Wim van Binsbergen, Virtuality as a key concept in the study of globalisation:Aspects of the symbolic transformation of contemporary Africa

Notes

1 Earlier versions of this paper were presented on the following occasions: at two meetings of the WOTRO (Netherlands Foundation for Tropical Research) Programme on 'Globalization and the construction of communal identities': in the form of an oral presentation at the Bergen (Netherlands) conference, 15-16 February 1996, and as a paper at the programme's monthly seminar, Amsterdam, 6 May 1996; at the one-day conference on globalisation, Department of Cultural Anthropology/ Sociology of Development, Free University, Amsterdam, 7 June, 1996; and at the graduate seminar, Africa Research Centre, Catholic University of Louvain, 8 November, 1996. For constructive comments and criticism I am indebted to all participants, and especially to (alphabetically) Filip de Boeck, René Devisch, Martin Doornbos, André Droogers, Mike Featherstone, Jonathan Friedman, Peter Geschiere, Ulf Hannerz, Peter Kloos, Birgit Meyer, Peter Pels, Rafael Sanchez, Matthew Schoffeleers, Bonno Thoden van Velzen, Rijk van Dijk, Wilhelmina van Wetering, and Karin Willemse. I am especially indebted to Peter Geschiere and Birgit Meyer as the editors of the book in which a necessarily much shortened version of this text has appeared.
2 Cf. Fardon 1995; Featherstone 1990; Forster 1987; Friedman 1995; Hannerz 1992; and references cited there. Some of the underlying ideas have been expressed decades ago, e.g. Baudrillard 1972, 1981. Or let us remember that, on the authority of Marshal McLuhan (1966), the world was becoming a 'global village' was a truism throughout the 1980s. In fact, work by Toynbee (1952: 134-5) and his great example Spengler (1993) can be cited to show that the idea of a global confrontation of cultures, with global cultural coalescence as a possible outcome, has been in the air throughout the twentieth century.
3 Notions on space-time compression in globalisation are to be found with Harvey and Giddens, e.g. Harvey 1989; Giddens 1990, cf. 1991: 16f. Some of my own recent work (1996b) suggests that we should not jump to the conclusion that such compression is uniquely related to the globalisation context. In fact, an argument leading through African divination systems and board-games right to the Neolithic suggests that such compression is an essential feature of both games and rituals throughout the last few millennia of human cultural history.
4 For a similar view Friedman (e.g. 1995), who chides anthropology for having relegated other cultures to the status of isolated communities.
5 E.g. in the context of the work, within the WOTRO programme on globalisation and the construction of communal identities, on Ghanaian Pentecostal churches by Birgit Meyer and by Rijk van Dijk; for a comparable case from Southern Africa, cf. the Zion Christian Church as studied by Jean Comaroff, which started a debate about the political significance of these churches. Cf. van Dijk 1992; Meyer 1995; Comaroff 1985; Schoffeleers 1991; van Binsbergen 1993; Werbner 1986.
6 Cf. van Wetering 1988; van Binsbergen 1990.
7 Meyer 1995, 1996.
8 van Binsbergen 1990, 1993b.
9 van Binsbergen 1993.
10 van Binsbergen 1994.
11 Welbourn & Ogot 1966.
12 Hoenen 1947: 326, n. 1; Little e.a. 1978 s.v. 'virtual'.
13 E.g., IBM 1987 lists as many as 56 entries starting on 'virtual'.
14 Cf. Austin 1962: statements which cannot be true or false, e.g. exhortations, or the expression of an ideal.
15 Korff 1996: 5. On virtuality and related aspects of today's automated technology, also cf. Cheater 1995; Rheingold 1991.
16 Cf. the collections by Comaroff & Comaroff 1993 and Fardon 1995; moreover, Geschiere c.s. 1995; de Boeck, in press; Meyer 1995; Pels 1993; and perhaps my own recent work.
17 van Binsbergen 1981.
18 How many? That varies considerably between regions and between countries. The post-independence stagnation of African national economies, the structural adjustment programmes implemented in many African countries, the food insecurity under conditions of civil war and refugeeship, the implementation of rural development programmes - all these conditions have not been able to bring the massive migration to African towns to an end, even if their continued growth must of course be partly accounted for by intra-urban reproduction, so that even in African towns that were colonial creations, many inhabitants are second, third or fourth generation urbanites. Typical figures of village-born, first generation urbanites available to me range from an estimated 15% in Lusaka, Zambia to as much as 50% in Francistown, Botswana.
19 Turner 1968; van Velsen 1971; van Binsbergen 1992b.
20 Cf. van Binsbergen 1995, where a cultural relativist argument on democracy is presented.
21 Cf. van Binsbergen 1994; 1995c; 1995; 1996,.
22 Maine 1883, p. 128f.
23 Kroeber 1938, p. 307f.
24 Radcliffe-Brown 1940, p. xiv.
25 Cf. Hannerz 1987.
26 Appadurai 1995.
27 Cf. van Binsbergen 1995c, 1995b, 1996c, 1996a.
28 Cf. van Binsbergen 1995a, where a cultural relativist argument on democracy is presented.
29 In other words, the African townsman is not a displaced villager or tribesman - but on the contrary 'detribalised' as soon as he leaves his village: Gluckman 1945: 12. The latter reference shows that these ideas have circulated in African urban studies long before 1960.
30 Meillassoux 1975; cf. Gerold-Scheepers & van Binsbergen 1978; van Binsbergen & Geschiere 1985.
31 Nor should we over-generalise. Mitchell's seminal Kalela dance should be contrasted with the work of Philip and Ilona Mayer, which was far more subtle, and much better informed, on rural cultural material as introduced into the towns of Southern Africa; cf. Mayer 1971; Mayer 1980; Mayer & Mayer 1974.
32 Cf. Geuijen 1992; Kapferer 1988; Nencel Pels 1991; Tyler 1987; and references cited there.
33 Cf. Mitchell 1956, 1969; Epstein 1958, 1967. 34 E.g. van Binsbergen 1981; van Binsbergen & Geschiere 1985.
35 Hannerz 1980, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1992a, 1992b.
36 Hannerz, 1992a: 17, 273; taking his clue from: Cohen & Comaroff 1976.
37 The following section is based on a text which I wrote in 1994 as a statement of intent for the WOTRO Programme on globalisation and the construction of communal identities, thus opening the way for my student Thera Rasing to submit her own fully-fledged application for Ph.D. research as based on her previous M.A. work. This was approved, so that before long we may expect her more detailed ethnographic and analytical answers to the questions raised in this section. Meanwhile, cf. Rasing 1995. Of the vast literature on puberty initiation in South Central and Southern Africa, I mention moreover: Corbeil 1982; de Boeck 1992; Gluckman 1949; Hoch 1968; Jules-Rosette 1979-80; Maxwell 1983: 52-70; Mayer 1971; Mayer & Mayer 1974; Richards 1982 (which includes a 'regional bibliography' on girls' initiation in South Central Africa); Turner 1964, 1967; van Binsbergen 1987, 1992b, 1993b; White 1953.
38 This embarrassment created by the dominant paradigm is probably the main reason why the study of African historic urban ritual is much less developed than the empirical incidence of such ritual would justify. Such studies as exist have tended to underplay the historic, rural dimension in favour of the modern dimension (Mitchell 1956; Ranger 1975), or have drawn from other founts of inspiration than the dominant Durkheimian paradigm (Janzen 1992; van Binsbergen 1981).
39 Devisch 1995.
40 Van Binsbergen 1981.
41 See above, bibliographical footnote on female puberty ritual in South Central Africa.
42 Geschiere 1996; provisional English version of introductory chapter of: Geschiere 1995; Schoffeleers 1996.
43 Geschiere 1995; also cf. Geschiere 1996.
44 A reference to my initiation as a spirit medium in the early 1990s and my subsequent practice as a traditional healer in Botswana, cf. van Binsbergen 1991; also cf. van Dijk & Pels 1996. But much earlier, in his Wiley lectures delivered before the University of Belfast, 1978, my inspiring senior colleague and friend Terence Ranger found occasion to embellish his discussion of my analysis of religion including sorcery in western central Zambia with details as to how during field-work the local population considered me a witch. Needless to say that these lectures were never published. Cf. van Binsbergen 1981; Ranger was referring to my earlier, preliminary statements, e.g. van Binsbergen 1976.
45 Geschiere 1995, p. 5.
46 Cf. Probst 1996. I am grateful to my colleague Rijk van Dijk for an extensive comment on this section.
47 van Binsbergen, Religious change.
48 Schoffeleers 1992; and other studies cited there.
49 Redmayne 1970; Ranger 1972; van Dijk 1992, and extensive references cited there.
50 Geschiere 1982.
51 A few examples out of many: Melland 1967; Mackenzie 1925.
52 In his oral presentation at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of Development, Free University, Amsterdam, 12 April 1996, he admitted that in Malawi the term mchape carries general connotations of witchcraft; and regardless of the issue whether witchcraft might have been a more prominent aspect of the Chisupe movement than his argument suggests (apparently it was not), he also pointed out that given the primary audience he has in mind for his paper (notably, producers and consumers of African Theology) he could not afford to enter into a discussion of witchcraft if he did not want to loose that audience.
53 van Binsbergen, 1981.
54 Van Binsbergen, 1981: 195, 239.
55 Ranger 1975.
56 Cf. Ranger 1975 and: Fetter 1971.
57 For a preliminary account, e.g. van Binsbergen 1996.
58 Geschiere 1995.
59 On this point, cf. Schoffeleers 1978; van Binsbergen 1981.
60 Cf. van Binsbergen 1992, 1993.
61 Durkheim 1912.
62 van Binsbergen & Wiggermann, in press.
63 Cf. Melland 1967; van Binsbergen 1984.
64 It may even pervade the discourse and practice of independent churches, e.g. the Botswana case of the Guta ra Mwari church: van Binsbergen 1993b.
65 Sandbothe & Zimmerli 1994.
66 van Binsbergen 1996, and references cited there.
67 Van Binsbergen 1992, pp. 262f; 1981, pp. 155f, 162f.
68 Van Dijk 1992.
69 Van Dijk in press.
70 Anthropological and oral-historical fieldwork was undertaken in Western Zambia and under migrants from this area in Lusaka, in 1972-1974, and during shorter periods in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1988, 1989, 1992 (twice), 1994 (twice) and 1995. I am indebted to the Zambian research participants, to the members of my family who shared in the fieldwork, to the Board of the African Studies Centre for adequate research funds, and to the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO) for a writing-up year in 1974-75.
71 Very recently a third theme is emerging: the blurring of ethnic boundaries in Western Zambia, the attenuation even of Nkoya/ Lozi antagonism, in favour of a pan-Westerners regionalism opposing the Northern block which is President Chiluba's ethnic base. This at least is the situation around the National Party, which in bye-elections in Mongu (the capital of Western Province) in early 1994 defeated both MMD and UNIP. As a result of the general elections held during the 1994 Kazanga festival, the society's office of national chairman went to the leading NP official in Kaoma district.
72 Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983.
73 The following paragraph is based on: van Binsbergen 1992a; 1994b.
74 Nuchelmans 1971; Austin 1962.
75 WOTRO Programme on 'Globalization and the construction of communal identities', Bergen (The Netherlands) conference, 15-16 February 1996.

(c) 1997, 1997 Wim van Binsbergen

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