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Culture and Charisma: Outline of a Theory

Philip Smith Acta Sociologica 2000 43: 101 DOI: 10.1177/000169930004300201 The online version of this article can be found at: http://asj.sagepub.com/content/43/2/101

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Culture and Charisma: Outline of

Philip
Smith

Theory

Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland,

Australia

ABSTRACT From the work of Weber onwards charisma has been

primarily explained in terms of its structural and psychological environments. The paper redresses this imbalance and examines the cultural structures that operate as preconditions for the attribution of charisma to political and religious leaders. Drawing on Weberian, Durkheimian and semiotic theory the paper argues that charisma arises in conjunction with salvation narratives. The internal structure of these narratives requires binary oppositions contrasting good and evil. The model is exemplified with reference to case studies of Hitter, Churchill and Martin Luther King.

relationship

to

underlying social

Philip Smith, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia
© Scandinavian

Sociological Association

2000

1. Theories of charisma:

cultural critique

Two fault lines have run through the landscape of charisma theory in the 20th century. The first of these is social structural and psychological reductionism. Dominant trends in charisma theory have no place for what has become known as the autonomy of culture (Kane 1991). That is to say, they fail to acknowledge culture as an independent level of analysis and as a crucial factor in the construction of charismatic authority. The second flaw is conceptual triviality. By applying the concept of charisma indiscriminately to things and people that are attractive and/or powerful, the specificity of charismatic power in Webers theory has been lost. Although analytically separate, the two issues are intimately related. Consequently, resolving the former requires attention to the latter. Drawing on recent work in semiotic and narrative theory this paper proposes a simple model of the cultural forms that underpin charisma. In so doing it calls for a relocation of charisma theory around leaders, the sacred and salvation. Webers writings on charisma are typically

Weberian. They are suggestive, elusive, brilliant and fragmentary. Although Weber hints at the possibilities of a multidimensional understanding of charisma, his successors have elected to read him in a reductionist way. Webers arguments, to quote Shils, have been taken to testify to the irrepressibility of the need to attribute charismatic properties to individuals under certain conditions, and to the probability that certain kinds of personality - expansive and dominating and with strong and fundamental convictions - will emerge, under conditions of stress, in specific decision making, power exercising roles (Shils 1975 a: 257). Webers successors and critics have grounded their debates with the master on this theoretical terrain. Rather than exploring the relative powers of social structure and culture, the issue at stake has been the form that social structures can take in supporting a psychologically defined charisma. Evcn Edward Shils, a noted cultural advocate, has shared this discursive horizon. Instead of arguing for the primacy and autonomy of symbolic structures. Shils restricted his innovations to insisting that charisma was equally

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fundamental to a routinized, hierarchical social order. Such an approach converts charisma into a seemingly automatic appendage of office or status, and tends to conflate the exercise of routine political power with a world ordering symbolic power (Shils 1975a:263, also 1975b, 1975c). Much the same comments can be made about the work of Wolfgang Schluchter (1989) and Schmuel Eisenstadt (1968) and their attempts to theorize office charisma and institutional charisma. Whilst the intention is to provide a more hermeneutic understanding of the contemporary state, the mode of theorizing is one which privileges social, not cultural structures. If Shils, Schluchter and Eisenstadt have been unable to offer a strongly cultural model, it comes as no surprise that other, less cultural, theorists of stable organizations have shared in reductionist theorizing. In this tradition, charisma has been variously accounted for as the product of hierarchical systems, group dynamics, and the instrumental manipulations associated with money and power (Etzioni 1961; Blau & Scott 1962: Friedland 1964; Bell 1986 ; Bensman & Givant 1986; Glassman 1986a). In seeking to bolster Webers claims regarding the association of charismatic leadership with instability rather than stability, more orthodox thinkers have opposed the Shilsian hypothesis, but are equally reductionist. Through linking charisma with situations like the developmental cycles of social movements (Hopper 1950; Smelser 1963: Gusfield 1966). or the emergence of new nation-states (Apter 1963; Lipset 1963 ; Dow 1968 ; Gonzalez 1974), Webers apologists have, once again, bound charisma so tightly to the social structure that cultural autonomy has been squeezed out of the analytic frame. When mythology and symbolism are discussed, they are framed as an imaginative response to objective social relationships, such as inequality or social dislocation. Even theorists concerned with the relationship of charisma to the personality system neglect the influence of cultural forces on private meanings. By pinning the psychic needs and structures of the individual to the familial, material or social conditions which shape them, scholars such as Loewenberg (1971) and Lasswell (1933. 1948 ), perhaps unwittingly, allocate primacy to the social
structure.

extent that it loses its distinctiveness - and with it its utility (Schlesinger 1960; Ratnam Willner 1965; Roth 1964; Willner & 1979:128). A defining strand of Webers original formulation is that charisma relates to the sacred qualities of an individual and the sense of mission and duty that defines the relationship between the individual leader and his or her followers (Shils 1975b; Weber 1978:241-245). Subsequent theorists have applied the label of charisma to roles, institutions, symbols and geographical locations. Whilst they attempt to specify these phenomena using the concept of charisma, it is far from clear that there is any real payoff from the use of the term. On the contrary, the apparently universal application of a key sociological concept has cheapened and trivialized it. Appropriating a phrase from Geertz: the broad conceptualization of charisma has made vividly disparate matters look drably homogeneous
an

(Geertz 19983: 2 ).
In contrast to these macro theorists, social

have maintained a focus on the individual leader and his/her followers at the centre of their understanding charisma. They, however, have trivialized charisma in another direction. As Shils and those in his school realize, Webers conceptualization charisma is tied up with ultimate concerns regarding issues of soteriology, eschatology and theodicy. In reducing the study of charisma to personality traits on the one hand (Hoffman & Hoffman 1970; Maranell 19 7U: Bensman & Givant 1975; McClel land 1975) or emotional needs and group dynamics on the other (Freemesser & Kaplan 1976; Corsino 1982; Galanter 1982), social psychologists have obscured the specifically cultural facets of Webers complex conceptual edifice, that is to say, the essentially religious qualities of charismatic authority and its links to wider symbolic and narrative fields.

psychologists

2. A model of culture and charisma

..

Contemporary studies of charisma, then, are marked by two problems. On the one hand, there is no widely acknowledged general theory
between culture and charexplain charisma, social theorists have concentrated on explaining it away in social structural terms. On the other hand, the concept of charisma lacks a clear empirical or theoretical referent. It has become a debased, floating signifier. To begin the process
of the

relationship

isma. In the effort to

A second, and related, problem with Webers successors is that in many cases they have broadened the concept of charisma to such

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of culturalist reconstruction it is necessary first to attend to this latter issue, and to define charisma as a moral bond of duty linking followers to leaders (see Lindholm 199U:7). This bond, however, should not be understood in micro terms as the product of personality and group process, but rather in a cultural way as the product of symbolic structures. It is founded on the collective sentiment that the fate of society with regard to ultimate concerns is dependent upon the actions, powers and moral worth of the leader (Shils 1975b: Bendix 1977: 301 ). Although subjectively located, this moral bond is sustained by objectively identifiable culture forms amenable to comparative social scientific investigation. Recent work in the Durkheimian tradition provides clues as to the nature of these cultural structures. It has pointed to the importance of symbolization and the infiltration of the sacred into seemingly secular social and political life (e.g. Hunt 198H; Alexander 1989). Drawing on earlier structuralist scholarship (e.g. LeviStrauss 1966: Barthes 1972: Sahlins 1976), this Durkheimian body of work indicates the centrality of binary oppositions in culture. A related position argues for the importance of narratives in establishing the broader symbolic resonances of specific, worlded practices (e.g. Ricoeur 1984: Walzer 198 5; Wagner-Pacifici 1986). Such narratives can be seen as working in structured ways, mythologizing the concrete by aligning actors and events with plots. trajectories, destinies and moral codes (Frye 197 H; Jacobs 1996). By reading culture as a structure maintained by internal grammars like these, such models provide strong grounds for asserting the analytic autonomy of culture (Kane 1991). Like a language, its systems of meaning are generated by internal systems of resemblance and difference between symbols rather than merely echoing wider social structural forces. Although such an understanding provides no guarantee that cultural forces will exert a significant causal force in determining a given social outcome (this concrete autonomy can be demonstrated only through detailed study of particular historical events), it does provide a necessary but insufficient condition for theorizing cultural autonomy in social explanation. Extrapolating from this literature, it is proposed here that charismatic authority is underpinned by binary cultural codes which elaborate and oppose sacred and evil grammars of motivations (Mills 1940 ; Burke 1969), along

with narratives which emplot events within a salvation framework. These cultural structures serve to mark out charisma from routine deviance, suggesting that the charismatic is the bearer of a transcendent, positive essence (Katz 19 72 ). This position is consistent with the well-known findings of Davies ( 195~), who discovered that rigid categories of good and evil were held by those who attributed charisma to political leaders. It is also in accordance with Webers own study of the Hebrew prophets and Chinese saints in his religious sociology, and his argument that charismatic individuals are exemplary with respect to the quest for salvation (Weber 1952). As Edward Tiryakian (1995) has pointed out, charismatic communities feel themselves to be moral communities fighting for some kind of transcendence. Finally, the model gives substantive content to some of Webers casual remarks regarding the importance of rhetoric in allocating charisma: ... rhetoric has the same meaning as street parades and festivals: to imbue the masses with the notion of the partys power and confidence in victory and, above all, to convince them of the leaders charismatic qualification ( Weber, quoted in Bell 1986:64). Whilst Webers understanding of political language was perhaps rather too instrumental, he is correct in understanding the pivotal role of discursive frames in the construction and attribution of charismatic
...

properties.
Because the

symbolic logic

of charisma

upon binary codings and salvation narratives, images of evil must be present in

hangs

the forest of symbols surrounding each charismatic leader. There must be something for them to fight against, something from which their followers can be saved. In many cases this evil is an abstraction such as poverty, capitalism, heresy or injustice. In yet other cases, this evil finds its embodiment in another individual actor, a threatening person who can be taken as embodying a powerful negative charisma. Love of the charismatic leader often seems to be predicated on hatred of the evil against which they fight, and, indeed will be magnified as this perceived evil intensifies and is incarnated in a specific folk devil. Why has this simple observation about the role of evil largely escaped prior attention? The answer lies in a theoretical flaw inherent in the study of culture. The overwhelming trend from the work of Marx through that of Weber and Durkheim and Parsons has been to look at culture and ideology in terms of prescriptive

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(pull) rather than proscriptive (push)

ents. In the tradition of Marx and his
or

constitu-

followers,

Lewis, for example, has indicated parallels between beliefs about charisma and beliefs
about witchcraft.

ideologies promote false images of the utopian

else posit an erroneous correlation between the extant and the desirable. The Weberian lineage centres on the role of positive religious ideals and ethics as determinants of action. In the theory of the later Durkheim, social solidarity is for the most part assured by the manipulation of symbols that attract members to the sacred from the mundane rather than from the presence of evil, negatively charged symbols that repel members into sentiments of communality. For Parsons, values specify ideal goals towards which structured individual social action and institutional imperatives are directed. Failure to attend to the nature of the evil and its relationship to conceptions of the good, desirable or sacred has prejudiced cultural analysis to the extent that half of the picture has been overlooked. In charisma theory, this generic problem has been compounded by the particular historical and biographical factors that led Weber to a vision of charisma as an ideological good; that is to say, as a romantic antidote to the impersonal and coercive poisons of a rationalized and deracinated social order (Mitzman 1970). This combination of universal and particular factors has resulted - insofar as the issue of meaning has been addressed at all in a focus on the positive ideals and relationships of mutuality between the charismatic leader and his/her followers. Images of evil and damnation have been left out of the frame. If generic features of social theory, and specific qualities of charisma literature, have worked against recognition of the kind of understanding developed in this paper, they have by no means prevented other scholars from thinking along similar lines. In social psychology it has long been acknowledged that love and hatred, solidarity and exclusion are interlinked in complex ways. In his discussions of group psychology Freud 119 Z 2: 5 3 ) indicated that ... hatred against a particular person or institution might operate in just the same unifying way, and might call up the same kind of emotional ties as positive attachment. Eric Hoffer ( 19 51:1 ? ~-12 3also pointed to the role of suspicion and hatred in generating a community of fanatical true believers. Within the charisma literature we can also find scattered references to the religious dimensions of charismatic authority and of its links to imageries of salvation and evil. The anthropologist I. M.

According to Lewis both are underpinned by beliefs about mystical, supernatural forces and in a sense presuppose one another. As Lewis points out. ... the conquest and transformation of malign forces (negative charisma) empowers the leaders of charismatic cults (1986:vii). The are also parallels between the approach taken here and that of Charles Lindholm (1990). Whilst his study is broadly situated within the tradition of social psychology rather than cultural sociology, his case studies draw attention to the pivotal qualities of transcendent ideals, messianic leaders and evils to be conquered in charismatic episodes. Ann Ruth Willner ( 1984), however, provides perhaps the most sustained analysis in the spirit of the one proposed here. Through a series of carefully wrought case studies, Willner challenges reductionist understandings and develops a powerful and hermeneutically rich argument for the role of cultural frames in sustaining charismatic leadership. Her vocabulary of myths, saviours, heroes, apostles and seers correctly identifies the quasi-religious dimensions of these sustaining
narratives.

This paper
two

moves

beyond Willners book in

important ways. First, her work offers a discursively oriented exploration of the variety
of forms that charismatic stories and frames can take. Here it is proposed that the concept of the salvation narrative provides a unifying and distinctively Weberian theme with which we can work towards the construction of theory at a higher level of generality. Some subtlety and nuance might be lost in this shift from discursive to propositional theory, but the benefit is not only the construction of a more parsimonious explanatory model, but also the possibility of recognizing the explanation as a model. In other words, by shifting the emphasis in explanation away from the qualities of individual cases and towards their generic attributes we can begin to construct cultural theories, which are more likely to be understood and used as valid social scientific tools by a wider (possibly hostile) discipline. Secondly, Willners decoding of charismatic belief systems largely neglects the importance of negative symbolism. There is considerable attention given to the ideals that the leader embodies, but rather less to the evils that they confront. The resulting narrative foreclosure precludes from her case studies consideration of the ways in which negative

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imagery might influence the rise and fall of the charismatic leader. As the following empirical studies will suggest, this can be a matter of some

significance.
The model proposed here, then, builds upon and formalizes previous scholarship in attempting to avoid the pitfalls that have beset Webers followers and revisionists. In restoring the individual leader to definitional centrality, Webers original focus on interpersonal and group relationships is reaffirmed. In arguing that charisma is linked to the quest for salvation and issues of purity, sacrality, profanity and pollution, the nascent cultural dimensions of Webers original argument are maintained and given content. By specifying the presence of codes and narratives with formal and internally consistent systems of signification, the model endows the cultural system with a relative autonomy from the social and psychological systems. Finally, while arguing for the importance of the individual as leader, the model also maintains a strongly cultural and, therefore, collectivist, rather than psychological and individualist, understanding of charismas social origins.

3. Case studies

The utility of a theory can be seen in its ability to illuminate data. Consequently, this section aims to demonstrate the plausibility of the model proposed via three case studies. Ihese involve political leaders who are widely held to have been among the most charismatic persons of the 20th century: Martin I,uther King jr.. Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. The theoretical discussion above provides guidelines for analysing these cases. They suggest that historical events and the charismatic leader will be framed within a salvation narrative where strong binary themes contrast images of evil with those of the good. As a general rule of thLllllb. charismatic authority will attain its greatest force when images of evil are at their most threatening. In each case charismatic authority can arise only when these cultural frames are established. Hitler
Consistent with the dominant contours of

theory, Hitlers charisma has been variously attributed to his personality, to Gercharisma
man

social dislocation and to

an

propaganda apparatus. Whilst

efficient party these are all of

obvious importance, evidence from Hitlers early life suggests that personality alone was not the decisive factor. At the Realsc1wle in Linz his grades were frequently unsatisfactory and the other boys considered him an outsider. During his adolescent life and later in Vienna and Munich he was a loner rather than a leader (Fest 19 7 31. Even during his period of military service in World War I, there is no indication that anyone found him remarkable. One of his officers described him as a quiet, rather unmilitary looking man who appeared to differ in no way from his fellows; he had been rejected for promotion because we could discover no leadership qualities in him (quoted in Fest 197 3:h8, 69). Hitlers charismatic appeal arose only from the year 1920 onwards, when he was able to translate the brooding resentment of his youth into a mature and more or less coherent world view. In his early speeches and writings, Hitler drew on widespread popular sentiments of malaise associated with Germanys postwar social crises and funnelled these into a simplistic but powerful apocalyptic narrative. Using superlatives and hyperbole he elevated routine troubles into world historical struggles (Fest 1 9 74: 9ff>. Hitlers discourses spoke of the need for national salvation from disgrace and offered a spiritual haven in a hostile world (Carr 1978 :7). For the mass populace this salvation was from poverty and unemployment, from national ignominy, from perceived foreign domination, from chaos, anomie and conspiracy (Bullock 1952; Carr 1978). Symbolic enemies figured strongly in the binary discourses of National Socialism. Bolsheviks, Slavs, intellectuals, dithering and decadent parliamentary systems and nebulous conspiracies provided the foils against which Hitler could promote himself as a salvation figure. It was the Jew, however, who took centre stage in the moral drama Hitler began to spin (Bullock 19 ~?; Lindholm 1990:101). Described as base, licentious, secretive, deformed and corrupt. the Jew provided a pervasive image of evil which only strong leadership could overcome (Fest 1974:101I. In the Book of Apocalypse the Bible speaks of the end of the world. Using strikingly similar imagery. Hitler spoke of the awesome and irreversible powers of Jewish evil: If with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world. his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did millions of years ago, move through the ether devoid of

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men (quoted in Fest 1974:102). At other times Hitler predicted an Armageddon-like struggle for the future of the planet: What is beginning today will be greater than the World War. It will be fought out on German soil for the entire world. There are only two possibilities: we will be the sacrificial lamb or victors (quoted in Fest

man

or

world of

figure

in

rescuer,

politician who inhabits the deflated Realpolitik. but rather as a Christ-like a mythological scenario - as a helper, redeemer from overwhelming need
in Fest 1974:328;
see

1974:151).
Within this broader pseudo-religious framework, Hitler was positioned as a prophetlike figure. As Joachim Fest (1974 :154ff, 755) points out in his monumental biography, Hitler himself in a John the Baptist the heir to Jesus, rather than as his precursor. For the Nazi leader Christ had been the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jew and he consequently proclaimed that the work that Adolf Christ started but could not finish, I Hitler - will conclude (quoted in Toland 1976:302). These kinds of self-identifications found currency with the German people. Accounts exist, for example, of spectators at the Oberammergau Passion Play confusing Jesus on the cross with Hitler (Toland
sometimes
saw

also Lindholm Hitlers public appearances have been properly likened to Elmer Gnntr~-style religious revival meetings where his messianic politics of sacrifice and salvation struck an appropriate emotional chord (Carr 1978 : 5).

(quoted

1990:100ff). For this

reason,

role,

at others

as

Churchill Webers original theory emphasized the challenge that charismatic authority posed to the established order. Charisma is said to derive, in part, from confronting legal-rational authority and institutionalized norms. One of the most

significant developments in post-Weberian charismatic theory has been the assertion that
this form of power can be conservative in orientation rather than radical. Edward Shils ( 19 7 5 a, b, c) argues that charisma is a property of cultural and political centres as well as peripheries. In detailed comparative and historical work Barry Schwartz (e.g. 1983) has documented this theme, showing that figures like George Washington derived charismatic authority by conforming to orthodox norms of virtue rather than by establishing oppositional value systems. The case of Winston Churchill allows for an application of the model proposed in this paper to such conservative charisma. His early life was a mediocre as Hitlers. Neither showed any evidence of nascent charismatic appeal. As a schoolboy and army cadet Churchill was unremarkable and scarcely gave promise of what was to come (Lockhart 1973:12). He was bad at sports, unpopular and often at the bottom of his class (Mayer 1967). His fellow officers in the cavalry considered him bumptious. As a young politician Churchill was widely considered to be talented, but also impulsive, presumptuous and self-serving (Wright 19 7 3 ). For much of the 19 30s Churchill was a wilderness figure, excluded from office. He was an outcast in British politics, prognosticating from the back benches, and ridiculed for his bombastic and ornate literary style (Berlin 1949). The former Tory party heavyweight was viewed as reactionary, unreliable, a figure of the past who was out of touch with the times (Rhodes James 1970). His persistent warnings throughout the decade about Hitler and German re-armament, such as the Deepening and

1976:491).
Within the three years between 1920 and 19233 the oddball outsider was converted into a charismatic leader with a mass following. A spell in Landsberg prison provided him the opportunity to write Mein Kanipf. This is less a political tract than a visionary text in the tradition of St. John of Patmos and the Old Testament seers. Following a quasi-mythologi-

cal, semi-autobiographical
how he had
seen

account

explaining

the light on the road to his own personal Damascus, there come a series of cataclysmic visions of the rise and fall of civilizations engaged in a cosmic struggle

regulated only by an eschatological

Hitlers
own

Darwinism.

role in this grim but heroic tale was to promote the cause of the Aryan race. This group alone could bring about salvation through the attainment of a millennial Thousand Year Reich under his leadership. These frames were enhanced in subsequent years by the rallies and rituals through which the Nazi regime generated mass hysteria. Whilst these have often been invoked as examples of the secularization of ritual process, the obverse is perhaps more accurate. The code underlying Nazi political rituals was the spiritualization of the secular processes of political life. Consequently Goebbels called these activities the divine services of our political work. Those who attended perceived Hitler not as the states-

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107

Darkening Danger speech

of May 31, 1935 (Churchill 1974:5624) were seen as warmongering. Churchill was widely viewed as a

( 1949:9()), the saviour of his country,

hero who
to
as

political adventurer and swashbuckler of the most dangerous sort and was written off by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin as part of the flotsam and jetsam of political life thrown up on
the beach (Gardner 1970:2, 6). The Second World War and Hitler provided, of course, the raw materials for Churchills overnight symbolic and political redemption (Rees 19 7 3: 211, 217 ) and his elevation to the status of a colossal figure (ibid.:217). Churchills anti-German track record was well established and enabled him to be symbolically distanced from tainted appeasers. As new narratives fell into place the warmonger was retrospectively interpreted as a kind of prophet whose warnings of an impending Armageddon had gone unheeded. A binary contrast with the evil Hitler was facilitated by the fact that since the mid-1930s the German leaders speeches had frequently denounced Churchill in person (Gardner 1970:24). With defeat at Dunkirk, Britain became vulnerable to invasion and even stronger salvation narratives emerged. Churchills hyperbolic and bombastic radio broadcasts reinforced this mood, conjuring up the menacing spectre of Nazi domination and an end to the civilization of the English speaking peoples with their great national traditions of democracy. For example, in the Blood, Toil. Tears and Sweat speech of May 13. 1940 Churchill (1974:6220) argued that the war was against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime and that without victory there would be ... no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. In the subsequent speech, Their Finest Hour (Churchill 19 74: 6 2 3 8 ), the binary contrasts were drawn even more fiercely and in an idiom which fused the search for secular salvation with the religious imagery of apocalyptic struggle: Upon this battle depends the If we can survival of Christian civilization stand up to him [Hitler], all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world ... will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age ... Radio broadcasts allowed Churchill to disseminate these imageries direct to the public. The widespread acceptance of their underlying Manichean dualisms allowed Churchill to become, in the words of Isaiah Berlin
...

mythical belongs legend much as to reality .... In other words, Churchills charisma emerged once he became an effective mobilizing symbol in an apocalyptic narrative, a personification of the spirit of national defiance. According to one historian, his tonic effect upon the British people was almost miraculous (Thompson 1973:72). Robert Rhodes James (1969:109) provides some indication of this quasi-millennial mass transformation in national mood: One caught Churchills infectious spirit that this was a great time to be alive in; that Destiny had conferred a wonderful benefit upon us; and that these were thrilling days to live through. One indication of this ability to resonate with and construct a national mood was his immense personal popularity. His broadcasts were listened to by over 60 per cent of the adult population and by August 1940 he

enjoyed

an

88 per cent

approval rating (Pelling

1974:458).

Following Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, Churchills charismatic authority was assured, and for the period when the outcome of the war was in doubt he was to enjoy unprecedented public adulation and consequent personal influence. As one commentator notes: Churchills charisma persuaded the sceptical military chiefs, the cynical Civil Service, the uncertain House of Commons and the batlled man in the street that he, and he alone, was capable of extracting the country from disaster ... (Lewin 19 7 3:? 3 ). For the rest of his life Churchill was to remain a respected figure, although it is doubtful that his charismatic authority ever regained the heights of 1940 (Rees 1973). By 1945 realist frames saw concerns about poverty replace concerns for the survival of civilization, and Churchill was voted 5 out of office. His administration from 1951-55 was unremarkable and did nothing to boost his charismatic power (Rees 1973), being mostly concerned with economic matters and austerity, which provided a much less easily identifiable goal than victory over Hitler (Colville 1973:138). Notwithstanding Churchills considerable oratory, debates about nationalization, social security and steel production could not equal the salvation narratives that enhance ; charismatic reputation.

Martin Luther King Jr. Biographies of King show that he too

was

not

considered

charismatic

early

in

his

life.

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108

Accounts of his

college years show that he was perceived as a sharp dresser, a good debater and an earnest but by no means brilliant student
(Lewis 1978). If there
was
a

figured most prominently in his I Have a Dream speech, identified King as a person in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets who
received messages from God and tried to enact them to redeem a sinful world. It is no accident, then, that King was to suggest that the Negro is Gods instrument to save the soul of America

which

charismatic

personality, then,

it did not manifest itself at

this stage. The situation began to change with the Rosa Parks initiated bus boycott in Montgomery s Alabama in 19 5 5. As a member of the citys African-American elite, King found himself taking on a leadership role in the dispute. Salvation narratives began to structure this dispute following Kings stirring sermon at the Holt Street Baptist Church. When he asked that his congregation be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice (quoted in Lewis 1978:58). King was placing a secular struggle for equality within a religious context. This narrative framing was made possible, in part, through the influence of Rauschenbuschs concept of the Social Gospel on Kings theological development. It was a motif that remained central to the narratives King spun in subsequent disputes as the struggle for material and political rights promoted by the civil rights movement became, simultaneously, a struggle for spiritual salvation. In many cases this understanding was predicated upon the Old Testament doctrine of the Promised Land, and in particular the story of Moses (Smylie 1989). King called the City Commissioners of Montgomery, for example, the pharaohs of the South and dreamed that one day even the State of Mississippi, a desert state sweating with the heat of injustice and oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice (Smylie 1989:135). Such imagery

(Cone 1991:151).
A series of evil and polluted opponents facilitated Kings rise to charismatic status. Whilst the abstract system of inequality provided one source of evil, Kings charismatic appeal was maximized when he confronted personal rivals who could be portrayed as violent, irrational and selfish. The moral dramas which King - following Gandhis

satytigralia teachings - attempted to create depended on strong narrative polarization. Thus the key mytho-poetic moments of the civil rights struggle are located in precisely those places where brutal and stupid establishment
officials confronted King and his followers Sheriff Clark and Colonel Al Lingo in Selma, Commissioner Bull Connor in Birmingham, Police Chief Bubba Pritchet in Albany and Connie Lynch in St. Augustine (Lentz 1990). Confrontations with these figures assisted King to exert his maximum influence in the period between the Birmingham demonstrations of 1963 and the Selma March of 1965 (Cone

1991).

played

upon

long-standing,

religiously

inflected dualism in African-American popular culture that extended back to the anti-bellum period. This depicted the South as unfree and as Egypt whilst the North was Canaan - the Promised Land to which escaped slaves wished to flee (Cone 1991 :59). In this framing King played a role analogous to that of Moses, operating simultaneously as a temporal and spiritual leader. At other times King used New Testament analogies. In his epochal Letter from Birmingham Jail, King explicitly likened himself to the Apostle Paul responding to the Macedonian call for aid. Such tactics were designed to raise conveniently interred memories about the sacrificial aspects of Christian duty (Lewis 1978:188). On occasion King would speak as a prophetic figure. The concept of the dream,

By contrast Kings later campaigns seemed flounder when he could not locate an opponent. The Chicago housing initiative, for example, was consistently thwarted by Mayor Daleys compliant facade of affability (Lentz 1990:220). In the case of Chicago, Kings charisma was damaged once he was forced into compromise by city authorities, rival African-American organizations and ghetto apathy. The accompanying shift towards realist narrative frames led to a deflation of salvation rhetoric. With this movement came a widespread feeling that King was no longer a prophetic figure, but rather had become just another politician (Lewis 1978 :349). These threats to charismatic authority were reinforced by growing public splits with more radical African-American leaders, division over the Vietnam question and inability to deal with urban riots. By 1967 a Gallup Poll showed King was no longer among the ten most admired persons (Lewis 1978:358), and by 1968 prominent activist Adam Clayton Powell had publicly dubbed him Martin Loser King. History, however, has been somewhat kinder
to

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to King. An unintended consequence of his assassination was that it ensured him an enduring martyrs status and a posthumous level of moral authority that is without equal in

the United States.

4. The limits to cultural autonomy and other qualif cations

Structural models of culture such as the one here proposed are prone to several flaws. First, they are said to be culturally deterministic in the manner of a Levi-Straussian myth. Secondly, they are claimed to be static, inflexible and prone to glossing over situational detail. Thirdly, they are said to make claims that are too broad and universal, ignoring sphere-specific logics. In order to place the argument of this paper in context, it is necessary to consider each of these
in turn.
autonomous

These genres underpin realpolitik, and generate pragmatic orientations towards political events and political leaders (Smith 1994). The argument that charisma is universally determined by historically invariant cultural structures should not be conflated with an assertion that there is an unchanging semantic content within these formal structures. This is consistent with Webers own work on comparative religion, which demonstrated that there are many local ways of pursuing the universal quest for salvation. Consider the case studies. In all three we can detect common structural properties to the narratives. In each there is an evil to be overcome and a way that the leader proposes it can be conquered, yet in each the specificities are highly divergent. Understanding that Hitlers Jews, Kings racists and Churchills

ing

To argue that culture has a significant and input into the process of generatcharismatic individuals is by no means to

discount the importance of social structure or individual ability and psychic needs. Clearly not everybody has the same access to world ordering power as a US President or leader of a social movement. It is also obvious that in periods of social crisis and upheaval, actors will seek powerful leaders in response to sentiments of anomie and vulnerability. Still, social structure and psychic needs alone are not determinate. Not every power-wielding leader is charismatic (e.g. Gerald Ford), nor does every economic or social crisis give rise to a messianic figure (e.g. 1998 Asian economic meltdown). Only when these structural conditions are supported in a combinatorial way by the availability of appropriate cultural structures can the charismatic figure arise. Even in these cases, however, questions relating to the reception of culture need to be considered. Whilst elites may deploy charisma-generating cultural frames, there is no guarantee that audiences will endorse this template. During the 1990s. for example, US President Clinton made extensive use of Biblical imagery and negative images of Hussein and Milosevic in order to justify bombings of Iraq and Serbia. Yet there was no sign of Clinton becoming charismatic simply because this discourse existed. Whilst a detailed explanation of this negative case is beyond the scope of this paper, it would seem that the American people continued evaluating events using mundane and realist cultural frames.

structurally analogous does not thing as claiming they are semantically identical. Rather, it allows us to construct higher-order models of culture through which to compare and understand the specificities of each concrete historical episode. Turning briefly to the issue of generalizability, the case studies presented here are intended mainly to validate the model in political and social movement domains. There is no necessary reason why charismatic figures
are mean

Nazis

the

same

in other areas, such as business or sports, should follow a similar logic. Similarly, all three examples were drawn from settings within the Judeo-Christian tradition where Biblical imagery plays a key role. Whilst it is anticipated that salvation narratives will be a universal feature of political charisma, it is likely that they will draw up local religious traditions in other cultural settings. Willner ( 198-1), for example, points to the way the Ayatollah Khomeini made use of Islamic mythologies of the heroic Imam. Interesting questions must also be raised about the possibility of charisma (at least in its Western form) arising in societies with antidualist cultural idioms. Buddhism, for example, arguably lacks a concept of evil. Can there be a Buddhist charisma?

5. Conclusion: the routinization of charisma and paradox

In Webers formal treatment of the types of authority (/!(rrsr/M/f) more attention is devoted to the transformation, routinization, weakening

and eventual disappearance of charisma than to

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the phenomenon itself. Webers discussion of this process spins around an axis of instrumental motivations and institutional forces (Weber 19 78 :246-2 54, 266-2 71). If a cultural model of charisma it to be taken seriously, it must be able to provide a compelling alternative account of this process. The theoretical model and the studies of King and Churchill suggested that charisma attributed to the individual can weaken when binary rhetoric is no longer produced, and when inflated salvation narratives are replaced by frames which substitute economistic and piecemeal visions of mundane political life. Fundamental to this process are the negative symbolisms against which heroes and salvation narratives are constructed. Because complex symbolic processes, and under-determined individual and group level typifications, are involved in the discursive transformation of the charismatic hero into the bureaucratic leader, rational manipulative strategies and social structural changes may have a less determinate influence than lvebers fatalistic vision suggests. Certainly this must be the case when the target of negative symbolism has sufficient power to perform acts whose interpretations may reinforce or destroy the authority of the charismatic hero himself. Strange as it may initially seem, this argument is in one sense an instance of old wine in new bottles. That the fate of a leaders charisma is ultimately dependent upon the actions and representations of his or her imagined enemy adds a cultural level of perversity to the catalogue of paradoxes we find in Webers original discussion.
First version received

Final version

July 1998 accepted April 1999

Acknowledgements
Jeffrey Alexander, Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters commented on early drafts of this paper. Notes by Paul Colomy were of use in constructing the literature review. Helpful suggestions from
Klaus Makela. Charles Lmdholm and other, anonymous, Acta Sociologica referees were of assistance in strengthening the final

manuscript.

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