>Wow -- I said that?
>
>DP
nope. i didn't claim you said anything. but you're enacting the logic of charismatic resistance to entrenched patrimonial, traditional or rationalized forms of leadership and authority.
thanks for the exchange though. there's an article here about how the typology of charismatic/traditional/rational-legal authority needs to be re-examined. or rather, how we can use it to look at anarchism v. al qaeda type orgs. anarchism in the west is a charismatic movement in the making, but it is operating in the soil of entrenched rationalized-legal authority systems. centralized, top down organizational models are seen as the primary mechanism of oppression. it's appeal isn't necessarily in a person, as Weber surmised. rather, it operates through a system of power based on symbols and rhetoric of membership in a group. there's no longer a need for a person and cult of personality to be committed to. instead, commitment is organized around membership in a group--membership signified by symbols, sig files, web pages, clothes, styles of dress and comportment, the black flag, styles of speech, preferred rhetoric, shared agreement about the right way to run a meeting, organize a demo/action. all of these signal membership in the group.
this is, i suspect, different from an organization like Al Qaeda. AQ emerges out of a world in which traditional forms of authority are the source of oppression--at least more so than rational-legal forms of authority.
anyway, i'll have to churn out that article after some more research, but that's the basic gist of it.
kelley