Transformation Theory? What is design, and design thinking? How do these topics connect with concepts of culture and material culture? How are domination and partnership as paradigms of cultural transformation expressed in design? How can design and partnership work together to achieve a partnership society, and what actions does this suggest for the future? This article addresses these questions, identifies key elements of Cultural Transformation Theory, and introduces the concepts of design and design thinking and the aspects of design as product and process. Definitions of culture and material culture that reveal a disconnect with design are discussed. This article makes the case that design and culture are reciprocally connected, and uses specific cross-cultural examples of domination and partnership as manifested in design disciplines of architecture. Current ways in which the emerging field of design thinking incorporates a partnership approach are also discussed. Finally, the article suggests ways in which cultural transformation and design can work synergistically, evolving cultures toward a partnership future while creating design expressions of such a culture.
 Erratum
 Issued March 15, 2016. On page 20, the first Eisler reference should read:
 Eisler, R. (2013). Human Possibilities: An Integrated Systems Approach. World Futures, The Journal of Global Education, 69:4-6 (pp. 269-289) Pacific Grove, CA: Center for Partnership Studies. Retrieved from: http://www.partnershipway.org/learn-more/articles-by-riane-eisler

Human Possibilities: The Interaction of Biology and Culture

This article briefly describes the two main strands of a new unified theory about human nature and human possibilities: cultural transformation theory and bio-culturalism. Bio-culturalism combines findings from neuroscience about how our brains develop in interaction with our environments with findings from the study of relational dynamics, a new method of social analysis focusing on what kinds of relations—from intimate to international—a particular culture or subculture supports. Bio-culturalism recognizes that our species has a vast spectrum of genetic capacities, ranging from consciousness, caring, empathy, cooperation, and creativity to insensitivity, cruelty, exploitation, and destructiveness, and proposes that which of these capacities are expressed or inhibited largely hinges on the nature of our cultural environments. Cultural transformation theory looks at the whole span of human cultural evolution from the perspective of the tension between the contrasting configurations of the partnership system and the domination system as two underlying possibilities for structuring beliefs, institutions, and relationships. The article describes the core components of partnership- and domination-oriented societies, provides examples of each, and proposes that our future hinges on accelerating the cultural transformation from domination to partnership in our time of nuclear and biological weapons and the ever more efficient despoliation of nature, when high technology guided by an ethos of domination and conquest could take us to an evolutionary dead end.

Partnership Studies in Transformative Education

This article provides a brief overview of Eisler's Cultural Transformation Theory and domination/partnership models. Its main objective is to share ways in which these important ideas and constructs can be included in educational curricula, with a focus on university teaching, to encourage and support personal development and positive social change. It offers examples of effective learning activities developed over nearly a decade of teaching partnership, as well as ways in which students have included partnership in their life, work, and studies.

Untangling Partnership and Domination Morality

Riane Eisler’s (1987) cultural transformation theory is an effective framework for understanding many of the constructs that shape society. This article uses Eisler’s theory to explain the formation of morality and the construction of conscience. It contrasts partnership morality and domination morality, and describes the factors that shape our tendency to embrace one or the other. The article helps us understand that we have a choice, and invites us to choose partnership morality.

Leadership for Cultural Transformation: Addressing Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya

The cultural practice of female genital mutilation persists, with grave implications for girls’ and women’s health. The cultural reasons behind the practice are complex. It is therefore essential that critique of the practice come from members of the affected communities. This paper presents a thoughtful review of current community views and proposes an alternative cultural narrative using cultural transformation theory to shift community norms.

Shifting the Paradigm: A Conversation with Riane Eisler, JD

Teddie Potter: Today I am privileged to interview Riane Eisler, social theorist, macrohistorian, celebrated author, and president of the Center for Partnership Studies. Riane, we at Creative Nursing are excited to have you join us for this interview. Our previous issue (Creative Nursing, Volume 18, Issue No. 2) has a review of your book, The Chalice and the Blade, as well as a discussion of your work related to the field of nursing. So we're very interested in what you have to say. Riane Eisler: And I'm very interested in Creative Nursing because the nursing community embodies in so many ways the principles of what I call the caring economy. As you know well, Teddie, because you wrote your dissertation on that as well as on what I call the partnership model. Potter: Yes. You have been analyzing social organization structure for your entire career. Would you help our audience understand a bit about your personal history and how it fueled your passion for partnership? Eisler: You're right. I have a great deal of passion for this work, not only as a researcher and a social scientist and of course as a writer and organizer and speaker, but also as a mother and grandmother. I'm deeply concerned, as so many of us are, about what kind of world our children will inherit. The issue is human agency. We must understand where we are and what we can do to move in a more positive direction. My research came out of questions that arose very early in my life. When I was a little girl in Vienna, after the takeover by the Nazis, suddenly my parents and I became hunted. The Nazis had a license to kill, and we escaped by a hair's breadth. I was very young on Kristallnacht, when a gang of Gestapo men barged into our home and dragged my father away. So very early, I saw that we humans are capable of great cruelty, violence, insensitivity. But I also saw something else that night that profoundly affected me: it's what I call spiritual courage. We've been taught to think of courage as slaying the dragon, killing the enemy, but spiritual courage is the courage to stand up against injustice out of love. And my mother displayed that courage. She recognized one of the Gestapo men as a young man who had once been an errand boy for the family business, and she got furious. She said, "How dare you treat this man, who was so good to you, this way! I want him back!" Now, my mother could have been killed because many Jewish people were killed that night. But by a miracle she wasn't-by a miracle, we escaped Vienna. My mother managed to get my father's release; we fled in the middle of the night and I grew up in Cuba, in the industrial slums of Havana, and eventually came to the United States. All that led to the question that many of us have asked: Does it have to be this way? When we humans have such an enormous capacity for caring, for sensitivity, for creativity; why has there been so much destructiveness, so much cruelty, and so much insensitivity? Eventually, those questions led to my multidisciplinary cross-cultural research, looking for answers. Potter: You did a wonderful job describing those answers in your book, The Chalice and the Blade. Can you talk about the cultural transformation theory that came out of your work? Eisler: I want to start by saying that I didn't really embark on this research until another pivotal experience in my life-in the late 1960s-when, along with thousands of other women, I suddenly woke up as if from a long drugged sleep. I realized, through consciousness-raising groups, that so many of the problems that I thought were just me (You know, something's wrong with me! We're always told something's wrong with us, right?) . . . Potter: Right! Eisler: They weren't really personal problems, because I shared them with so many other women. They were social problems. So when I embarked on this cross- cultural historical multidisciplinary research, I drew from a much larger database than most studies of society. …

Educating for Partnering

In the early 1980s, I was working on an oncology unit at a large inner-city hospital. One of my colleagues was sitting at the bedside of a dying patient, quietly speaking to the patient while holding his hand. The primary physician arrived, cleared her throat, and gruffly said, "When the captain of the ship arrives, the crew stands." Much has changed in three decades. There has been extensive research and education about civility, nurse-provider relationships, moral distress, and lateral violence. Based on this research and the implications for patient outcomes, hospitals wanting to earn Magnet status must demonstrate their support for healthy interprofessional relationships. With these advancements, one would think that all nurses would see themselves as full partners with other providers, but this is not always the case. What factors perpetuate nurses' sense of powerlessness? Why do nurses frequently remain silent or in the shadows regarding major health system decisions? Why do some new nurses still experience the old adage, "Nurses eat their young?" I left full-time practice in the field because of a desire to help shape the next generation of nurses. With my newly awarded master of science in nursing, I started teaching theory and clinical courses at a local college. I love bedside nursing and was eager to share the magic of our profession with novices. On my first day of clinicals, I was surprised to find the units empty-not a student in sight. Strange! We all started the day together-Where did they all go? Finally, I cornered one student who reported in a shaky voice, "We always run and hide when we see an instructor approaching. Who wants to be treated poorly?" I was shocked! Nurse educators are part of the problem? It's easy to point fingers at external forces but more difficult to critically evaluate our own complicity. I spoke with numerous nurses in practice and, almost to a person, they could recall at least one instructor who made them question if they wanted to be a nurse-made them question their own judgment and undermined their confidence in reporting significant observations. Yet it is passion for our work, skilled judgment in complex situations, and confidence to act that distinguish an expert nurse. These same qualities are required if we are to be effective partners with other providers. In order to best equip nurses for the complexities of health care today and to give them the adaptability required for health care systems tomorrow, we need to educate nurses for partnership. Nursing education needs to shake off the old paradigm of dominance and move toward a culture of partnership with those we teach. This issue of Creative Nursing examines educating for partnership from various perspectives. The authors discuss education issues ranging from theory and curriculum to application and evaluation. Our articles move from a thoughtful critique of the past to a hopeful vision for nursing's future. Nursing fundamentals textbooks often provide student nurses with their first glimpse of the history of the nursing profession and the role of the nurse in today's health care system. In "Partnership Nursing: Recovering Lost Threads of the Nursing Story," I summarize how nursing fundamentals textbooks currently address power, partnerships, and the role of nurses through history. Social theorist and macrohistorian Riane Eisler's cultural transformation theory facilitated the analysis of the fundamentals textbooks as well as the shaping of an empowering story of nursing based on partnership. Lori Steffen's review of The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (Eisler, 1987) elucidates Eisler's theory further. Eisler studied cultures from around the globe, spanning human history with the aim of discovering why some cultures live peacefully while others gravitate toward violence and war. …

The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics (review)

Reviewed by: The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics Mary Kirk (bio) Eisler, Riane. The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007. 318 pp. Economics: the word strikes fear in the hearts of some, confusion in the minds of many, and concern in the souls of most worldwide today. In The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, Riane Eisler calms our fears and demystifies our confusion, while demonstrating how dominator economics have cost us and how partnership economics can help us cultivate the real wealth of our nations—our people. During the over twenty years since she first published her international best-seller (now in twenty-three languages) The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (1987), Riane Eisler has applied her cultural transformation theory to a range of social questions: to sex, [End Page 266] spirituality, and the body in Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body (1996); to education in Tomorrow's Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century (2000) and Educating for a Culture of Peace (2004); and to daily life in The Power of Partnership: Seven Relationships that Will Change Your Life (2002). As Eisler has focused her dominator-partnership lens on a different aspect of our society in each book, she has used her interdisciplinary, social systems perspectives to help us understand the dominator systems we have created so far and to offer a road map for creating partnership systems. In her latest book, Eisler focuses her dominator-partnership lens on economics as a social system. Her comprehensive analysis offers a big-picture perspective that is often missing from economic discussions. Here she lays bare the flawed fundamental assumptions of our current dominator economic systems and reveals ways that partnership economic systems might help us create the world we long to inhabit. Although most of us have learned to think about economics as a battle between capitalism and socialism, Eisler demonstrates how neither the capitalist free market (envisioned by Adam Smith) nor the scientific socialism (envisioned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) could be realized due to their shared inheritance of dominator beliefs, structures, and habits. Smith's capitalism assumed that competition would counter self-interest, but the evidence of ruthless business leaders historically and today belies that erroneous assumption. Eisler also reveals core fallacies of capitalism as a dominator economic model. For example, what we value is determined by supply and demand; scarce goods and services are more valued than abundant ones. However, this ignores the fact "that current economic policies and practices often artificially create scarcities" and that so-called "demand is largely determined by cultural beliefs about what is and is not valuable" (16). Similarly, Marx and Engels's vision of an egalitarian socialist economic system could not manifest in the midst of dominator values that emphasize hierarchical control. According to Eisler, what is missing is that neither capitalist nor socialist theory recognized "that a healthy economy and society require an economic system that supports optimal human development," and she adds that "the ultimate goal of economic policy should not be the level of monetary income per person, but developing the human capabilities of each person" (148). Eisler proposes a new "partnerism" economic model to replace both capitalism and socialism—one that recognizes "the essential economic value of caring for ourselves, others, and nature" (22). She explains that developing partnerism will require fundamental changes in our economic measurements, institutions, and rules and outlines seven steps toward creating this new "caring economics": 1. Recognize how the cultural devaluation of caring and care-giving has negatively affected economic theories, policies, and practices. 2. Support the shift from dominator to partnership cultural values and economic and social structures. 3. Change economic indicators to assign value to caring and care-giving. 4. Create economic inventions that support and reward caring and care-giving. 5. Expand the economic vocabulary to include caring, teach caring economics [End Page 267] in business and economics schools, and conduct gender-specific economic research. 6. Educate children and adults about the importance of caring and care-giving. 7. Show government and business leaders the benefits...

Karakteristik Iket Sunda di Bandung dan Sumedang Periode Tahun 1968-2006

The study discusses the design of Iket Sunda as it is related to the life of Sundanese people and their associated culture. Iket is a type of traditional head-attire of Sunda, in which through its use we may grasp the function and status of those who wears it. Unfortunately, the use of traditional iket Sunda is no longer common and no one seems to wear it in daily basis. Yet, iket Sunda carries more than just fashion, as it also represent distinct identity amongst diverse ethnic cultures of Indonesia. This study exposes the knowledge behind iket Sunda , from the embedded aesthetic values, the associated behavior of the people who wears it, and its inter-related historical background. To address the purpose, this study applied qualitative approach based on cultural transformation theory, in order to understand the undergone changes that may relate to the design of iket-Sunda . Results indicate that iket Sunda is not completely washed out of use in today’s living, as a small group of Sundanese societies in Bandung and Sumedang still wear it on a daily basis. However, some Sundanese people only wear it as part of complete traditional attire in certain events, including dance costumes and other performance activities, therefore most are not aware of the various styles of iket-Sunda . Study found that through times, iket Sunda has undergone changes on the shape, use of clothes, size, decorations, colors, and way of wearing. As rare as it may be, iket Sunda represents the true identity of Sundanese people and their associated culture .

The Dynamics of Cultural and Technological Evolution: Domination Versus Partnership

There is growing consensus that we need a new paradigm if we are to solve the global problems that are the result of actions and policies stemming from prevailing paradigms or cognitive maps. Theories are cognitive maps. This article summarizes cultural transformation theory, which proposes that to solve our mounting global problems we need a clearer understanding of the self-organizing interaction of two basic movements in cultural evolution. The first consists of technological phase changes, including the most recent shift from industrial to electronic, nuclear, and biochemical technologies. The second consists of shifts in a system's orientation to what, based on three decades of transdisciplinary research, the author identifies as the socio-economic, gender, and cultural configurations characteristic of the dominator and partnership models. The article calls for a reassessment of earlier theories as the basis for effective action to accelerate the shift to a world orienting to the partnership rather than dominator model as a basis for a sustainable, equitable, and peaceful future.