Jung and Goddess: the significance of Jungian and post-Jungian theory to the development of the Western Goddess Movement

This study is concerned with the significance of Jungian and post-Jungian theory to the development of the contemporary Western Goddess Movement, which includes the various self-identified nature-based, Pagan, Goddess Feminism, Goddess Consciousness, Goddess Spirituality, Wicca, and Goddess-centred faith traditions that have seen a combined increase in Western adherents over the past five decades and share a common goal to claim Goddess as an active part of Western consciousness and faith traditions. The Western Goddess Movement has been strongly influenced by Jung’s thought, and by feminist revisions of Jungian Theory, sometimes interpreted idiosyncratically, but presented as a route to personal and spiritual transformation. The analysis examines ways in which women encounter Goddess through a process of Jungian Individuation and traces the development of Jungian and post-Jungian theories by identifying the key thinkers and central ideas that helped to shape the development of the Western Goddess Movement. It does so through a close reading and analysis of five biographical ‘rebirth’ memoirs published between 1981 and 1998: Christine Downing’s (1981) The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine; Jean Shinoda Bolen’s (1994) Crossing to Avalon: A Woman’s Midlife Pilgrimage; Sue Monk Kidd’s (1996) The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine; Margaret Starbird’s (1998) The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine; and Phyllis Curott’s (1998) Book of Shadows: A Modern Woman’s Journey into the Wisdom of Witchcraft and the Magic of the Goddess. These five memoirs reflect the diversity of the faith traditions in the Western Goddess Movement. The enquiry centres upon two parallel and complementary research threads: 1) critically examining the content of the memoirs in order to determine their contribution to the development of the Goddess Movement and 2) charting and sourcing the development of the major Jungian and post-Jungian theories championed in the memoirs in order to evaluate the significance of Jungian and post-Jungian thought in the Movement. The aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of the original research question: what is the significance of Jungian and post-Jungian theory for the development of the Western Goddess Movement? Each memoir is subjected to critical review of its intended audiences, its achievements, its functions and strengths, and its theoretical frameworks. Research results offered more than the experiences of five Western women, it also provided evidence to analyse the significance of Jungian and post-Jungian theory to the development of the Western Goddess Movement. The findings demonstrate the vital contributions of the analytical psychology of Carl Jung, and post-Jungians M Esther Harding, Erich Neumann, Christine Downing, E.C. Whitmont, and Jean Shinoda Bolen; the additional contributions of Sue Monk Kidd, Margaret Starbird, and Phyllis Curott, and exhibit Jungian and post-Jungian pathways to Goddess. Through a variety of approaches to Jungian categories, these memoirs constitute a literature of Individuation for the Western Goddess Movement.

Pre-colonial institutions and long-run development in Latin America

The present doctoral thesis studies the association between pre-colonial institutions and long-run development in Latin America. The thesis is organised as follows: Chapter 1 places the motivation of the thesis by underlying relevant contributions in the literature on long-run development. I then set out the main objective of the thesis, followed by a brief outline of it. In Chapter 2, I study the effects of pre-colonial institutions on present-day socioeconomic outcomes for Latin America. The main thesis of this chapter is that more advanced pre-colonial institutions relate to better socioeconomic outcomes today - principally, but not only, through their effects on the Amerindian population. I test such hypothesis with a dataset of 324 sub-national administrative units covering all mainland Latin American countries. The extensive range of controls covers factors such as climate, location, natural resources, colonial activities and pre-colonial characteristics - plus country fixed effects. Results strongly support the main thesis. In Chapter 3, I further analyse the association between pre-colonial institutions and present-day economic development in Latin America by using the historical ethnic homelands as my main unit of analysis. The main hypothesis is that ethnic homelands inhabited by more advanced ethnic groups -as measured by their levels of institutional complexity- relate to better economic development today. To track these long-run effects, I construct a new dataset by digitising historiographical maps allowing me to pinpoint the geospatial location of ethnic homelands as of the XVI century. As a result, 375 ethnic homelands are created. I then capture the levels of economic development at the ethnic homeland level by making use of alternative economic measures --satellite light density data. After controlling for country-specific characteristics and applying a large battery of geographical, locational, and historical factors, I found that the effects of pre-colonial institutions relate to a higher light density --as a proxy for economic activity- in ethnic homelands where more advanced ethnic groups lived. In Chapter 4, I explore a mechanism linking the persistence of pre-colonial institutions in Latin America over the long-run: Colonial and post-colonial strategies along with the ethnic political capacity worked in tandem allowing larger Amerindian groups to "support" the new political systems in ways that would benefit their respective ethnic groups as well as the population at large. This mechanism may have allowed the effects of pre-colonial institutions to influence socioeconomic development outcomes up to today. To shed lights on this mechanism, I combine the index of pre-colonial institutions prepared for the second chapter of the present thesis with individual-level survey data on people's attitudes. By controlling for key observable and unobservable country-specific characteristics, the main empirical results show that areas with a history of more advanced pre-colonial institutions increase the probability of individuals supporting present-day political institutions. Finally, in Chapter 5, I summarise the main findings of the thesis, and emphasise the key weaknesses of the study as well as potential avenues for future research.