Re-Imagined Communities: Benedict Anderson in the Twenty-First Century
Date: 04 July 2012, 10:00 - 16:30
The School is pleased to announce this one-day symposium.
Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities forged a new path through the field of studies of nationalism when it was published in 1983. It has remained a seminal text, translated into twenty-nine languages worldwide.
This interdisciplinary one-day symposium at Cardiff University, hosted by the Representing Migration and Mobility network (RMM), will explore how and why Anderson’s text continues to provide an essential tool for exploring concepts of community, identity and belonging despite massive shifts in political, cultural and theoretical landscapes in the last 30 years.
Papers will explore a wide range of cultural and socio-political approaches to Anderson, and will address issues such as:
- The impact of digital and visual media in shaping political and cultural consciousness, beyond Anderson’s focus on print capitalism
- The construction of religious and imagined identities in the wake of 9/11, in comparison with the pan-national religious identities that Anderson highlights as preceding national imagined communities
- The impact of the ‘war on terror’ as shifting away from national identities, in contrast to Anderson’s reading of the First and Second World Wars as helping to shape national consciousness
- The growth of regional identities and linguistic identities at the expense of national identities
- The impact of increasing European integration on national identities in Europe
- The place of diaspora and migration in imagining communities of belonging
- The changing shape of censuses and the mapping of communities
- The emergence of new ‘cultural colonialisms’
- Non-national political revolutions and their imagined communities
For all conference enquiries and booking, please contact
