Partnership Studies 22: Domination Aesthetics, Partnership Art, and the Politics of Architecture

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/01/21

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, 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 received the Humanist Pioneer Award. Drawing on neuroscience and history, she argues that Peace begins at home and calls for a shift in worldview to build more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate societies rooted in connection rather than control. 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). 

In this exchange, Scott Douglas Jacobsen asks Riane Eisler how domination and partnership orientations show up in art, architecture, and the moral purpose of aesthetics. Eisler describes domination art as monumental, hierarchical, and awe-producing—towering deities, triumphal forms, and “great man” iconography that naturalize obedience and power. Partnership-leaning cultures, she argues, more often emphasize nature, interconnection, cyclical symbols like spirals, and influential female figures not reduced to object or stereotype. They may also embed care in production—fewer glorifications of killing, more communal responsibility. Eisler calls for systematic art-historical study using the partnership–domination lens.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Everyone has a way of looking at the world and what they enjoy looking at. We can call that aesthetics, which spans a spectrum from what we find beautiful to what we find ugly. In domination systems, when you look internationally over time, what do you usually see in domination art and architecture? What do you notice in partnership-oriented aesthetics?

Riane Eisler: In domination systems, the first examples that come to mind are immense statues of a male deity—say, Zeus—with tiny human figures at the base, shown as insignificant in comparison. Monumental architecture uses awe to reinforce hierarchy. Domination systems build cathedrals and other enormous structures dedicated to the deity of the day. The specifics vary, but the message remains consistent: the deity is excellent, and you are nothing—unless you obey, in which case you may be granted a small measure of value.

It is reasonable to ask how many people died in the construction of such works. I do not know the exact number, but it is safe to assume that many did, and not only men. Archaeological evidence increasingly shows that the strict role separation portrayed in bestselling books like The Naked Ape is not a universal fact about our deep past but is powerfully shaped by modern assumptions of male domination over women. In some societies, women did take part in hunting, and there is evidence that some hunters could have been pregnant women as well, which has surprised many researchers.

Normative myths about gender and hierarchy have not changed enough. New information from archaeology and holistic analyses of our past and present reaches us in fragments, without much connection. Unless someone is trained in whole-systems thinking, it is not easy to put these findings together into a coherent picture.

Old stories and old art often glorified acts such as the “rape of Lucretia” and similar scenes. For a long period in European history, art was funded and promoted mainly by those in power, so the question becomes: what kinds of art did they choose to support?

Jacobsen: Are there architectural analyses showing differences between partnership societies and domination societies—such as smoother, more organic lines in partnership societies, and more rigid, straight-line or diagonal structures in domination societies?

Eisler: I have not thought about that specifically. I think of places like Çatalhöyük, which were not exactly monumental in the same way, but represent a very different kind of built environment. I do not know, but continue with that thought, because it connects to some things I have learned.

Jacobsen: I have done interviews with, at least, one carver in the Pacific Northwest, and you see the S-curve and the formline style in Indigenous carving—the totem poles and related work. There is a specific art to it, and clear cultural rules about how you are supposed to do it so that you get the formlines right. These societies were often organized on matrilineal lines rather than strictly patriarchal ones, compared with European societies of the same period. If you look at the Soviet period, you see what we often describe as brutalist or starkly functional architecture: very gray, straight lines, highly functional, reflecting a society run by administrators. In modern corporate culture—New York in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, for example—you see many skyscrapers characterized by rigid vertical lines. In other societies, you sometimes see more creativity in how the architecture is done, especially when an architect and an engineering team work together on something more experimental. So there may be indications of domination versus partnership in architecture, but I am not entirely sure.

Eisler: Spirals were a very prominent theme in Minoan art and architecture, as well as in earlier partnership-oriented art. They seem to be connected to a cyclical view of life, death, and rebirth. We do not know this for sure because we do not have clear written records from that time explaining the symbolism. But again and again in that art, the female figure is depicted differently. She is not shown as a sexual object for men or reduced to the Christian dichotomy of virgin versus “fallen woman.” She is powerful. 

The way women and men are depicted is different overall. The kind of exalted lone-warrior scenes we associate with later epics do not, as far as current evidence shows, appear in Paleolithic or early Neolithic art. It takes an art historian using this framework to look systematically for patterns. What you describe is monumental architecture and monumental art: the “needle,” the phallic obelisk as a sign of victory. Then there is the arch of triumph, where a rounded form is co-opted and turned into a symbol of armed victory.

Jacobsen: What about the moral value of art in domination versus partnership societies—how it is understood, and what it is seen as applicable for, within the context of that society?

Eisler: I think of the theme of the so-called Exodus, a forced expulsion from paradise, and how that idea has, in a sense, shifted with the environmental movement.

I have not studied this in depth, but landscapes were secondary in much older Western art. The figures in the foreground were religious protagonists, rulers, and later the wealthy merchant class—think of Dutch Golden Age painting. The focus remained on those at the top of the social hierarchy. It is not until the Impressionists that you see a renewed emphasis on nature as a primary subject rather than a backdrop.

Jacobsen: Something that appears again and again in popular commentary is the “great man theory” of history—the idea that history turns on a handful of exceptional individuals. These figures were often brilliant and talented, but history did not hinge on them alone. That myth is separate from the historical record, yet it pairs neatly with the idea of the “self-made individual” in the modern era, which has been damaging for both individuals and communities. How does that thinking—whether or not it was framed that way at the time—shape art and society internally? How does it manifest in artistic representation?

Eisler: You already know the basic answer. Look at whose busts and statues dominate classical Greece. The people represented are consistently those at the top. Philosophers are an interesting case. The one philosopher who openly mocked prevailing norms—Socrates—was condemned to death and forced to take poison. Yet, as a group, philosophers still reached the upper cultural strata, in part because they tried to explain why men were dissatisfied, as if men could ever be content under rigid domination.

A book that opened my eyes to ancient Athens was The Reign of the Phallus by Eva Keuls. I had an excellent education in Cuba, but we were never taught how pervasive the symbolism of the phallus was in classical Athens. Large phallic sculptures were common, particularly in gardens and public spaces. The phallus was a symbol of power. My book Sacred Pleasure has a chapter titled “The Reign of the Phallus” that explores this as well, but Keuls’ book is essential reading.

This is what we have idealized as the foundation of “Western civilization,” yet even in classical times, there were countercurrents. For example, Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, a play centred on women using a sex strike to force men to end war—an early expression of women’s resistance to domination and militarism.

My education was very classical, so I am familiar with these stories, although I could not immediately recall the playwright’s name. The play you are referring to is the one in which women refuse sex as a protest against the Peloponnesian War. That strategy has appeared in more than one historical instance and even in contemporary times. In at least one recent case—Somalia during the civil conflict—a sex strike reportedly contributed to peace negotiations. Rwanda is sometimes mentioned as well. So we cannot dismiss the power of disincentives. And yes, the playwright was Aristophanes.

Before we wrap up: when I say I had a very classical education, it clearly was not complete, because when I read Eva Keuls’ The Reign of the Phallus, I found material that had never appeared in my formal studies. She is a classicist who closely examined ancient Greek culture and highlighted elements that are not usually taught.

Jacobsen: Would you, to close, offer any speculation on what people might find if they conducted a trans-historical or cross-cultural study of the production of art—step-by-step, how art is made—and how that might differ between domination-oriented societies and partnership-oriented ones? For example, in domination societies where the lives of people with low incomes are valued less, especially those doing the physical construction, I would speculate that you would expect higher mortality in the creation of monumental works than in societies with more partnership values.

Eisler: I think you would. I have done some of this work because art is a symbolic language. If you compare art from periods when societies were more oriented toward partnership than domination—not perfectly, but significantly—you see evidence that people cared more about each other. Cooperative parenting was the norm in some of these societies; the whole community felt responsible for caring for children, regardless of parentage or origin.

Çatalhöyük, for example, was multiracial and multicultural, and people lived together for an extended period in relative harmony. But in the upper layers of the site, something changes. Whether this shift was caused by invasion or emerged as wealth accumulated is unclear. There has been a historical overemphasis on hoarding and on violence to obtain resources. That becomes the norm later.

In the earlier art, you see influential female figures and an emphasis on nature. In Minoan art, for example, there is a strong sense of interconnection—look at the figure on the cover of The Chalice and the Blade. She is a bird goddess who is simultaneously phallic in form and has breasts: an interconnection of male and female, deity and nature. It is all present if you look closely. There are very few hunting scenes, and even fewer scenes of killing. Later, you see idealized “heroic” warriors—celebrations of killing—and of male domination over women. You cannot miss it if you use that frame when looking at the art.

I do not know precisely what a systematic cross-cultural study would conclude, but I know art is transforming now. Performance art and storytelling are growing. The stories being told are not necessarily the old stories glorifying stereotypical masculinity and femininity or ranking male over female and masculine over feminine. It is a compelling time to pay attention to art.

Because today you see two major strands. There is still monumental art—grand ballrooms in seats of power, presidential faces carved onto mountains, symbols of political dominance. And then there is art that does something else entirely: splashes of colour, non-linear forms, works that feel like a search for meaning rather than a declaration of it. What exactly are they searching for? That is the open question.

Jacobsen: That is a good place to end.

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