Modes of Existence - How Methods Afford for Learning

In the previous posts, I have talked about defining our object of inquiry as well as a little on what documents matter.

A thing that I was often taught in methods courses is that you often (especially with deductive testing) operationalize and then evaluate based on that. Inductive, you mostly just explore. This dichotomy is frustrating because you can EITHER learn OR test, never both.

Initially, I was super interested in “ethnographic content analysis” because it allowed researchers to learn technical concepts across their studies and re-evaluate the conclusions they are making.

This isn’t enough.

What is frustrating about most methods is that they require you to gather data (at the moment of gathering it is data from a past) to make guesses about the future. At no point in time is the present accounted for, nor is any past outside of the one the data is collected for.

And so, I have found Actor-Network-Theory interesting though I think this is often a mark of ditching careful methods for a shiny reckless one. However, Modes of Existence is interesting as it is a DENSE and difficult manual.

It focuses on the present and how different translations of a concept are constantly remaking that concept. It focuses on constant making and remaking of truth from whatever perspective the truth makers exist in. It allows us to follow controversies going back through time as well as to make sense of controversies that come up and really dig into the things we consider the law of the land and things we consider a religious or faith-based truth.

At the intersection is a reflective method that doesn’t have to operationalize, confine itself to specific data types, or rely on extrapolative calculations that have become obscenely problematic in the past few years.

So now we have a moment of example.

On Chapter 1 - Defining Our Object of Inquiry

Initially, I wanted to begin with the way Charisma is defined by the original edition of D&D and then move in how it was operationalized in digital games and then re-defined in the tabletop game until this relationship flipped.

However, the thing that is interesting about the concept isn’t how it changed (because that part is obvious), but in how the relationship is mediated both by history as well as popular usage because Charisma is a recent addition both to English but also as a concept mediated by the forms of capitalism that began to take shape after the discovery of clocks.

I think this passage from The History of Charisma is the best approach for this:

The contemporary meaning of charisma is broadly understood as a special innate quality that sets certain individuals apart and draws others to them. I have composed this definition following extensive study of the word’s usage not only in recent media, particularly newspapers, magazines, and websites, but also in the discourse of various academic disciplines, including sociology, psychology, management theory, media studies and cultural studies. The definition offered here largely from Weber, attesting to the power of his formulation of the concept of charismatic leadership. However, the current meaning has shifted away from the restricted range of charismatic authority elaborated in Weber’s sociology. Charisma in contemporary culture is thought to reside in a wide range of special individuals, including entertainers and celebrities, whereas Weber was concerned primarily with religious and political leaders.

Weber states that charismatic authority could the ‘iron cage’ or rationalism built in what we call modernity. That said, there are various issues within this definition wherein folks like Bourdieu calls out Weber for justifying power relations and folks like John Kotter dismissing it entirely. What it is and how it is seems never to have fully transcended its murky, cloudy definition.

So we have religious connotations but see them mediated by new discourse into the impact of capitalism on how religiosity is expressed in society. With Sociology mostly being a reaction against much of what Marx said about the potential perfectibility of humanity, it is no wonder that we see this kind of application of said critique on the way capitalism’s ascendance to absolute religiosity in society writ large.

If we look at it from the Protestant point of view, it makes sense as this is primarily the mode of thought that Weber was working on defining (e.g. The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism). He believed that pursuit of capital and the resultant accumulation of capital showed favor from God. Here, we see religious charisma become charisma detached from religion while still holding the power of its religious origin. He concludes his text on this saying:

The Puritan wanted to work in calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ‘saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.’ But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage. (Page 181, 1953 Scribner’s edition.)

This concept of charisma–being chosen by god getting attached to capitalism and wealth accumulation–was at its peak when Dungeons and Dragons was new. But this would not get picked up quickly but hesitantly over time as it. moved from a kid’s thoughts about how people work to this sort of generalized concept Charisma comes to inhabit.

We head back into Dungeons and Dragons territory.

Charisma as an attribute has a relatively well-preserved history. When D&D was being developed, we see a number of divergent drafts with something like Beyond This Point Be Dragons with attributes like Credibility, Looks, and Sexual Prowess. Then, there is the draft that Gygax inevitably publishes where Gygax would take Credibility, Looks, and Sexual prowess into just 1 Attribute: Charisma. It is interesting that later, the book Unearthed Arcana that would separate Charisma back into charm and beauty.

So from here, we now see the concept of Charisma enter into the discourse of what the concept means when it becomes the place of wargames in society and how wargames are enacted in computing. We get back to those definitions previously offered:

“Charisma is a combination of appearance, personality, and so forth. Its primary function is to determine how many hirelings of unusual nature a character can attract. This is not to say that he cannot hire men-at-arms and employ mercenaries, but the charisma function will affect loyalty of even these men. Players will, in all probability, seek to hire Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and/or Clerics in order to strengthen their roles in the campaign. A player-character can employ only as many as indicated by his charisma score” – 0dnd

It is interesting that the, “sexual prowess” stuff is often completely removed though it partially remains in the form of whether or not a witch or dragon will make a character a lover. But what’s more interesting is that we see it being first removed entirely in Pedit5 and dnd followed by being used as an impact on commerce in games like Akalabeth. So, the use when it does appear in videogames is connected to capitalism and Weber’s work on the concept.

It then slowly gets translated and re-translated here and there across different editions and video games. It then ends up here:

“Charisma measures your ability to interact effectively with others. It includes such factors as confidence and eloquence, and it can represent a charming or commanding personality. Charisma Checks: A Charisma check might arise when you try to influence or entertain others, when you try to make an impression or tell a convincing lie, or when you are navigating a tricky social situation. The Deception, Intimidation, Performance, and Persuasion skills reflect aptitude in certain kinds of Charisma checks. Bards, paladins, sorcerers, and warlocks use Charisma as their spell-casting ability, which helps determine the saving throw DCs of spells they cast.” – 5e (text taken from Roll20).

So in thinking about how to define charisma, we see that simply following its usage across the games themselves isn’t really enough. What I didn’t touch on here are the redefinitions and work against Weber’s definition though I hinted at Bourdieu and John Kotter, there are other attempts to deal with this concept. We also must contend with the work in and around gender studies, functionalism giving way to post modernism, modernism in general, and more. There’s a lot here though going into that takes a little away from tracing it from a technical point of view.