Primary sociological topics include:

• Max Weber on charisma
• Durkheim on primitive classification
• Ethnomethodology
• Sociology of scientific knowledge

Max Weber on Charisma

    Charisma is central to Max Weber’s theories of authority, power, and domination.  He clearly explained that pure charisma required the working of miracles, and he specifically mentioned prophecy, telepathy, and weather control as manifestations of pure charisma.

    Weber’s concepts of rationalization, disenchantment, and bureaucratization are well known.  They entail the attenuation and routinization of charisma.  As cultures become more rationalized, miracles and magic (i.e., overt control of paranormal and supernatural powers) are suppressed.  A variety of institutions are agents for rationalization and disenchantment.  Academe is such a force, as are most exoteric religions.

    Magic and miracles are never fully eliminated from the world, rather they are expelled from the conscious awareness of cultural elites.  They view them as fiction.  Indeed, large industries portray the paranormal in and as fiction.  In financial terms, these industries dwarf those that attempt to apply psychic powers.

    Weber’s theory of charisma was integrated with his ideas on authority.  Pure charisma is the primordial source of authority, but bureaucracy is inimical to pure charisma.  Consequently, those who directly attempt to apply psychic powers almost always do so outside the purview of large bureaucratic institutions.

    The trickster is a figure of marginality and of transition.  Typically the paranormal is marginalized by establishment elites, but in times of cultural transition, it becomes more publicly prominent.  Likewise, charismatic leaders attain greater visibility in times of significant transition.

Durkheim

    Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) addressed a number of topics that today would be labeled paranormal, e.g., magic, consequences of taboo, and the irrational.  Stories of the trickster describe them all, but in ways unfamiliar to the Western mind.  The trickster was central in many early (elementary) religions, and he is the reason that scholars find those religions so difficult to comprehend.
 

Ethnomethodology and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

    The chapter on reflexivity discusses ethnomethodology and the sociology of scientific knowledge.  Both disciplines were disruptive and called into question basic assumptions of sociology.  At an abstract level, they share properties of the trickster.

    The Trickster and the Paranormal draws upon established theories in sociology to illuminate the position of the paranormal in today’s society.  It is argued that paranormal phenomena are fundamentally sociological, rather than psychological.