Beyond Charismatic Leadership: New York Catholic Women's Movement / Edition 1

by Michele Teresa Aronica

Overview

Dorothy Day died recently in New York City. With her death, the Catholic Worker Movement lost the last of its founders and leaders. In this insightful and well-documented study, Aronica answers the question whether and how the Movement has survived beyond the founders. Starting from the notion of charismatic leadership, the author converts the Catholic Worker Movement into a test case for the classical analysis of social organization. Through participant observation, Aronica uncovers and explains the system of power and authority, the process of incorporation and the services provided to the poor by the Catholic Worker Movement. The Movement's paper, the Catholic Worker, was used to help provide a typology of membership categories. The book is more than a study in the transformation of charismatic leadership; it is also a study of the place of radical social thought within American Catholicism. Aronica shows the problems that the church structure has with grass-roots activities. She also illustrates the difficulty that a grass-roots organization has in transforming itself into a functioning bureaucracy. The book adds a new organizational dimension to the growing number of books on social movements. It is well suited for an audience interested in the sociology of religion and for those concerned with a fruitful application of modern ethnographic research to classical frameworks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780887381683
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	11/30/1987
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	210
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michele Teresa Aronica is assistant professor of sociology, Saint Joseph's College, North Windham, Maine. She received her Ph.D. from Boston College, and has taught at New York Institute of Technology and Boston College. Since 1978 Aronica has been a member of the Sisters of Mercy in Portland, Maine.

Table of Contents

1: Sociological Theory and Focus of Investigation; 2: Personal Roots of Vision: Selected Biographies of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, Co-founders; 3: The Evolution of Ideology and Leadership; 4: New York City Houses of Hospitality in 1984; 5: Categories of Membership: Roles of Service and Group Processes Within the Catholic Worker Movement in 1984; 6: The Catholic Worker Movement in 1984; 7: Summary and Conclusions