Charisma, liminality, and symbolic types

Don Handelman*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

The term charisma was borrowed by Max Weber from the theologian, Sohm, as an antithesis to this-worldiy and mundane routines of rational-legal and traditional authority and organization. Charisma has been associated to a greater or lesser extent with the potential force of deconstruction and, to use Jacques Derrida's term, with the "de-centering" of perceptions of centricity. There is a growing recognition that centricity formulates its own collapse and that centripetality begets centrifugality. The concept of the symbolic type is borrowed from Richard Grathoff, although usage differs from his. Grathoff compares it to the role type, or role, in conventional usage. Symbolic types appear in conjunction with what Grathoff terms social inconsistencies, whose more extreme condition is that of anomie. Although the evocation of condensation in symbol largely depends on context for its release, the symbolic type is expansionist, as context is played through its matrices of transformation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComparative Social Dynamics
Subtitle of host publicationEssays in Honor of S. N. Eisenstadt
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages346-359
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9780429705502
ISBN (Print)9780367014896
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 1985 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

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