Culture and charisma: Outline of a theory

From the work of Weber onwards charisma has been primarily explained in ter ms of its relationship to underlying social structural and psychological en vironments. The paper redresses this imbalance and examines the cultural st ructures that operate as preconditions for the attribution of charisma to p olitical and religious leaders. Drawing on Weberian, Durkheimian and semiot ic theory the paper argues that charisma arises in conjunction with salvati on narratives. The internal structure of these narratives requires binary o ppositions contrasting good and evil. The model is exemplified with referen ce to case studies of Hitler, Churchill and Martin Luther King.