Introduction

The phenomenon also continues to attract considerable interest among students, practitioners, policy makers, and media professionals. The Routledge International Handbook of Charisma casts light on classical approaches to the study of charisma while also highlighting recent advances from scholars and thinkers in various academic disciplines around the world. A similar emphasis on the sacralization of the political in the modern world – and the role played in it by charismatic leaderships – was evident in the literature on postcolonial nations, such as those in Africa. The study of this everyday notion of charisma – intrinsically tied with consumerism and mass culture – and boosted by the internet – merits its own place in this volume, and experts on media, film, and entertainment explore its nature and ramifications while connecting it with the original, a “more elevated” meaning of a charisma.