Culture and Charisma: Outline of a Theory

Smith, Philip L.

doi:10.1080/00016990050079563

Cited by 17 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Thus, both populist (antagonism between the “people and the masses,” anti‐status quo dynamics) and charismatic (the leader as a mythic figure, the attachment to a redemptive mission, the presence of narratives of “faith” and “sacrifice”) features are present in this form of politics. The analysis links the discussion of charismatic authority to its original Weberian context, by grounding it in wider salvationist, symbolic, and narrative fields (Smith ).…”

Section: Criticismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Missionary Politics – A Contribution to the Study of Populism

Zúquete¹

2013

Religion Compass

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The sacralization of politics is commonly studied in terms of movements and regimes of the past. This article explains and develops the political-religious concept of missionary politics as an analytical tool to understand political activism in the twenty-first century. Missionary Politics is a political religion that has at its center a charismatic leadership, a narrative of salvation, ritualization, and the creation of a moral community invested with a collective mission of combating conspiratorial enemies and redeeming the community from its putative crisis. Ongoing research regarding missionary politics demonstrates the continuing importance of the sacralization of the political, which manifests itself in many ways, in contemporary times.

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Section: Criticismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Missionary Politics – A Contribution to the Study of Populism

Zúquete¹

2013

Religion Compass

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“…In the process of political change, violent protest rituals often play an important role as the bloody sacrifice of the victim symbolizes the purification of the community. In other words, violent protests are meaningful because they indicate the transformation of a collectivity from a state of “impurity” (authoritarianism) to a state of “purity” (democracy) (Smith 2000). Therefore, violence is not just an element in the strategic action repertoire of social movements (as the political process model suggests) (Smith 1991).…”

Section: Political Power and Collective Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The activists framed Korean history as a series of confrontations between the Minjung and the ruling elite that usually ended in the defeat and humiliation of the Minjung. These narrations described a mythic conflict between the “good” and the “evil” (Smith 2000): on one side, the Minjung who rose up against suppression, and on the other side, the anti‐Minjung, who made the common people suffer. Through protests, time and again, the profane temporal life of both camps was interrupted by “periods of a sacred time that is non‐historical (in the sense that it does not belong to the historical present)” (Eliade 1961:72).…”

Section: Pragmatics Of Protestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Performance and Political Regime Change

Kern

2009

Sociological Theory

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The question about how culture shapes the possibilities for successful democratization has been a controversial issue for decades. This article maintains that successful democratization depends not only on the distribution of political interests and resources, but to seriously challenge a political regime, the advocates of democracy require cultural legitimacy as well. Accordingly, the central question is how democratic ideas are connected to the broader culture of a social community. This issue will be addressed in the case of South Korea. The Minjung democracy movement challenged the military regime by connecting democratic ideas concerning popular sovereignty and human rights with cultural traditions. The dissidents substantiated democratic values by (1) articulating an alternative concept of political representation against the authoritarian regime, (2) increasing the cultural resonance of their concept by linking democratic ideas to traditional narratives and practices, (3) developing a rich dramaturgical repertoire of collective action, and (4) mobilizing public outrage by fusing the above three elements within historical situations.The question concerning how culture shapes the possibilities of successful democratization has been a controversial issue for decades. Since the end of World War II, the debate has been dominated by two paradigms: the normative paradigm of classical modernization theory stresses the importance of a favorable political culture (Lipset 1959:92-93; Huntington 1984:207); the rationalist paradigm of conflict theory accentuates the distribution of economic and political power (Przeworski 1991;Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). The main difference between the two paradigms is the way they conceptualize the relation between values and actions. While the first assumes an almost deterministic effect of values, the latter neglects them. However, as Joas (1996) andEisenstadt (1979) pointed out, cultural values actually give actors an orientation, but they are too general to bring about a specific institutional outcome. From the perspective of a theory of creativity, "an adequate understanding of values in human action has to conceptualize instead the interaction between values embodied in prereflective aspirations and the situation where we establish which course of action accords with our values. This concretization or specification of values is an exercise in the creativity of action" (Joas and Beckert 2002:274). Accordingly, the question is not whether a given set of cultural values is compatible with democracy or not but rather how creative actors more or less succeed in specifying basic democratic ideas of popular sovereignty and human rights.Referring to current discussions about the "performative turn" (2006) in sociology, this article develops a model to analyze the cultural dimension of regime changes on the empirical case of South Korea. Given that the legitimacy of a political system *

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“…Although there is current work that continues to follow the original work of Weber (e.g. Smith, 2000), the majority of current scholarship suggests that charismatic leadership is a viable paradigm in organizational behavior studies.…”

Section: Neo-charismatic Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership and the Church: The Impact of Shifting Leadership Constructs

Gautsch

Setley

2016

IJBSR

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The idea of leadership has been examined for millennia. Examples of leadership in action go back to Moses from the Bible and Xenophón from Greek history. One of the key theories in early leadership is that of charismatic leadership. Although most scholars agree that a key concept of charismatic leadership is that of follower attribution, defining boundaries for charismatic is as difficult as defining leadership itself. This difficulty is accentuated in this work because of the shifting organizational structures and follower perceptions. The case details follower attributed charismatic leadership traits, and then provides a robust discussion on the impact of shifting organizational constructs.

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Culture and Charisma: Outline of a Theory

Cited by 17 publications

References 18 publications

Missionary Politics – A Contribution to the Study of Populism

Missionary Politics – A Contribution to the Study of Populism

Cultural Performance and Political Regime Change

Leadership and the Church: The Impact of Shifting Leadership Constructs

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