FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE

ANTROPOLOGICHESKIJ FORUM
RUS | ENG

Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 29

 

RELIGIOUS CHARISMA FROM THE (DIS)ENCHANTING VIEWPOINT OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: A Review of CHARLES LINDHOLM (ed.), THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS CHARISMA: ECSTASIES AND INSTITUTIONS. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 248 рp.

Sergei Shtyrkov

European University at St Petersburg
3 Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences
3 Universitetskaya Emb., St Petersburg, Russia
shtyr()eu.spb.ru

Abstract: This collection of articles can be considered as a recurrent endeavor to present a theoretical and ethnographical basis for using a Weberian concept of primary charisma in analysis of religious life in different social contexts. This endeavor seems very risky because the very term ‘charisma’ is widely used in day-to-day communication and mass media discourse (and one can name this process the real routinization of charisma). There is also the problem that the term became a very important element of contemporary religious language aimed to present someone’s religious experience and vocation as authentic. Yet one can assume that those ‘genuine’ religious feelings are or can be understood to be socially constructed. Therefore, despite the editor’s enthusiasm for good perspectives for using the concept of primary charisma, some other authors gives examples of presenting secondary (institutional) forms of religious activity in terms of primary charisma to legitimize them as coming from above. Ironically it turns out that in the theoretical and temporal respect, secondary forms of charisma are more primary ones than those that we usually treat as primary after Weber.

Keywords: Anthropology of religion, primary charisma, institutional charisma.

To cite: Shtyrkov S., 'Religioznaya kharizma s ras- i zakoldovyvayushchey tochki zreniya sotsialnykh nauk [Religious Charisma from the (Dis)Enchanting Viewpoint of the Social Sciences]: A Review of Charles Lindholm (ed.), The Anthropology of Religious Charisma: Ecstasies and Institutions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 248 pр.', Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 29, pp. 223–246.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/029/shtyrkov.pdf