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Since its first systematic treatment by Max Weber in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in the early twenties, the concept of charisma has been of only limited use to the social sciences. This is so because of fundamental disagreement concerning its meaning and application. In response to this, the present paper offers (1) a brief examination of Weber's contribution, (2) a critical analysis of this position based in part on the recent literature, and (3) a final formulation of the concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore the ramifications of charismatic sensitivity, i.e., the propensity to impute charismatic qualities to actions, persons, institutions and cultural objects. My analysis takes its point of departure in Max Weber's analysis of charismatic authority, in trying to analyze charismatic authority more systematically than Weber was able to do, I have concluded that he was dealing with one particular variant of the charismatic propensity, which has more far-reaching, more permeative manifestations than his analysis has hitherto led us to believe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper reference will be made consistently to constructive typology. In order to avoid confusion—to use McKinney's words— "the term 'constructed' type is used here in preference to the designations 'ideal' and 'pure' types. The terms ideal and pure have been misinterpreted so frequently that it seems advisable to follow Howard Becker's usage and refer to these types as 'constructed types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of rationalization, so central to Weber's sociology, has been curiously neglected by nearly all American students of Max Weber. Indeed, the reception of Max Weber's work in American sociology, while providing an excellent example of the growth of science as an international co-operative enterprise, is a reminder, too, that in the course of assimilation of any such body of ideas there are influences at work which determine which aspects will be incorporated, which ones will be de-emphasized or overlooked, and which ones will be refashioned and reinterpreted. As one of the few true polyhistors of the social sciences, Max Weber was bound to appeal to a wide range of scholars, and with an unprecedented variety of ideas and substantive contributions, at the risk of some of the leading themes of this work becoming obscured. One of the obstacles to an adequate comprehension of Weber's work has been the tendency to lay too great an emphasis on the methodological and systematic-theoretical aspects of his work (especially his conception of social action) and to underestimate the significance of its historical and comparative aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If there is one figure in the sociological firmament who needs no special Festschrift one hundred years after his birth, it is Max Weber. Why? Simply because we celebrate him every working day in every scholarly way. Indeed, Weber has become the Benedict Spinoza of sociology. Just as all major wings of modem philosophy find something in Spinoza to take seriously—pragmatists praise his liberalism, historicists adhere to his concept of freedom through necessity, Thomists praise his God-intoxicated universe, while Marxists are equally fervent in honoring his materialist ontology so too has this universalizing trend unfolded in relation to Weber. It is almost as if Weber provides not just a theory of status legitimation, but in his person is a special form of legitimation to the sociologist. Parsonians can identify with Weber's notions of bureaucracy and social stratification; Mertonians can identify with Weber's concepts of career patterns of scientists and theologians and their stimulus to social change; and Millsians can identify with Weber's concepts of authority and dysfunctionality of raw power no less than the belief that at its source every social problem is a moral paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]