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Johnson, George W.
1976.
1975 Annual Supplement.
p.
1.
Article contents
Charisma and Integration: an Eighteenth-century North American Case
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
The renewed interest in the phenomenon of charisma, which was first given coherent conceptual form by Max Weber, shows little sign of abating. It is probably the most easily comprehensible, possibly the most popular and certainly the most dramatic model which can be utilized in interdisciplinary studies. Moreover, the theory has the apparent attractiveness of enabling students to intensively study one leader and his movement and then draw more general conclusions about that leader's impact on the society in which he operated. In an article written in 1966, Claude Ake gave a timely warning to practitioners who made grandiose deductions from evidence about one leader and then drew firm conclusions about his total society. In particular, Ake, at one stage in his critique, pointed out the fallacy of assuming that charisma usually implies integration of a previously decentralized, regionalized or fragmented society. As Ake correctly noted, this is unenlightening, unanalytical reasoning since ‘the theory seeks to explain how solidarity may be forged [by a charismatic leader]; but it does so by means of a concept which assumes the existence of solidarity’, thus producing ‘a circular explanation of integration’.
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- Charisma
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- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1974
References
1 It would be superfluous, in view of the ongoing series of articles in Comparative Studies in Society and History, to repeat here the bibliography of the topic. For this article the most relevant works are Eisenstadt, S. N., ed., Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building: Selected Papers (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar; Friedland, William H., ‘For a sociological concept of charisma’, Social Forces 43 (10, 1964), 18–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; GirTord, Ann, ‘An Application of Weber's concept of charisma’, Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions, 1 (Spring, 1955), 40–50Google Scholar; Ake, Claude, ‘Charismatic Legitimation and Political Integration’, (CSSH, IX (1966), 1–13Google Scholar; Tucker, Robert C., ‘The Theory of Charismatic Leadership’, Daedalus, 97 (Summer, 1968), 731–56Google Scholar; Apter, David, ‘Nkrumah, Charisma and the Coup’Google Scholar, Ibid., pp. 757–92.
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6 These settlements are usually referred to as the outsettlements to distinguish them from Halifax which, as a British military, naval and administrative post, remained quite distinct from the farming-fishing areas of the New England emigrants. Throughout the period the outsettlements had few connections with Halifax.
7 Besides the New Englanders there were groups of Scotch-Irish in the Cobequid area and Yorkshire Methodists who had emigrated to Cumberland from Britain in 1774–5.
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24 See Friedland, , ‘For a Sociological Concept of Charisma’, pp. 18–26.Google Scholar
25 Alline, , A Sermon Preached at Liverpool, 21 November, pp. 21–2Google Scholar; Alline, , Two Mites, Cast unto the Offering of God for the Benefit of Mankind (Dover, N.H., 1804), pp. 264–9Google Scholar; Stewart, and Rawlyk, , A People, pp. 154–63.Google Scholar
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33 See Talmon, Yonina, ‘Pursuit of the Millenium: the Relation between Religion and Social Change,’ European Journal of Sociology, 111 (1962), 125–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Geertz, Clifford, ‘Ideology as a Cultural System’, in Apter, David (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (Glencoe, Ill. 1964).Google Scholar
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