<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2189" src="http://asiacentre.co.th/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-12-18-at-11.43.39-am.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015-12-18 at 11.43.39 am" width="777" height="724" />

<strong>Debating Imagined Communities: A Tribute To Benedict Anderson</strong>

Benedict Anderson’s seminal work “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism” revolutionised our understanding of nationalism. Anderson saw the nationalism as a force that was integrative and imaginative; allowing us to build camaraderie with strangers. While other academics took a negative view of the subject, linking nationalism with fear, notions of ‘the other’ and racism; Anderson postulated that nationalism was also a positive force for integration and solidarity.

In a globalised world that is struggling to grapple with migration, climate change, economic integration, refugees and displaced populations just to n<span class="text_exposed_show">ame a few, this debate on nationalism and the notion of ‘imagined communities’ remains relevant today 32 years after its publication.</span>

We invite you to join us for a debate and discussion on Imagined Communities in remembrance of Benedict Anderson.

<span class="text_exposed_show">
<strong>About Benedict Anderson</strong></span>

<span class="text_exposed_show"><strong><img class="alignright wp-image-2190" src="http://asiacentre.co.th/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Anderson_B.jpg" alt="Anderson_B" width="199" height="263" /></strong>Benedict Anderson (26 August 1936 – 13 December 2015) was best known for his 1983 book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Anderson was Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government and Asian Studies at Cornell University and a renowned historian and political scientist. As scholar of Southeast Asia, his unflinching account of the Indonesian anti-Communist purges of 1965-66, which saw over 500,000, massacred, helped undermine the official whitewashed narrative and consequently saw Anderson banned from Indonesia until 1998. Anderson was also a polyglot who contributed extensively to scholarship on the relationship between language and power in the region, and was fluent in Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese, Thai and Tagalog. Anderson passed away in Malang, Indonesia on 13 December 2015 at the age of 79.
</span>

<span class="text_exposed_show">
<strong>Imagined Communities</strong></span><span class="text_exposed_show">
Anderson coined the term ‘imagined communities’ positing that that the nation was an imagined political community that arose as a result of the interplay between capitalism and the rise of the printing press. Anderson argued that within the nation ‘horizontal comradeship’ or a sense of fraternity was shared by people who did not know each other and who shared the same notion of belonging to a nation despite the existence of inequalities and oppression between groups. He wrote, “Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.”</span>

&nbsp;

RSVP at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/158076804551470/">Debating Imagined Communities: A Tribute To Benedict Anderson Facebook Page</a>