21/10/2026
The Social Governance and Sustainable Development Lab (SGSD Lab) of the Department of Sociology cordially invites you to attend the upcoming seminar, which will be held on Friday, 6 November 2026 (Hong Kong Time, UTC+8). The details are as follows:
【Seminar Details】
Topic: The Less Agreeable Side of Charisma: Incredulous Onlooking and Anti-structural Power
Speaker: Prof. Paul JOOSSE, Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong
Date: Friday, 6 November 2026
Time: 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. (Hong Kong Time)
Venue: Room 422, 4/F, Sino Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Language: English
Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13744859
【About the Seminar】
Charisma is often theorized as a form of cultic insularity consisting of “bonds” between leaders and followers. Its world-historical significance, however, stems not from this inward-intimacy, but rather from its aggressive outward posture which occasionally radiates through traditional and/or rational-legal social orders, destabilizing and overturning them. This article focalizes charisma’s consumptive leading edge by distinguishing and describing the incredulous onlooker—a type of non-believing institutional elite who exists at the interface between the charismatic community and wider society. Incredulous onlookers intend to quash charismatic movements, but their interventions counterintuitively (to them) work to augment charismatic potency and proliferate charismatic rupture. They do this in two ways. First, their affective signals of shock, exasperation, and moral outrage lend a sense of gleeful wonder (even “miraculousness”) to the incipient leader’s early successes, even if such successes are initially relatively minor. Second, as institutional-organizational mouthpieces, incredulous onlookers widen the aperture for extraordinary expression within the institutional spheres they represent, bringing their full interlocutory capacity within reach of the charismatic leader. Together, these factors account for charisma’s revolutionary potential. Observational and interview data reveal that incredulous onlookers have played a key role in buoying and propelling the “Trump phenomenon.”
【About the Speaker】
Prof. Paul Joosse is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. His work on Max Weber, political legitimation, and gender has been published in American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociological Theory, and British Journal of Sociology, among others. He is currently an Editor in Chief at the ASA journal Sociological Theory. He is the recipient of the ASA’s Clifford Geertz Prize for best article in cultural sociology, the ASA’s Junior Theorist Award, and the International Sociological Association’s Junior Theorist Prize.
For further details, please refer to the attached poster. Upon successful registration, the access details will be sent to your registered email address automatically.
Should you have any questions, please contact us at (852) 3943 6271 / [email protected]
