Now published: RELIGION AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT -- Wim van Binsbergen's testament in the social science of religion

Religion as a social construct

African, Asian, comparative and theoretical excursions –
a testament in the social science of religion

to be distributed by Amazon.com (link in preparation) and by Lulu -- click on the button to the left to order a copy from Lulu (follow the instructions on the specific webpage that opens with the button; you may have to create a Lulu account first); commercial distributors, libraries and others seeking a booksellers discount may approach the publishers directly for further information at: shikandapress@gmail.com or refer to the publisher’s webpage

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Now published:

van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2016, RELIGION AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT: African, Asian, comparative and theoretical excursions – a testament in the social science of religion, Haarlem: Papers in Intercultural Philosophy / Transcontinental Comparative Studies, 712 pp, dozens of illustrations, dozens of tables, Cumulative Bibliography, Index of Authors, General Index, ISBN 978-90-78382-32-4, EUR95.- / US$105

THE BLURB:

Bringing together 16 chapters written between the 1970s and 2012, and introduced by a penetrating and personal Preface, book is the inspiring testament of a versatile and passionate anthropologist of religion; it is also an exciting and many-facetted introduction to the details and global ramifications of grassroots religion outside the North Atlantic region. In the Preface, the author sums up the formidable lessons to be derived from this huge book (712 pp, dozens of illustrations, dozens of tables, Cumulative Bibliography, Index of Authors, General Index):

1. knowability and translatability of the others’ religion (while retaining, beyond this empiricist credo, the mystery of the other as boundary condition)

2. interdisciplinarity

3. historical awareness

4. a quantitative, statistical / mathematical perspective as auxiliary to the overall qualitative approach

5. simple, old-fashioned personal, and ideally prolonged qualitative field-work

6. the underlying transcontinental continuity in space and time of most African and Asian religious expressions

7. and finally an all-pervading sense of the therapautic dimension of religion.

WIM VAN BINSBERGEN (*1947) was a prominent anthropologist / sociologist of religion when in 1998 he acceded to the chair of Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Trained at Amsterdam University and the Free University Amsterdam, he conducted his first field-work in Tunisia, 1968. He subsequently focused his field research on rural and urban South Central and Southern Africa, Guiné Bissau, Cameroon, and on African-Asian continuities. This has yielded a substantial output of authored books, edited collections, and articles. From 1998 most of this internationally published work has also been made available at the author’s highly popular website. In 2003 a selection was collected under the title Intercultural Encounters (marking the transition from anthropology to intercultural philosophy), to be followed by the author’s philosophical testament: Vicarious Reflections (2015, on North-South knowledge formation); Our Drums Are Always On My Mind (in press, on the Nkoya people of Zambia); and Researching Power and Identity in African State Formation (2016, with M. Doornbos). Sampling all major themes and regions Van Binsbergen has worked on over the decades (including Africa, popular Islam, the Ancient Near East, Japan and Indonesia, ecstatic cults, divination, myth, pilgrimage and magic) , the present book bundles studies specifically in the social science of religion, written between 1975 and 2012, the year of his retirement. He has continued his fieldwork, writing and teaching on, and in, Africa, while increasingly diversifying towards Africa’s transcontinental continuities in pre- and protohistory, Asia, comparative mythology, and the Mediterranean Bronze Age. Married with an Africanist / musician / breathing therapist, and father of five, he is a published poet, a qualified and practising spirit medium / diviner, and a life Honorary Fellow of the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands.

Even readers / owners of the printed hard copy are advised to visit the web version by means of the links below: it was financially impossible to print the book’s many illustrations in full colour, but that is how they do appear online, which adds both splendour and conviction to their contribution to the book’s often contentious argument.

Table of contents