Charisma Reconsidered

More documents

Recommendations

Info

18 leads to the creation of a system of norms according to which certain actions are permanently taboo. Totemism arose through the association of particular taboos and particular animals in which spirits were believed to reside. We may leave aside the question of the truth of this reconstruction, other than to say that it has the same problems as charisma – what one needs is an explanation of culturally specific ideas of spirit, contagion, and so forth, in terms of something more basic – to consider Steiner’s version of the same facts. He begins with danger: . . . all situations of danger, not merely those created by taboo-breaking, are socially or culturally defined, and it is precisely this relation between the defined danger and the restrictive pattern [i.e. of taboo] which we should study in each case. For until taboos are involved, a danger is not defined and cannot be coped with by institutionalized behavior. (1967 [1956]: 146) So taboo is itself a means of, or a preliminary to, coping, which works like a theory about the risks in the world. Interdictions state the theory. Danger is narrowed down by taboo. A situation is regarded as dangerous: very well, but the danger may be a socially unformulated threat. Taboo gives notice that the danger lies not in the whole situation, but only in certain specified action concerning it. These actions, the danger spots, are more challenging and deadly than the danger of the situation as a whole. (1967 [1956]: 147) Taboo, in short, does not come from a prior belief in a danger: danger is already there as part of an undifferentiated reality. Rather it is a combination of two things: a localization or specification of danger (including dangerous persons), a notion that is meaningless without abstentive behavior. So localization and specification and then abstention and interdiction are responses to danger that are in turn basic to culture itself, found wherever there is culture, and constitute culture. Contagion is part of this story too, since the classification of transgressions, which, through contagion, bring the dangers to others, also amounts to a theory of unknown risks that employs a device – contact – that is a source of risk that serves to specify and define danger. By treating risk-defining interdiction itself as basic, Steiner avoids the problems Weber creates for himself by identifying charisma with ‘baffling success’ and then being faced with the problem of explaining how ‘authority’ could possibly be produced out of the fact of success alone. With taboo we reach degree zero: the fact of undifferentiated danger as the problem that taboo solves. Taboo is also the origin of authority. The personal power of imposition of taboos is the basic form of power in the Polynesian societies in question. It is grounded in JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 3(1)
nothing prior to itself other than more taboos, such as the taboo on the body of the chief. But here we face a familiar trouble. The mana of the imposer is the source of the power of interdiction. But mana is as unhelpful a concept as charisma, in the sense that it too is a dead end. In these societies, power is the power to interdict, and mana is a name for this power, not an explanation (Steiner, 1967 [1956]: 110). This is a difficult notion to grasp, but the point can be made with a simple example. As a child I lived in a Catholic neighborhood, where the Monsignor of the local parish church routinely imposed interdictions – on forms of behavior and dress, on membership in organizations, even on what bars to patronize. What was the religious ‘authority’ for this? There was no literal authority, though there was the notion that he possessed delegated powers from the Pope, who had them delegated from Jesus through Peter – hardly an active consideration for those choosing what bar to patronize. Yet the uncertainty surrounding the dangerous powers of the Monsignor himself meant that to violate them was to act dangerously. Similarly for the imposition of taboo: what enables the imposition of taboo is not a power of an imposer, like magic, or charisma, which is a term like mana, but the effect of the act of interdiction, the localization of danger itself. It is tempting to say that it is a vaguely felt fear of the interdictor that enables the interdiction to have force, or that the reason a given interdiction has force is fear of the imposer. But it is doubtful, in a situation of generalized danger, that saying this amounts to anything more than the interdictor is part of ‘the dangerous’ and that any interdiction from this source serves to localize danger. This in turn is all that Steiner is saying. But it has the uncomfortable Nietzschean implication that the root of morality is fear of the other. When we consider the broader question of the establishment of perceptions of risk, it is evident that the actions of individuals – whether Madonna or a political leader – serve to define risks just as the pronouncing of interdictions does. Indeed, one may wonder whether the alteration of risk perceptions through action is a more fundamental mechanism than interdiction. The power to interdict may be the province of those who have mana, and this may be what mana consists in. But it is also plausible to say that this power is itself rooted in fear – in taboo, as Steiner says – which is in the end no more than a localization of the non-specific dangerousness of those who may bring harm to one and thus must be obeyed. The magical properties we attribute to the powerful (and which Weber takes to be the concomitant of charisma), on this account, are no more than an aspect of the localization of danger itself. If this is reasonable, there is no mystery about primitive charisma: it is a by-product of the localization of danger that individuals can, through their own actions, influence, and the fact that they can increase the sense of their dangerousness or sacredness through their own actions. The case that was puzzling for Weber himself was the idea of charismatic law-givers who were assigned a particular historical role in the origins of legal orders. The traditional puzzle of the philosophy of law of which Weber was well TURNER CHARISMA RECONSIDERED 19
Page 1 and 2: Journal of Classical Sociology Copy
Page 3 and 4: Charisma as a Social Science Concep
Page 5 and 6: himself gave typically involved tim
Page 7 and 8: particular institutions, offices an
Page 9 and 10: eason, other than the convenience o
Page 11 and 12: or Hitler may lead one to recognize
Page 13: seen to be a ‘rational’ one, bu
Page 17 and 18: admirers as charismatic. Why should
Page 19 and 20: the idea that a charismatic leader
Page 21 and 22: ecomes a subject for personal expre

Charisma Reconsidered

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?