Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson (August 26, 1936 – December 13, 2015) was an Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian who lived and taught in the United States. Anderson is best known for his 1983 book ''
Imagined Communities
''Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism'' is a book by Benedict Anderson about the development of national feeling in different eras and throughout different geographies across the world. It introduced the ter ...
'', which explored the origins of
nationalism
Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Theory, I ...
. A
polyglot
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...
with an interest in
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
, he was the Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
. His work on the "
Cornell Paper
''A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia'', more commonly known as the "Cornell Paper", is an academic publication detailing the events of an abortive ''coup d'état'' attempt by the self-proclaimed September 30 Movemen ...
", which disputed the official story of Indonesia's
30 September Movement
The Thirtieth of September Movement (, also known as G30S, and by the syllabic abbreviation Gestapu for ''Gerakan September Tiga Puluh'', Thirtieth of September Movement, also unofficially called Gestok, for ''Gerakan Satu Oktober'', or Fir ...
and the subsequent
anti-Communist purges of 1965–1966, led to his expulsion from that country. He was the elder brother of the historian
Perry Anderson
Francis Rory Peregrine "Perry" Anderson (born 11 September 1938) is a British intellectual, political philosopher, historian and essayist. His work ranges across historical sociology, intellectual history, and cultural analysis. What unites An ...
.
Biography
Background
Anderson was born on August 26, 1936, in
Kunming
Kunming is the capital and largest city of the province of Yunnan in China. The political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province, Kunming is also the seat of the provincial government. During World War II, Kunming was a Ch ...
, China, to an Irish and
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the State rel ...
father and English mother.
His father, James Carew O'Gorman Anderson, was an official with
Chinese Maritime Customs
The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was a Chinese governmental tax collection agency and information service from its founding in 1854 until it split in 1949 into services operating in the Republic of China on Taiwan, and in the People's Republ ...
.
The family descended from the
Anderson family
The Anderson family is a fictitious family of professional wrestlers, largely consisting of billed brothers, cousins and children.https://www.midatlanticgateway.com/2016/03/blood-thicker-than-water.html>
Gene Anderson
NWA Hall of Famer Gene ...
of Ardbrake,
Bothriphnie, Scotland, who settled in Ireland in the early 1700s. His mother's family descended from
Lancaster.
Anderson's maternal grandfather
Trevor Bigham
Sir Frank Trevor Roger Bigham, KBE, CB (22 May 1876 – 23 November 1954) was an English barrister, an Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police from 1914 to 1931, and Deputy Commissioner from 1931 to 1935. He was the first o ...
was the
Deputy Commissioner
A deputy commissioner is a police, income tax or administrative official in many countries. The rank is commonplace in police forces of Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries, usually ranking below the Commissioner.
Australia
In all Aust ...
of the
Metropolitan Police from 1914 to 1931. One of Anderson's grandmothers, Lady Frances O'Gorman, belonged to the
Gaelic
Gaelic (pronounced for Irish Gaelic and for Scots Gaelic) is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". It may refer to:
Languages
* Gaelic languages or Goidelic languages, a linguistic group that is one of the two branches of the Insul ...
Mac Gormáin
MacGorman ( Irish: ''Mac Gormáin''), also known as McGorman, Gorman, or O'Gorman ( Irish: ''Ó Gormáin''), is an Irish Gaelic clan based most prominently in what is today County Clare. The paternal ancestors of the clan are of the Laigin a ...
clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship
and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, a clan may claim descent from a founding member or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societie ...
of
County Clare
County Clare () is a Counties of Ireland, county in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster in the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern part of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, bordered on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Clare County Council ...
and was the daughter of the
Irish Home Rule
The Home Rule movement was a movement that campaigned for self-government (or "home rule") for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of ...
MP Major
Purcell O'Gorman
Purcell O'Gorman (1820 – 24 November 1888) was an Irish nationalism, Irish nationalist politician and member of parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elected as a member of the Home Rule League to represent Waterford City ( ...
.
Major Purcell O'Gorman was in turn the son of Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman who had been involved with the
Republican Society of United Irishmen
The Society of United Irishmen was a sworn association, formed in the wake of the French Revolution, to secure Representative democracy, representative government in Ireland. Despairing of constitutional reform, and in defiance both of British ...
during the
1798 Rising, later becoming Secretary of the
Catholic Association
The Catholic Association was an Irish Roman Catholic political organization set up by Daniel O'Connell in the early nineteenth century to campaign for Catholic emancipation within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was one of ...
in the 1820s. Anderson also had roots in
County Waterford
County Waterford () is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is part of the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. It is named after the city of Waterford. ...
through his O'Gorman side.
Benedict Anderson took his middle names from the cousin of Major Purcell O'Gorman, Richard O'Gorman, who was one of the leaders of the
Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848
The Young Irelander Rebellion was a failed Irish nationalist uprising led by the Young Ireland movement, part of the wider Revolutions of 1848 that affected most of Europe. It took place on 29 July 1848 at Farranrory, a small settlement about ...
.
California, Ireland and Cambridge
Anderson's family moved to California in 1941 to avoid the invading Japanese during the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
and then to Ireland in 1945.
He studied at
Eton College
Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...
, where he won the
Newcastle Scholarship
The Newcastle Scholarship is an annual prize awarded at Eton College in England for the highest performance in a series of special written examinations taken over the course of a week. It was instituted and first awarded in 1829 and is the colle ...
, and went on to attend
King's College, Cambridge
King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...
. While at Cambridge, he became an anti-imperialist during the
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, also known as the Second Arab–Israeli War, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, having done so w ...
, which influenced his later work as a
Marxist
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
and
anti-colonialist
Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. The meanings and applications of the term are disputed. Some scholars of decolon ...
thinker.
Southeast Asia studies
He earned a classics degree from Cambridge in 1957 before attending
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
, where he concentrated on Indonesia as a research interest and in 1967 received his Ph.D. in government studies.
His doctoral advisor at Cornell was Southeast Asian scholar
George Kahin.
The
violence
Violence is characterized as the use of physical force by humans to cause harm to other living beings, or property, such as pain, injury, disablement, death, damage and destruction. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence a ...
following the
September 1965 coup attempt that led to
Suharto
Suharto (8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was an Indonesian Officer (armed forces), military officer and politician, and dictator, who was the second and longest serving president of Indonesia, serving from 1967 to 1998. His 32 years rule, cha ...
taking power in Indonesia disillusioned Anderson, who wrote that it "felt like discovering that a loved one is a murderer".
Therefore, while Anderson was still a graduate student at Cornell, he anonymously co-wrote the "
Cornell Paper
''A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia'', more commonly known as the "Cornell Paper", is an academic publication detailing the events of an abortive ''coup d'état'' attempt by the self-proclaimed September 30 Movemen ...
" with Ruth T. McVey that debunked the official Indonesian government accounts of the abortive coup of the
30 September Movement
The Thirtieth of September Movement (, also known as G30S, and by the syllabic abbreviation Gestapu for ''Gerakan September Tiga Puluh'', Thirtieth of September Movement, also unofficially called Gestok, for ''Gerakan Satu Oktober'', or Fir ...
and the subsequent
anti-Communist purges of 1965–66.
The "Cornell Paper" was widely disseminated by Indonesian dissidents.
One of two foreign witnesses at the
show trial
A show trial is a public trial in which the guilt (law), guilt or innocence of the defendant has already been determined. The purpose of holding a show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public, serving as an example and a d ...
of
Communist Party of Indonesia
The Communist Party of Indonesia (Indonesian language, Indonesian: ''Partai Komunis Indonesia'', PKI) was a communist party in the Dutch East Indies and later Indonesia. It was the largest non-ruling communist party in the world before its Indo ...
general secretary
Sudisman in 1971, Anderson published a translated version of the latter's unsuccessful testimony.
As a result of his actions, Anderson was in 1972 expelled from Indonesia and banned from reentering, a restriction that lasted until 1998 when
Suharto
Suharto (8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was an Indonesian Officer (armed forces), military officer and politician, and dictator, who was the second and longest serving president of Indonesia, serving from 1967 to 1998. His 32 years rule, cha ...
resigned to be replaced by
B. J. Habibie
Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie (; 25 June 1936 – 11 September 2019) was an Indonesian politician, engineer and scientist who served as the third president of Indonesia from 1998 to 1999. Less than three months after his inauguration as the seventh ...
as president.
Anderson was fluent in many languages relevant to his Southeast Asian field, including
Indonesian,
Javanese,
Thai and
Tagalog, as well as the major European languages.
After the American experience in the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
and the subsequent wars between Communist nations such as the
Cambodian–Vietnamese War
The Cambodian–Vietnamese War was an armed conflict between Democratic Kampuchea, controlled by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the Vietnam, Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It began in December 1978, with a Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia which to ...
and the
Sino-Vietnamese War
The Sino-Vietnamese War (also known by other names) was a brief conflict that occurred in early 1979 between China and Vietnam. China launched an offensive ostensibly in response to Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia in 1978, whi ...
, he began studying the origins of nationalism while continuing his previous work on the relationship between language and power.
Anderson is best known for his 1983 book ''
Imagined Communities
''Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism'' is a book by Benedict Anderson about the development of national feeling in different eras and throughout different geographies across the world. It introduced the ter ...
'', in which he described the major factors contributing to the emergence of nationalism in the world during the past three centuries.
Anderson defined a nation as "an imagined political community
hat isimagined as both inherently limited and sovereign".
[Anderson, Benedict. ''Imagined Communities'', p. 6. ] Anderson was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
in 1994. In 1998, Anderson's return trip to Indonesia was sponsored by the Indonesian publication
''Tempo'', and he gave a public speech in which he criticized the Indonesia opposition for "its timidity and historical amnesia—especially with regard to the massacres of 1965–1966".
Anderson taught at Cornell until his retirement in 2002, when he became a
professor emeritus
''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus".
...
of International Studies.
After his retirement, he spent most of his time traveling throughout South East Asia. Anderson died in
Batu, a hill town near
Malang
Malang (; , ), historically known as Tumapel, is an inland List of regencies and cities of Indonesia, city in the Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province of East Java. It has a history dating back to the age of the Singhasari, Singhasari K ...
, Indonesia, in his sleep on December 13, 2015. According to close friend
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali (;; born 21 October 1943) is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the ''New Left Review'' and ''Sin Permiso'', and co ...
, Anderson died of heart failure.
He had been in the middle of correcting the proofs of his memoir ''A Life Beyond Boundaries,'' which had initially been published in Japanese translation. He was survived by two adopted sons of Indonesian origin.
Key concepts
Imagined communities
Anderson is best known for his 1983 book, ''Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism'', in which he examined how nationalism led to the creation of nations, or as the title puts it, imagined communities.
In this case, an "
imagined community
An imagined community is a concept developed by Benedict Anderson in his 1983 book '' Imagined Communities'' to analyze nationalism. Anderson depicts a nation as a socially-constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves a ...
" does not mean that a national community is fake, but rather refers to Anderson's position that any community so large that its members do not know each another on a face-to-face basis must be imagined to some degree.
According to Anderson, previous Marxist and
liberal thinkers did not fully appreciate nationalism's power, writing in his book that "Unlike most other isms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: no
Hobbeses,
Tocquevilles,
Marxes or
Webers."
Anderson begins his work by bringing up three paradoxes of nationalism that he would address in the work:
# Nationalism is a recent and modern creation despite nations being thought of by most people as old and timeless;
# Nationalism is universal in that every individual belongs to a nation, yet each nation is supposedly completely distinct from every other nation;
# Nationalism is an idea so influential that people will die for their nations, yet at the same time an idea difficult to define.
In Anderson's theory of nationalism, the phenomenon only came about as people began rejecting three key beliefs about their society:
# That certain languages such as Latin were superior to others in respect to access to universal truths;
# That
divine right to rule was granted to the rulers of society, usually monarchs, and was a natural basis for organizing society;
# That the origins of the world and the origins of humankind were the same.
Anderson argued that the prerequisites for the rejection of these beliefs began in Western Europe through the numerous factors that led to the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained th ...
, such as the power of economics, the
Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of History of science, modern science during the early modern period, when developments in History of mathematics#Mathematics during the Scientific Revolution, mathemati ...
, and the advent of improvements in communication brought about by the invention of the
printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...
under a system of capitalism (or as Anderson calls it,
print capitalism).
Anderson's view of nationalism places the roots of the notion of "nation" at the end of the 18th century when a replacement system began, not in Europe, but in the Western Hemisphere, when countries such as Brazil, the United States, and the newly freed Spanish colonies became the first to develop a
national consciousness.
In contrast to other thinkers such as
Ernest Gellner
Ernest André Gellner (9 December 1925 – 5 November 1995) was a French-born British-Czech philosopher and social anthropologist described by ''The Daily Telegraph'', when he died, as one of the world's most vigorous intellectuals, and by '' ...
, who considered the spread of nationalism in connection with industrialism in Western Europe, and
Elie Kedourie
Elie Kedourie (25 January 1926, Baghdad – 29 June 1992, Washington) was a British historian of the Middle East. He wrote from a perspective that dissented from many points of view taken as orthodox in the field. From 1953 to 1990, he taught ...
, who construed nationalism as a European phenomenon carried around the world by colonization,
Anderson sees the European
nation state
A nation state, or nation-state, is a political entity in which the State (polity), state (a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory) and the nation (a community based on a common identity) are (broadly ...
as a response to the rise of nationalism in the European diaspora beyond the oceans, especially in the Western Hemisphere, which was then retransmitted to Africa and Asia through colonization.
Anderson considers nation state building as an imitative and transportable action, in which new political entities were copying the model of the nation state.
As Anderson sees it, the large cluster of political entities that sprang up in North America and South America between 1778 and 1838, almost all of which self-consciously defined themselves as nations, were historically the first such states to emerge and therefore inevitably provided the first real model of what such states should look like.
According to Anderson, this phenomenon led to the rise of nations: communities that were limited by their borders and were
sovereign
''Sovereign'' is a title that can be applied to the highest leader in various categories. The word is borrowed from Old French , which is ultimately derived from the Latin">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to ...
.
Anderson conceived nationalism as having come about in different "waves."
Nationalism and print
Like other thinkers such as
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (, ; July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media studies, media theory. Raised in Winnipeg, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba a ...
in his ''
The Gutenberg Galaxy
''The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man'' is a 1962 book by Marshall McLuhan, in which he analyzes the effects of mass media, especially the printing press, on European culture and human consciousness. It popularized the term ''glo ...
'', of particular importance to Anderson's theory on nationalism is his stress on the role of printed literature and its dissemination.
Thinkers like McLuhan,
Elizabeth Eisenstein
Elizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein (October 11, 1923 – January 31, 2016) was an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th-century France. She is well known for her work on the history of early printing, writing on the transition in ...
, and Anderson did not believe that nationalism came about because of a vaguely-defined "European" way of thinking, but because of the social, economic, and cultural practices associated with the rise of the printing press and the mass reproduction of printed material.
According to Anderson, "the revolutionary vernacularizing thrust of capitalism" was central to the creation of imagined communities, as the mass mechanical reproduction of printed works united people that would otherwise have found it difficult to imagine themselves as part of the same community, mainly because of extreme linguistic differences.
With the advent of the printing press, languages became more stable and certain dialects became "languages of power" (such as the
Queen's English in the United Kingdom) that were inherently more prestigious than sub-regional vernacular dialects.
Print capitalism also meant a culture in which people were required to be socialized as part of a literate culture, in which the standardized language of their nation became both the language of printed material and education for the masses.
Fellow nationalism scholar Steven Kemper described the role of print technology in Anderson's theory as making it "possible for enormous numbers of people to know of one another indirectly, for the printing press
obecome the middleman to the imagination of the community." Kemper also stated that for Anderson the "very existence and regularity of newspapers caused readers, and thus citizens-in-the-making, to imagine themselves residing in a common time and place, united by a print language with a league of anonymous equals."
Therefore, for Anderson, the rise of print technology was essential to create the "deep horizontal comradeship" that despite its socially constructed origins, was also genuine and deep-seated, explaining why nationalism can drive people to fight, die, and kill for their countries.
Multi-ethnic empires
Anderson also studied how the 19th century European dynasties that represented retention of power over huge polyglot domains, underwent naturalization at the same time as they developed programs of official nationalism in a process that he called the "willed merger of nation and dynastic empire". Anderson considered the empire as solely a pre-modern, "dynastic realm" and focused his attention on the official nationalism in multiethnic empires (e.g. the Russian
Official Nationality), programs that he described as "reactionary, secondary modelling". Whereas previously the legitimacy of European dynasties had nothing to do with nationalness, Anderson argued that after the dissolution of the
Austro-Hungarian
Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...
,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
,
Ottoman, and
Russian
Russian(s) may refer to:
*Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*A citizen of Russia
*Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages
*''The Russians'', a b ...
empires in the aftermath of
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, the nation-state superseded the empire as the norm in international affairs, as demonstrated by how delegates from the imperial powers in the post-war
League of Nations
The League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), Paris Peace ...
were careful to present themselves as national delegates instead of imperial ones.
Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Benedict Anderson,
OCLC
OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...
/
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...
encompasses roughly 100+ works in 400+ publications in 20+ languages and 7,500+ library holdings.
* ''Some Aspects of Indonesian Politics under the Japanese Occupation: 1944–1945'' (1961)
* ''Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese'' (1965)
* ''Java in a Time of Revolution; Occupation and Resistance, 1944–1946'' (1972)
* With Ruth T. McVey.
* ''Withdrawal Symptoms: Social and Cultural Aspects of the October 6 Coup'' (1976)
* ''Religion and Social Ethos in Indonesia'' (1977)
* ''Interpreting Indonesian Politics: Thirteen Contributions to the Debate'' (1982)
* ''
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism'' (1983; second edition, 1991 and later printings)
*''In the Mirror: Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era'' (1985)
* ''Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia'' (1990)
* ''The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World'' (1998)
*
* ''Violence and the State in Suharto's Indonesia'' (2001)
* ''Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism: Is there a difference that matters?'' (2001)
* ''Debating World Literature'' (2004)
*
* ''
Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination'' (2005)
* ''Why Counting Counts: A Study of Forms of Consciousness and Problems of Language in Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo'' (2008)
*''The Fate of Rural Hell: Asceticism and Desire in Buddhist Thailand'' (2012)
* ''A Life Beyond Boundaries: A Memoir'' (2016)
Honors
*
Association for Asian Studies
The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is a scholarly, non-political and non-profit professional association focusing on Asia and the study of Asia. It is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States.
The Association provides members with an Ann ...
(AAS), 1998 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies.
*
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
, 1982 for work in political science.
*
Fukuoka Prize, 2000 Academic Prize.
*Membership to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
*
Social Science Research Council
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is a US-based, independent, international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and related disciplines. Established in Manhattan in 1923, it maintains a headqua ...
, 2011 Albert O. Hirschman Prize.
*
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, Economic and Social Science Prize at the 1st Annual
Asia Cosmopolitan Awards.
Notes
References
*
*
; Interviews
"When the virtual becomes real" National Institute for Research Advancement The National Institute for Research Advancement (NIRA; ) is a Japanese independent policy research think tank based in Tokyo founded in 1974 under the ''National Institute for Research Advancement Act''. It is funded through an endowment comprisin ...
(Japan), 1996
"I like nationalism's utopian elements,"University of Oslo
The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...
(Norway), 2005
"Interview with Benedict Anderson"Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture Spring 2009. Retrieved 8 January 2016.
External links
Life
Books
An excerpt from ''Imagined Communities'' (1983).
* about "Imagined communities" and Indonesia (In mijn vaders huis, 1994). While the preamble is in Dutch, the interview is in English with Dutch subtitles.
Interviews with Anderson
A Talk with Benedict Anderson, (Spring 1996).
Interview with Benedict Anderson by William Seaman ''ZMagazine'' (December 1996).
Interview with Anderson ''Invisible Culture'' (Spring 2009).
Articles by Anderson
by Anderson, (May 11, 2001).
Anderson on Anti-Americanisms, a book review in ''BOOKFORUM'', (December/January 2005).
In the NLR
"Petruk Dadi Ratu"New Left Review article on Indonesia G30S Coup D'État, (May–June 2010).
Archive of articles written by Anderson in the ''New Left Review'' (1986-2016) (requires subscription from some articles).
University of Oslo (2005).
Reviews
Review of ''Under Three Flags'' by Meredith L. Weiss (February 13, 2006).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anderson, Benedict
1936 births
2015 deaths
American political scientists
Cornell University alumni
Cornell University faculty
Scholars of nationalism
Javanists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
People educated at Eton College
Irish emigrants to the United States
People from Kunming
Historians of Southeast Asia
Writers from Yunnan
Educators from Yunnan
Members of the American Philosophical Society