Islam and China are topics of relevance and contention in today’s economic, political and religious climate. In this work, Tiffany Cone makes an important contribution to these contemporary discourses through an ethnographic case study of Islamic leadership and the cultivation of charismatic power by Sufi disciples at a shrine site in Northwest China. Though this volume focuses on a specific religious community, it carries valuable insights into religious unity, syncretism and religious legitimacy, materialism and religious integrity, and the stability of religious institutions in light of rapid economic growth. Cultivating Charismatic Power speaks to global concerns about the rise of a militant Islam and an increasingly aggressive Chinese State. As such, it will appeal to scholars and practitioners across a range of fields including anthropology, philosophy, religious studies, Islamic Studies, and Chinese Studies.

What if charisma could be taught? The charisma myth is the idea that charisma is a fundamental, inborn quality—you either have it (Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs, Oprah) or you don’t. But that’s simply not true, as Olivia Fox Cabane reveals. Charismatic behaviors can be learned and perfected by anyone. Drawing on techniques she originally developed for Harvard and MIT, Cabane breaks charisma down into its components. Becoming more charismatic doesn’t mean transforming your fundamental personality. It’s about adopting a series of specific practices that fit in with the personality you already have. The Charisma Myth shows you how to become more influential, more persuasive, and more inspiring.

According to Max Weber, charisma is opposed to bureaucratic order. This collection reveals the limits of that formula. The contributors show how charisma is a part of cultural frameworks while retaining its ecstatic character among American and Italian Catholics, Syrian Sufis, Taiwanese Buddhists, Hassidic Jews, and Amazonian shamans, among others.

The Laws of Charisma explores the vital skills and traits needed to earn trust, generate interest, and motivate others in the workplace. Bestselling author Kurt Mortensen defines the intersection of these pivotal abilities as charisma--an enviable quality that can lead to improved relationships, greater income, and more success in every area of life. To some extent, charisma is innate, but in this inspiring guide Mortensen explores the trait’s four core elements to show how anyone can draw out a more charismatic and compelling presence. With the help of practical tools, simple principles, applicable exercises, and insightful assessments, you’ll learn how to radiate confidence, passion, power, and optimism; influence others by improving communication skills; and persuade and empower anyone by creating instant rapport. People with the ability to enter a room and draw instant attention, effortlessly exuding charm and radiating energy, are better able to influence what gets done and ultimately achieve what they want. The Laws of Charisma is packed with everything you need to develop and bring out the more charismatic person within.

For organizations to achieve excellence in today's world, the commitment to develop people is becoming increasingly important. It is the effective utilization of the human resources that is the cornerstone to high performing organizations. This book presents a practical framework to developing people and increasing productivity.

As a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, this book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives. It does not simply take one side as a framework to understand the other; rather, it takes them as mirrors for each other and seeks to develop new readings and perspectives of both ethics that would be unattainable if each were studied on its own.

"The book defends the thesis that the concept of self-cultivation philosophy is an informative interpretive framework for comprehending and reflecting on several philosophical outlooks in India, the Greco-Roman world and China. On the basis of an understanding of human nature and the place of human beings in the world, self-cultivation philosophies maintain that our lives can and should be substantially transformed from what is judged to be a problematic, untutored condition of human beings, our existential starting-point, into what is put forward as an ideal state of being. We are to do this by undertaking a set of therapeutic or spiritual exercises guided by some philosophical analysis. The self-cultivation philosophies in India are expressed in: the Bhagavad Gītā; the Sāṃkhya and Yoga philosophies of Īśvarakṛṣṇa and Patañjali; and teaching of the Buddha and his followers Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva. The philosophies originating in Greece, with subsequent development in the Roman period, are the most prominent Hellenistic approaches: the Epicureanism of Epicurus, Lucretius and Philodemus; the Stoicism of Chrysippus, Epictetus and Seneca; and Pyrrho and the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus. The self-cultivation philosophies from China are the early Confucian outlooks of Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi; the classical Daoist perspectives of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi; and the Chan tradition of Bodhidharma, Huineng and Linji"--