Charisma Reconsidered
Charisma Reconsidered
Charisma Reconsidered
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seen to be a ‘rational’ one, but a rational one in a special sense. One might<br />
compare it in some respects to Buchanan’s (2001) notion of ‘constitutional<br />
choice’, the choice to live under a particular kind of constitutional order. Like<br />
these choices, the choice to follow a charismatic leader is a drastic, all-or-nothing<br />
choice in which many elements of the alternatives are bound up with one another.<br />
But ‘charismatic choice’ is a life-style and belief-system choice in which beliefs<br />
about risk, about what is dangerous, are changed.<br />
To put this in more general terms, there are actions that ‘prove’ that one’s<br />
assessments of risk need revision. The choice to submit to a leader is a subcategory<br />
of this larger category: the path represented by the leader corresponds to<br />
a new line in a decision matrix, in terms of which submission is a rational means to<br />
an end with a new risk term. The same kind of inner transformation, a transformation<br />
in beliefs about what is possible (meaning what can be done without<br />
incurring overwhelming danger), is made, but in the case of choice of a leader, the<br />
belief is that what is possible is possible only though submission to the leader. Not<br />
surprisingly, there are situations in which this kind of choice becomes more<br />
rational, in the sense of relatively less risky. Times of trouble or hopelessness are<br />
times in which taking chances becomes a rational strategy because there is less to<br />
lose.<br />
Risk is a part of rational calculation, but it is a curiously irrational part.<br />
Writers like Mary Douglas (1992) argue that risk should be understood as a<br />
cultural concept, because risk perceptions vary culturally. But one need not invoke<br />
some sort of notion of culture as a system of shared beliefs to see that risk is<br />
necessarily ‘social’. Most risks cannot be learned about by trial and error, simply<br />
because the trial itself is dangerous. One cannot tell a child: ‘Play in the street, and<br />
learn for yourself that a car will run you over.’ Thus much of our understanding of<br />
risk necessarily comes from others, and, similarly, even those who tell us about<br />
risks typically have not tested the risk themselves.<br />
These simple considerations point to a solution to another problem, the<br />
relationships between risk and magic, magic and taboo, and charisma and magic.<br />
Weber discussed these topics in Economy and Society (1978 [1922] ) in a section<br />
on magic and religion, in which he applies these ideas to the Polynesian case, an<br />
application that is made more interesting by the fact that it has close parallels to<br />
the highly influential discussion of taboo by Steiner, which influenced Mary<br />
Douglas’s account of purity and danger (Douglas, 1999: 11). Weber comments<br />
that the idea of obedience to religious law is preceded by a form of religious ethics<br />
that is magical, and in which violation of norms is a religious abomination. Thus<br />
where there exists a belief in spirits, the idea develops that spirits enter into a<br />
person, that one must not irritate the spirit, and that persons who are inhabited by<br />
a spirit must be isolated out of fear of contamination. Out of this reasoning,<br />
Weber suggests, arose the notion of taboo, of objects or persons endowed with<br />
the quality of taboo, which in turn could be transmitted by magical means by<br />
persons possessing, as he calls it, magical charisma. The rationalization of taboos<br />
TURNER CHARISMA RECONSIDERED 17