Charisma Unbound: The Origins of China’s Cultural Revolution Reconsidered

• In Event: 044 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Paper Session. Collective Action in Comparative and Historical Perspective

Abstract

Why did students participate in the Red Guard Movement and rebel against the Party establishment during China’s Cultural Revolution? This paper recovers and retools Weber’s theory of charisma and routinization to answer this question. I argue that in routinizing its authority, institutional power must also require charismatic legitimation. This charismatic legitimation, however, is liable to re-appropriation by charismatic subjects, which may unsettle routinization. I support this argument by documenting the ideological education that the Communist Party launched to justify its routinization and the mechanisms through which students re-appropriated the Party’s charismatic legitimation and formed their rebel identity against the Party establishment. I conclude by discussing the implications of my analysis for understanding the subsequent dynamics of the movement as well as other instances of institutionally induced internal dissent and the general wave of youth revolts in the 1960s.

Author

• Xiaohong Xu, National University of Singapore