Weber Reinvents Charisma

Abstract

Charisma as theorised and defined by Max Weber (1864–1920) is one those terms, like Thomas Kuhn’s ‘paradigm shift’, that has exerted an influence far beyond the discipline in which it was first encased. Weber articulated ‘charisma’ as one of three forms of authority within his massive work Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, published posthumously in German in 1922, translated to English first in 1947 and later in 1968 as Economy and Society.¹ Unfinished and spanning almost 1500 pages, Economy and Society was a summation of Weber’s sociological purview of social structure and world history. His definition and detailing of his theory of charisma, scattered throughout Economy and Society, and in several other minor works, installs charisma as a central concept within Weber’s theory of legitimate domination, which in turn constituted one element in the vast Weberian sociological apparatus.