NCSA 2020 Presidential Address: Luck, Weber, and Constant Crisis

ABSTRACT

The past four years in the United States has been rife with constant crisis, even preceding the COVID19 pandemic. The Trump Administration regularly caused upheaval by refusing to following traditional protocol for the presidency across official appointments, staffing, domestic policy and international relations, among others. The inability to stop these violations despite strong negative reactions to them highlight the United States cultural overreliance on structural expectations. Weber cautioned again the growing influence of bureaucratic organizations while also reminding us the voluntary compliance necessary to make authority legitimate. Coupled with a broad misunderstanding of the Weberian sources of authority for the office of the president and use of homogenous sources of information, we have been lucky that such upheaval has not occurred in the past 240 years. Perhaps now our luck has run out. This essay is a modified version of the 2020 NCSA Presidential Address given virtually by Robert Carrothers after the cancellation of the in-person conference due to the COVID19 pandemic.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Notes on contributors

Robert Carrothers

Robert Carrothers is an associate professor of sociology at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio. His research has focused on collective behavior, social problems, and identity. His work has been published in Teaching Sociology and Sociological Spectrum and has been featured on ESPN, in Sports Illustrated, and the Wall Street Journal. He was the 93rd President of the North Central Sociological Association serving during the 2020 meetings.