picture source, with thanks: http://www.djsylvia.nl/pics/ref1.jpg

(c) Paul Vonk

picture source (with thanks): http://www.hoorn.nl/Smartsite.shtml?id=59159

rechts: een lid van de doelgroep; source (with thanks): http://www.planet.nl/planet/show/id=1354909/contentid=543486/sc=a9f87c

EXPRESSIONS OF TRADITIONAL WISDOM
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
Brussels,
Thursday 27 – Friday 28 SEPTEMBER 2007

The Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences, in collaboration with the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the Royal Museums of Art and History, is organizing an international symposium devoted to“Expressions of Traditional Wisdom” of cultures from “overseas”, i.e., Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas including the ancient civilizations of these continents.

The notion of “wisdom” in the sense of practical wisdom has entered Western civilization through biblical texts. In the Hellenic experience this kind of wisdom received a more structural character in the form of philosophy. In this sense philosophy also reflects one of the expressions of traditional wisdom. The following themes have been retained: Expressions of Traditional Wisdom in:

NB. Wim van Binsbergen (gehuwd, vader van o.m. drie beeldschone dochters) beschouwt zich als intercultureel filosoof met feministische orientatie. Onder zijn leiding vond veel onderzoek plaats naar vrouwencultuur en vrouwenculten in Afrika. Hij heeft eerder over dit onderwerp, en verwante thema's, geschreven in: Intercultural encounters (met name de hoofdstukken 'Sensus communis or sensus particularis: Immanuel Kant in Africa' en 'The shadow you shall not not step upon: The western researcher at the Nkoya girl's puberty rites, western central Zambia'); Afrika in spiegelbeeld (laatstgenoemd hoofdstuk in een eerdere, Nederlandse versie, p. 139ff), en in zijn dichtbundels, waarin Afrikaanse thema's steeds een aanzienlijke plaats innemen.

left: 'Black I am but beautiful' (Song of Songs): A Nubian queen being groomed during the period of the so-called Black Pharaos (early first mill. BCE); source: http://shisa.ukzn.ac.za/pictures/Nubian-kemsit.jpg

'Out of Sundaland? A constructive assessment of Oppenheimer’s thesis claiming decisive Indonesian prehistoric cultural influence on West Asia, Africa and Europe, specifically on the core mythologies of the Ancient Near East and the Bible'.

	ABSTRACT. The paper is devoted to the Sunda thesis as launched by the leading British geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer in 1998. Largely concurring with Oppenheimer, but against the background of an explicitly theoretical position and critical of Oppenheimer's archaeology and Frazerianism, the paper extensively states the positive case in favour of the generalised Sunda thesis, on the basis of additional African and European material (from comparative mythology, comparative ethnography, ancient history and comparative linguistics) not yet adduced by Oppenheimer. However, the argument is critical of the specific application of the Sunda thesis in the field of comparative mythology. Although there are several indications that mythical themes already circulating in the Old World for tens of thousands of years where transformed / innovated and subsequently spread in the Sunda context, multivariate analysis (upon a contents analysis of a representative corpus of flood myths from all over the world, graciously made available by Marc Isaak) brings out that this is not the case for the Nuahic (Noah-related) type of flood myth, centring on 'The flood hero in his ark as an ally of the Supreme God' -- as exemplary for the core mythologies of the Ancient Near East and of the Bible. Far from being the source of Western civilisation, as Oppenheimer claims, Sunda turns out to be a relatively recent recycling context (7 ka BP, on a total time scale of 200 ka for Anatomically Modern Humans), which however in recent millennia has been a major source of non-demic cultural diffusion all over Oceania; South, East and Southwest Asia; Africa; and probably even parts of Europe. Whilst thus assessing and to a considerable extent vindicating Oppenheimer's seminal thesis, the paper also entails the specific presentation and of a more comprehensive theory as an attractive alternative to Oppenheimer's: Wim van Binsbergen's own 'Aggregative diachronic approach to world mythology, starting from the African continent'. The latter theory was the subject of Wim van Binsbergen's contributions to the Harvard Round Table on Comparative Mythology during its 2005 and 2006 sessions at Kyoto (Japan) and Beijing (People's Republic of China; also: click here for the paper based on van Binsbergen's Beijing presentation) respectively.	click here for details
click here for details Meanwhile the original Powerpoint Presentation had now been worked into a article, currently in the press in the journal Cosmos: Journal of Ancient Cosmology (Univ. of Edinburgh); click here for a pre-print (PDF): Wim van Binsbergen, in press (2008), 'Transcontinental mythological patterns in prehistory: A multivariate contents analysis of flood myths worldwide challenges Oppenheimer’s claim that the core mythologies of the Ancient Near East and the Bible originate from early Holocene South East Asia': ABSTRACT. The present argument is devoted to the Sunda thesis, launched by the leading British geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer in 1998. He made two claims: (1) there was decisive Indonesian / Sundaland prehistoric cultural influence on West Asia (the General Sunda Thesis); (2) this influence is specifically manifest in the core mythologies of the Ancient Near East and the Bible (the Special Sunda Thesis). Van Binsbergen’s Aggregative Diachronic Model of Global Mythology, which is briefly introduced, suggests that many of the mythical themes for which Oppenheimer claims a unique Sunda origin, have a much older history elsewhere in the Old World. These themes may have undergone major transformations and innovations, in the Sunda context, and may have subsequently spread to Oceania and the western half of the Old World, in that context. The Nuah?ic (Noah-related) type of ‘Elaborate’ Flood Myth, centring on ‘The flood hero in his ark as an ally of the Supreme God’, is taken to be exemplary for the core mythologies of the Ancient Near East and of the Bible addressed in Oppenheimer’s Special Sunda Thesis. However, multivariate analysis (upon a contents analysis of a representative corpus of flood myths from all over the world), far from massively and unequivocally confirming Oppenheimer’s Special Sunda Thesis, merely makes plausible that for a minority of mythemic traits found in flood myths worldwide, a Sunda effect may be claimed, not for the origin of that trait, but for relatively minor aspects of its subsequent distribution. One multivariate analysis was based on discriminant analysis, another on factor analysis; both bring out that – pace Oppenheimer – most probably, and in line with conventional views, the mytheme of ‘The flood hero in his ark as an ally of the Supreme God’ originated in that form in Central Asia, and from there spread worldwide, also to Sundaland, from where sometimes a further spread with Sunda effect may be reconstructed. Far from being the source of Western, subsequently global, civilisation, as Oppenheimer claims, Sunda turns out to have been mainly a relatively recent recycling context. These statistical analyses unexpectedly highlight the possible role of the New World in the intercontinental prehistory of flood myths. They further demonstrate that the Nuah?ic mytheme is in itself composite; one or two of its twelve principal components could perhaps have originated in South East Asia or have been intercontinentally transmitted via that region from a New World origin.

After the conference the convenors decided to compile a selection of the papers presented at the panel as basis for a book with the provisional title African healing and the role of the inner senses. In this connection additional papers are being co-opted. Therefore, any authors interested to submit their papers for consideration are requested to contact the convenors/ editors, Wim van Binsbergen and/or Nomfundo Mlisa.

AEGIS European Conference on African Studies (ECAS)
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands

This panel was originally initiated and organised by Mrs Dr Jessica Erdsieck and Mrs Nomfundo Mlisa; however, in view of other commitments Dr Erdsieck decided to step down as convener; Wim van Binsbergen agreed to take her place. I take this opportunity to thank Dr Erdsieck and Mrs Mlisa for their valuable initiative, for the work they have already invested in this panel, and for their trust in co-opting me as co-convener.

Vusi Moloi (left), with Penny McCann and Amir Kiani (SAW Video, Ottawa, Canada)

9 juni: Hoogtij -- De cultureelkaravaan van Amsterdam Noord (multicultureel and interreligieus festival)

Wim van Binsbergen is uitgenodigd om voor het religieuze gedeelte als intercultureel filosoof en Afrikaans religiespecialist een algemene inleiding te verzorgen onder de voorlopige titel

'Volgens mij lijkt die God van jou als twee druppels water op die van mij'

The Ancient Mesopotamian/ Phoenician god Dagon, thought to be identical to the amphibious culture hero Oannes who (according to the book Babyloniaca of the Hellenistic historian Berossus) appeared in the Persian Gulf at the onset of (what we now call) Sumerian civilisation (c. 3,000 BCE). Oppenheimer takes him as another sign of Sunda expansion. The Assyriologist Temple (in his best-selling The Orion mystery, 1977) considered Oannes to be extraterrestrial -- the ultimate source of the apparently amazing (but most probably non-existent) astronomical knowledge which the French anthropologists Griaule and Dieterlen attributed to the Dogon of Mali, West Africa. Picture source: after: Cory, I.P., Sanchuniaton (1832). In my own, forthcoming comparative mythological analysis, Oannes is interpreted as a transformation of the Mistress of the Primal Waters who has haunted Eurasian mythologies for tens of millennia; and particularly as the most fundamental and characteristic transformation of the Primal Waters -- when their unbounded and featureless extension is focussed and concentrated in one spot that invites thought: the Fish (e.g. the fish Matshya which, as an avatar of the South Indian god Vishnu, assisted the regional flood hero Manu), the Ark, the Primal Hill, the land, the flood hero, and ultimately the Virgin Creatix's son and lover.

However, this anticlimax is not entirely the end of the story, for genetic, ethnographic (including musicological) and linguistic evidence demonstrates that there was, in fact, a considerable demic and cultural flow from Indonesia to Africa and the Mediterranean, but it was much more recent (cf. the peopling of Madagascar as part of the same process, around the beginning of the present era); and while this connection can be argued, on substantial grounds, to have brought some flood myths to Africa, other such myths were simply diffused there over land from West Asia -- as part of the more general 'Back into Africa' migration that made for a genetically demonstrable westbound migration from Central and West Asia from c. 15,000 BP.

This project is carried out as part of the subprogramme 'Connections in African knowledge', which Wim van Binsbergen initiated within the Theme Group Connections and Transformations in Africa (coordinator Mirjam de Bruijn), African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands

also see the NWO/WOTRO application below, under May 2007; and the paper proposal for the Edinburgh Annual Meeting of the International Association of Comparative Mythology, under August 2007.

Wim van Binsbergen's contribution will be largely in line with his well-known article on ubuntu ('Ubuntu and the Globalisation of African Thought and Society', Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy, 2001), which triggered a polemic with Ramose and Bewaji in the South African Journal of Philosophy

• From village to canon: the qualified survival through formalisation of popular culture in transcontinental perspective

• Flood myths and the postulated Sunda expansion: The long-range dynamics of culture in transcontinental perspective

Competition for funding from the Cultural Dynamics project is stiff and we can only keep our fingers crossed for a positive outcome. Meanwhile the formulation of these proposals did a lot to focus already ongoing research and writing, and to tighten intercontinental networks of collaboration and cross-fertilisation, which will not fail to yield inspiring results, with or without the NWO/WOTRO funding. I sincerely thank all colleagues concerned. The purpose of putting these pre-proposals on the web at this early stage is to further expand the networks that will make these projects a success. (These proposals have circulated before their submission, they are not confidential, and there is nothing in the NWO procedure that prohibits their circulation while being processed).

Power and Identity in African State Formation: Comparative Perspectives (c. 500 pp.)

authored by Martin Doornbos and Wim van Binsbergen

click here for: (a) Powerpoint presentation (improved performance) ; (b) summary text only

Over the years, the Shikanda portal (of which the present page on African religion has attracted the largest number of visitors) has grown to such size, and its internal structure has become so complex, that visitors have had increasing difficulty finding their way, even despite the internal search facility which appears on all the index pages of the various constituent websites. Since Wim van Binsbergen's main output consists of texts for publication, an updated list of publications with hyperlinks to all available fulltext digital texts seems the best remedy. Thanks to the good services of the African Studies Centre, Leiden, in the course of current retrodigitalisation of its members published work, many more digital texts have recently come available, so that now the list of publications could be greatly improved and given a more prominent place in the Shikanda portal. This list is now being provided with clickable links to these uploaded publications. Since that time-consuming process has not yet been completed, of many articles listed, fulltext or draft versions are in fact available in the Shikanda portal, even though no links yet appear in the list of publications. Therefore, please also look at the separate webpages within the Shikanda portal, and use the internal search facility (see below).

van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2007, 'Further steps towards an aggregative diachronic approach to world mythology, starting from the African continent', paper read at the International Conference on Comparative Mythology, organized by Peking University (Research Institute of Sanskrit Manuscripts & Buddhist Literature) and the Mythology Project, Asia Center, Harvard University (Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies), May 10-14, 2006, at Peking University, Beijing, China (convenors Professors Duan Qing and Michael Witzel)

NB this is a large PDF document (c. 10 Mb), with dozens of high-resolution illustrations, so rather than opening it from inside your browser, use 'Save Target As..'

Itinerary: An Africanist's itinerary of long-range research 1968-2007, by Wim van Binsbergen

Prof. Edith Turner, did ethnographic fieldwork in NW Zambia from the 1950s, published on religion with her husband Victor Turner, and in the last decades has diversified her research sites, while becoming more and more vocal on the reality of spirits and healing (image courtesy http://victorturner.webpark.pl/edith.jpg -- from an interesting Polish review of Victor Turner's work)

1) van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2003, ‘Sangoma en filosoof: Eenheid in de praktijk, dilemma in de theorie’, in: Bulhof, I.N., Poorthuis, M., & Bhagwandin, V., eds., Mijn plaats is geen plaats: Ontmoetingen tussen wereldbeschouwingen, Kampen: Klement-Pelckmans, pp. 219-231; see http://www.shikanda.net/general/sangoma_en_filosoof_beter.pdf ; which is the slightly edited Dutch translation of
2) van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2000, ‘Crossing cultural boundaries’, in: Compass Newsletter: For endogenous development, no. 3, July 2000, special issue on: Vitality, health and disease: in soils, crops, animals and people, p. 12-13; also at: http://www.shikanda.net/general/compas.htm ; and
3) van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2003, ‘African spirituality’, in: Polylog: Internet Journal for Intercultural Philosophizing, issue 4, March 2003, at: http://them.polylog.org/4/fbw-en.htm and http://www.shikanda.net/african_religion/spirit.htm

4) his webpage on African religion, with analytical studies as well as accounts of his own practice as a diviner-healer in the Southern African tradition

5) his book Intercultural Encounters (2003), whose central section (200 pp.) is entirely devoted to an analytical approach to such practice

van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 1967, 'Het begrippenpaar ‘sacré/profane’ van Émile Durkheim (een verkenning)', sociologie-scriptie in het kader van de kandidaatsstudie culturele antropologie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, Sociological Institute, Amsterdam University (supervisor J. Berting), with an extensive Postscript 2007

The above event has been occasion to upload on the Shikanda portal a number of books and papers Gerti Hesseling and Wim van Binsbergen published together over the years:

	Wim van Binsbergen & Gerti Hesseling, eds., 1984, Aspecten van staat en maatschappij in Africa: Recent Dutch and Belgian research on the African state, Leiden: African Studies Centre, 1984, 470 pp.
	van Binsbergen, W.M.J., F. Reijntjens & G.S.C.M. Hesseling (eds), 1986, State and local community in Africa, Brussels: Cahiers du CEDAF [ Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation sur l‘Afrique Noire ]
and a study of Independence constitutions in West Africa: Doornbos, M.R., van Binsbergen, W.M.J., & Hesseling, G.S.C.M., 1984, ‘Constitutional form and ideological content: The preambles of French language constitutions in Africa’, in: Van Binsbergen, W.M.J., & G.S.C.M. Hesseling, eds, 1984, Aspecten van staat en maatschappij in Afrika: Recent Dutch and Belgian research on the African state, Leiden: African Studies Centre, pp. 41-100 also cf., more recently, Piet Konings, Wim van Binsbergen & Gerti Hesseling, eds., 2000, Trajectoires de liberation en Afrique contemporaine: Hommage a Robert Buijtenhuijs, Paris: Karthala

African Studies Centre (ASC), Leiden, The Netherlands
Theme group on Agency in Africa (AiA)

Workshop ‘Connections and transformations in Africa'

convenors: Mirjam de Bruijn and Wim van Binsbergen

click here for workshop's programme, and for all appers and documents

For this workshop, Wim van Binsbergen wrote a lavishly illustrated draft presentation 'Connections in African knowledge' (click)

Wim M.J. van Binsbergen, 1998-2006, ‘Skulls and tears: Identifying and analysing an African fantasy space extending over 5000 kilometres and across 5000 years’: Paper read at the conference ‘Fantasy spaces: The power of images in a globalizing world’ (convenors Bonno Thoden van Velzen & Birgit Meyer), part of the WOTRO [Netherlands Foundation for Tropical Research] research programme ‘Globalization and the construction of communal identities’, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 26-29 August 1998, PDF, 46 pp.

Wim van Binsbergen & Henk Meilink, eds., 1978, Migration and the Transformation of Modern African Society, African Perspectives II, 2, 1978; Leiden: African Studies Centre

Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophy