A new collection from the author of the celebrated Imagined Communities

While Benedict Anderson is best known for his classic book on nationalism, Imagined Communities, many of his most telling and incisive interventions have been made in his essays. Those collected in this new book span a range of subjects: from Aquino's Philippines, where the horses on the haciendas ate better than the stable-hands, to political assassination in contemporary Thailand, where government posts have become so lucrative that to gain them candidates will kill their rivals. In these writing, the subtle imbrication of politics, national imaginings, bureaucracy, modernization and its agents (particularly print culture) is brought out in all its complexity and richness.

“The spectre of comparisons” was a phrase used by the celebrated Filipino nationalist and novelist José Rizal (1861–96), whose work and fate in the national imagination are discussed in these pages. In his finely wrought observations on Southeast Asian societies, Anderson raises deep questions concerning this spectre, about how, for instance, Manila is changed when it can no longer be seen through a comparison with European capitals, and how, more broadly, nationalism is produce by the process of increasing global connection.

The Spectre of Comparison is an indispensable resource for those interested in Southeast Asia. But it also contains important theoretical and historical considerations about nationalism, national literature and memory, modernization, and the prospects for the Left in what Anderson dubs “The New World Disorder.”

Praise for Benedict Anderson's seminal best-seller Imagined Communities:

“Fascinating ... Anderson's knowledge of a vast range of relevant historical literature is most impressive; his presentation both masterly and lucid.” — Edmund Leach, New Statesman

“Sparkling, readable, densely packed.” — Peter Worsley, Guardian

“A brilliant book.” — Neal Ascherson, Observer

Benedict Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. He is author of Java in a Time of Revolution, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia and Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. His Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination is also available from Verso.

288 pages

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 85894 184 6
£13 / US$20 / CAN$25

Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 813 5
£40 / US$60 / CAN$80