 Durkheim's collective effervescence and Weber's charisma: updating or stretching kindred concepts for the post-post-Cold War world?Laurence McFalls Chapter 13 in The Elgar Companion to Émile Durkheim, 2026, pp 212-227 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: Despite their epistemological and ontological differences, Durkheim and Weber shared an interest in religion and revolutionary movements, an interest expressed in their respective concepts of collective effervescence and charisma. This chapter explores this conceptual convergence and questions their continued relevance in an age when individualism, liberalism, industrial capitalism, democracy, and the bureaucratic state, i.e., the defining features of Western modernity that Durkheim and Weber theorized, have all come into crisis. The chapter argues that both of their conceptual frameworks require updating to make sense of radical changes in Western subjectivity, society, politics, and economics brought on first by neoliberalism and now by postliberal developments in economy and society. Unforeseeable for Durkheim and Weber respectively, anomic solidarity and therapeutic domination are new concepts the author proposes to help explain collective effervescence without social coherence and charismatic movements without leaders and ideology. Keywords: Liberal subjectivity; Dividuality; Therapeutic domination; Dematerialized capitalism; Postliberal populism; Anomic solidarity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22860_13 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.