Articles

Creative individuals in every era have produced works that inspire and provoke their fellow citizens, challenging them to both confront distorted realities and reimagine better lives. Artifacts that have stood the test of time and critical reception usually elicit multiple interpretations among contemporaries and are reinterpreted by future generations. Ulti-mately, said works were eventually embraced…

This introduction gives an overview of mimetic theory’s three core ideas as first formulated in the work of René Girard, its general reception in the academy, and its close connection to Christianity. It surveys applications of the theory across the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities (as developed more fully by other articles in this theme issue)…

The Bible, in René Girard’s reading, reveals the violent foundations of social order and critiques the scapegoat mechanism used to transform the conflictual mimesis of human culture into unanimous arbitrary victimage. Girard classifies as myth all those conventional narratives that have been used to justify foundational violence, concealing the guilt of the persecutors and the…

Though tribalism and conflict have long been a focus of social psychological research, psychology as a discipline has few meta-theories able to serve as organizing principles or prisms for new ways of understanding. This paper draws on the work of philosopher and anthropologist René Girard who uses mimesis (imitation) as a foundational lynchpin for tying…

This collaboration between a social work researcher with expertise in systems of care for those with disabilities and a literary scholar asks whether mimetic theory can shed light on relational dynamics surrounding children with intellectual disabilities. Data came from two sources: field experience with organizations in China and interviews with stakeholders of organizations in Michigan.…

Mimetic theory has received very little attention from economists. This essay by an ap-plied microeconomist may be the first article written on mimetic theory directed primarily at an audience of mainstream Anglo-American economists. It outlines the potential con-tributions of mimetic theory to economics, discussing Rene Girard’s core ideas in terms of economics terminology and concepts.…