Charisma Conferred
Guy Poitevin, an anthropologist and social worker based in Pune, India, who passed away in 2004, dedicated part of his research to collecting and analysing untouchable women’s milling songs. His writings contain important information about the untouchable women’s culture, they also introduce a new vision of how knowledge in the social sciences should be elaborated, especially of how social representations can be accessed to in order to understand “subaltern” processes of reconstruction of the self leading to actions aiming at changing social orders. Part of the milling songs repertoire referred to Ambedkar, political leader of the untouchables and “father” of the Indian constitution. The reconfiguration of Ambedkar they encapsulate invites to reconsider the concept of charisma as proposed by Max Weber. Guy Poitevin’s analysis of these songs suggest that charisma is not an innate quality of the leader that generates obedience, but that it is the product of a special relation established between the leader and the “leds” whereby the supporters confer charisma to the one they have construed as their chief.