Expanding Moral Panic Theory to Include the Agency of Charismatic Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Working beyond latently Durkheimian figurations of moral panic which depict a dialectic between 'right-thinkers' and folk devils, this article integrates charismatic entrepreneurs into a tripartite model that sheds light on two new pathways of interaction that are relevant for the sociology of morality. First, charismatic leaders can outflank traditional leaders' aspersions of folk devils, taking the principle of 'one-upmanship' to an extraordinary (and therewith charismatic) extreme. Second, charismatic leaders can creatively subvert traditional mores, overturning value tables to 'bedevil' traditional leaders. Because moral panic and charismatic enthusiasm implicate distinct, complementary, and unitary social processes, I argue that, taken together, the work of Max Weber and Stanley Cohen offer a more theoretically profitable vision of moral denaturation and reformulation than either would alone. Donald Trump's charismatic ascension during his 2015-16 US Presidential campaign is used to illustrate the theoretical contribution.

Social media and moral panics: Assessing the effects of technological change on societal reaction

“…Whether by steering communications, creating fake accounts, or exploiting digital interactions, techniques of 'attention hacking' can strategically influence engagement patterns and produce wildly disproportionate effects (Marwick and Lewis, 2017). Ultimately, by allowing users to eliminate ambiguity and delineate moral boundaries in publicly visible ways, sites like Twitter and Facebook generate new types of agency that can rapidly propel the ideas and identities of various outsiders into prominence (Joosse, 2018). 7 With their cacophonous character making it difficult to vet the integrity of content, digital platforms have been inundated with captivating, tendentious and skewed, if not entirely spurious, communications (news stories, videos, memes, blog posts, hashtags, etc.)…”

Max Weber's Disciples: Theorizing the Charismatic Aristocracy

“…Indeed, a little-known backstory to Weber's development of the concept was his own preoccupation-predominantly in his more polemical writings-with combating the demagogic Ceasarism that threatened German politics from Bismark's leadership onward (Baehr 2008: 11-114). A strand of political sociology has followed in this train (Bourdieu 1987;Cavalli 1987;Gerth 1940;Joosse 2017;Madsen and Snow 1991;Schweitzer 1974;Willner and Willner 1965), along with calls for attention to the role that charisma plays in social movement formation and revolution (Andreas 2007;Downton 1973;Reed 2013a), terrorism studies and asymmetrical warfare (Hofmann 2016;Hofmann and Dawson 2014;Joosse, Bucerius, and Thompson 2015;Scott 1990), celebrity culture and artistic genius (DeNora 1997;Dyer and McDonald 1998), and management studies (Conger and Kanungo 1988;Gardner and Avolio 1998;Khurana 2002). Because charismatic processes are clearly salient for this wide range of fields, future work should examine how performances of charismatic aristocracies are shaped by field-specific structures that constrain or increase their agency.…”

Max Weber’s antinomies of the Fall: Paradisiacal ethics and the populistZeitgeist

“…The Weberian perspective on populism, therefore, is both etiological and political. By making proposals to return to a paradisiacal situation a “populist leader” can “outflank” the traditionalist elites for whom the essentialization will be dangerously purist or utopian (Joosse, 2018). Moreover, the opposition between the paradisiacal and fortunate Fall ethics can function as an axes along which new political value conflicts are fought.…”