The City in Transgression explores the unacknowledged, neglected, and ill-defined spaces of the built environment and their transition into places of resistance and residence by refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, the homeless, and the disadvantaged. The book draws on urban and spatial theory, socio-economic factors, public space, and architecture to offer an intimate look at how urban sites and infrastructure are transformed into spaces for occupation. Anderson proposes that the varied innovations and adaptations of urban spaces enacted by such marginalized figures - for whom there are no other options - herald a radical new spatial programming of cities. The book explores cities and sites such as Mexico City and London, the Mexican/US border, the Calais Jungle, and Palestinian camps in Beirut and utilizes concepts associated with 'mobility' - such as anarchy, vagrancy, and transgression - alongside photography, 3D modelling, and 2D imagery. From this constellation of materials and analysis, a radical spatial picture of the city in transgression emerges. By focusing on the 'underside of urbanism', The City in Transgression reveals the potential for new spatial networks that can cultivate the potential for self-organization so as to counter the existing dominant urban models of capital and property and to confront some of the major issues facing cities amid an age of global human mobility. This book is valuable reading for those interested in architectural theory, modern history, human geography and mobility, climate change, urban design, and transformation.

Monumental in scale and epic in development, cities have become the most visible and significant symbol of human progress. The geography on and around which they are constructed, however, has come to be viewed merely in terms of its resources and is often laid to waste once its assets have been stripped. The City in Geography is an urban exploration through this phenomenon, from settlement to city through physical geography, which reveals an incremental progression of removing terrain, topography and geography from the built environment, ushering in and advancing global destruction and instability. This book explains how the fall of geography in relationship to human survival has come through the loss of contact between urban dwellers and physical terrain, and details the radical rethinking required to remedy the separations between the city, its inhabitants and the landscape upon which it was built.

The City in Transgression explores the unacknowledged, neglected, and ill-defined spaces of the built environment and their transition into places of resistance and residence by refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, the homeless, and the disadvantaged. The book draws on urban and spatial theory, socio-economic factors, public space, and architecture to offer an intimate look at how urban sites and infrastructure are transformed into spaces for occupation. Anderson proposes that the varied innovations and adaptations of urban spaces enacted by such marginalized figures - for whom there are no other options - herald a radical new spatial programming of cities. The book explores cities and sites such as Mexico City and London, the Mexican/US border, the Calais Jungle, and Palestinian camps in Beirut and utilizes concepts associated with 'mobility' - such as anarchy, vagrancy, and transgression - alongside photography, 3D modelling, and 2D imagery. From this constellation of materials and analysis, a radical spatial picture of the city in transgression emerges. By focusing on the 'underside of urbanism', The City in Transgression reveals the potential for new spatial networks that can cultivate the potential for self-organization so as to counter the existing dominant urban models of capital and property and to confront some of the major issues facing cities amid an age of global human mobility. This book is valuable reading for those interested in architectural theory, modern history, human geography and mobility, climate change, urban design, and transformation.

Cities are built over the remnants of their past buried beneath their present. We build on what has been built before, whether over foundations formalising previous permanency or over the temporal occupations of ground. But what happens when you shift a city - when you dislodge its occupation of ground towards a new ground, bury it and forget it? Focusing on Berlin's destruction during World War II and its reconstruction after the end of the war, this book offers a rethinking of how the practices of destruction and burial combine to reform the city through geography and how burying a city is intricately tied to forgetting destruction, ruination and trauma. Created from 25 million cubic meters of rubble produced during World War II, Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) is the exemplar of the destroyed city. Its critical journey is chronicled in combination with Berlin's seven other rubble hills, and their connections to constructing forgetting through burial. Furthermore, the book investigates Berlin's sublime relation to Albert Speer's urban vision to rival the ancient cities of Rome and Athens through their now shared geographies of seven hills. Finally, there is a central focus on the role of the citizens who cleared Berlin's streets of rubble, and the subsequent human relationships between people and ruins. This book is valuable reading for those interested in Architectural Theory, Urban Geography, Modern History and Urban Design.

Monumental in scale and epic in development, cities have become the most visible and significant symbol of human progress. The geography on and around which they are constructed, however, has come to be viewed merely in terms of its resources and is often laid to waste once its assets have been stripped. The City in Geography is an urban exploration through this phenomenon, from settlement to city through physical geography, which reveals an incremental progression of removing terrain, topography and geography from the built environment, ushering in and advancing global destruction and instability. This book explains how the fall of geography in relationship to human survival has come through the loss of contact between urban dwellers and physical terrain, and details the radical rethinking required to remedy the separations between the city, its inhabitants and the landscape upon which it was built.

Cities are built over the remnants of their past buried beneath their present. We build on what has been built before, whether over foundations formalising previous permanency or over the temporal occupations of ground. But what happens when you shift a city - when you dislodge its occupation of ground towards a new ground, bury it and forget it? Focusing on Berlin's destruction during World War II and its reconstruction after the end of the war, this book offers a rethinking of how the practices of destruction and burial combine to reform the city through geography and how burying a city is intricately tied to forgetting destruction, ruination and trauma. Created from 25 million cubic meters of rubble produced during World War II, Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) is the exemplar of the destroyed city. Its critical journey is chronicled in combination with Berlin's seven other rubble hills, and their connections to constructing forgetting through burial. Furthermore, the book investigates Berlin's sublime relation to Albert Speer's urban vision to rival the ancient cities of Rome and Athens through their now shared geographies of seven hills. Finally, there is a central focus on the role of the citizens who cleared Berlin's streets of rubble, and the subsequent human relationships between people and ruins. This book is valuable reading for those interested in Architectural Theory, Urban Geography, Modern History and Urban Design.

Why does it matter that nations should care for their archives, and that they should develop a sense of shared identity? And why should these processes take place in the public domain? How can nations possibly speak about a shared sense of identity in pluralistic societies where individuals and groups have multiple identities? And how can such conversations be given relevance in public discussions of reconciliation and development in South Africa? These are the issues that the Public Conversations lecture series - an initiative of the Constitution of Public Intellectual Life Project at Wits University - proceeded from in 2006. Five years later, cross currents in contemporary South Africa have made the resumption of a public debate to clarify the meanings of identity and citizenship even more imperative, and an understanding of 'archive' even more urgent. The 2006 lectures were subsequently collected, resulting in this volume which takes its title from Weber's point, elaborated on in the chapter by Benedict Anderson, that the future asks us to be worthy ancestors to the yet unborn. The book, as did the lecture series, aims to reach a broad and informed reading public because the topic is still of pressing interest in contemporary public discourse. In a changed (and, some might say, degraded) environment of public dialogue, the editor hopes to inspire a re-thinking of the very essence of what it means to be a citizen of South Africa. Becoming Worthy Ancestors aims to make accessible the theoretically informed, sometimes highly academic work of its various contributors. With chapters from high profile international and local contributors, it will be of interest to South African and international audiences. Editing for publication has further enhanced the accessibility of each speaker's thinking without forfeiting any of its complexity, and the addition of an introductory chapter by the editor contributes to the coherence of the volume. While the target audience is the broad public, the book is based on a core of academic thinking and research.

What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.

In 1975, when political scientist Benedict Anderson reached Wat Phai Rong Wua, a massive temple complex in rural Thailand conceived by Buddhist monk Luang Phor Khom, he felt he had wandered into a demented Disneyland. One of the world's most bizarre tourist attractions, Wat Phai Rong Wua was designed as a cautionary museum of sorts; its gruesome statues depict violent and torturous scenes that showcase what hell may be like. Over the next few decades, Anderson, who is best known for his work, Imagined Communities, found himself transfixed by this unusual amalgamation of objects, returning several times to see attractions like the largest metal-cast Buddha figure in the world and the Palace of a Hundred Spires. The concrete statuaries and perverse art in Luang Phor's personal museum of hell included, \u201cside by side, an upright human skeleton in a glass cabinet and a life-size replica of Michelangelo's gigantic nude David, wearing fashionable red underpants from the top of which poked part of a swollen, un-Florentine penis,\u201d alongside dozens of statues of evildoers being ferociously punished in their afterlife. In The Fate of Rural Hell, Anderson unravels the intrigue of this strange setting, endeavoring to discover what compels so many Thai visitors to travel to this popular spectacle and what order, if any, inspired its creation. At the same time, he notes in Wat Phai Rong Wua the unexpected effects of the gradual advance of capitalism into the far reaches of rural Asia. Both a one-of-a-kind travelogue and a penetrating look at the community that sustains it, The Fate of Rural Hell is sure to intrigue and inspire conversation as much as Wat Phai Rong Wua itself.

New in paperback

Human rights lawyer Yap Thiam Hien's (1913-1989) ethnic Chinese roots spurred him to become a courageous defender of the rights of all oppressed Indonesians. In "No Concessions," Yap's fascinating story brings modern Indonesian history to life.

Daniel S. Lev (1933D2006) was professor of political science at the University of Washington.

"Both Lev and Yap were utterly committed to fundamental reform of Indonesia's legal, political, and moral life. Yap, so reserved in many ways, opened his private thoughts to Dan." --Benedict Anderson, from the Foreword

"This book will inform and inspire a new generation." --Melissa Crouch, "Australian Journal of Asian Law ""

China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or "minzu, " as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project ("minzu shibie"). Thomas S. Mullaney draws on recently declassified material and extensive oral histories to describe how the communist government, in power less than a decade, launched this process in ethnically diverse Yunnan. Mullaney shows how the government drew on Republican-era scholarship for conceptual and methodological inspiration as it developed a strategy for identifying "minzu" and how non-Party-member Chinese ethnologists produced a "scientific" survey that would become the basis for a policy on nationalities.

In nearly two decades since Samuel P. Huntington proposed his influential and troubling 'clash of civilizations' thesis, nationalism has only continued to puzzle and frustrate commentators, policy analysts and political theorists. No consensus exists concerning its identity, genesis or future. Are we reverting to the petty nationalisms of the nineteenth century or evolving into a globalized, supranational world? Has the nation-state outlived its usefulness and exhausted its progressive and emancipatory role? Opening with powerful statements by Lord Acton and Otto Bauer - the classic liberal and socialist positions, respectively - Mapping the Nation presents a wealth of thought on this issue: the debate between Ernest Gellner and Miroslav Hroch; Gopal Balakrishnan's critique of Benedict Anderson's seminal Imagined Communities; Partha Chatterjee on the limitations of the Enlightenment approach to nationhood; and contributions from Michael Mann, Eric Hobsbawm, Tom Nairn, and Jurgen Habermas.

In this mystery thriller set at the end of World War II, American Gar Stanley returns to his native Philippines to help his childhood sweetheart locate her missing husband in the wake of a Japanese ambush. With Clem's ring as his only clue, Gar moves from the nightclubs of Manila to the mountains of Baguio, from mansions to hovels, bordellos to churches. He pursues and is pursued by bankers, matrons, hoboes, warriors, and thugs. Gar quickly realizes that no one is who they seem in this war-ravaged country. He must move quickly to stay ahead of the deadly conspirators before they silence his friend.

Bulosan's purposely mysterious authorship is illuminated in the thought-provoking introduction by Caroline S. Hau and Benedict Anderson. The short story "The Filipino Houseboy," also included in this volume, helps to establish Bulosan as the author of "All the Conspirators. "

Carlos Bulosan, author of "America Is in the Heart," was a passionate spokesperson for the more than 60,000 Filipinos who migrated to the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century; he died in Seattle in 1954.

"'Come, let us build a Third Kingdom, and in this Third Reich, hey, sisters, you will live happily; hey, brothers, you will live happily; hey, kids, you will live happily; hey, you German patriots, you will see Germany sitting enthroned above all the peoples in this world.' How clever Hitler was, brothers and sisters, in depicting these ideals!" Thus the late President Sukarno of Indonesia, an anti-colonial leader, in a public speech while accepting an honorary degree, and viewing Europe and its history through an inverted telescope, as Europeans often regard other parts of the globe. Strange shifts in perspective can take place when Berlin is viewed from Jakarta, or when complex histories of colonial domination strand what counts as the founding work of a national culture in a language its people no longer read. The "spectre of comparisons" arises as nations stir into self awareness, matching themselves against others, and becoming whole through the exercise of the imagination. In this series of profound and eloquent essays, Benedict Anderson, best known for his classic book on nationalism, Imagined Communities, explores these effects as they work their way through politics and culture. Spanning broad accounts of the development of nationalism and identity, and detailed studies of Southeast Asia, the book includes pieces on East Timor, where every Indonesian attempt to suppress national feeling has had the opposite effect; on the Philippines, where it is said that some horses eat better than stable-hands; on Thailand, where so much money can be made in elected posts that candidates regularly kill to get them; on the Filipino nationalist and novelist Jose Rizal for whom "we mortals are like turtles-we have value and are classified according to our shells;" and a remarkable essay on Mario Vargas Llosa, detailing the fate of indigenous minorities at the hands of the modern state. While The Spectre of Comparisons is an indispensable resource for those interested in Southeast Asia, Anderson also takes up the large issues of the universal grammars of nationalism and ethnicity, the peculiarity of nationalist imagery as replicas without originals, and the mutations of nationalism in an age of mass global migrations and instant electronic communications.

China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or "minzu, " as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project ("minzu shibie"). Thomas S. Mullaney draws on recently declassified material and extensive oral histories to describe how the communist government, in power less than a decade, launched this process in ethnically diverse Yunnan. Mullaney shows how the government drew on Republican-era scholarship for conceptual and methodological inspiration as it developed a strategy for identifying "minzu" and how non-Party-member Chinese ethnologists produced a scientific survey that would become the basis for a policy on nationalities.

The compelling personal story of human rights lawyer Yap Thiam Hien (1913-1989) brings decades of modern Indonesian history to life. No Concessions is a penetrating analysis of the trajectory of the Chinese minority in Indonesia over close to a century and the remarkable making of a civic leader. Without abandoning his ethnic roots, Yap transcended them by becoming a courageous legal defender of civil and human rights of all oppressed Indonesians, including former communists and radical Muslims.

The exchange of ideas makes history as surely as the exchange of gunfire. The Age of Globalization (previously published as Under Three Flags) is an account of the unlikely connections that made up late nineteenth-century politics and culture. In particular, Benedict Anderson examines the links between militant anarchists in Europe and the Americas and the anti-imperialist uprisings in Cuba, China, and Japan. Told through the complex intellectual interactions of two great Filipino writers-the political novelist Jose Rizal and the pioneering folklorist Isabelo de los Reyes-The Age of Globalization is a brilliantly original work on how global networks shaped the nationalist movements of the time.

Benedict Anderson was one of the most respected thinkers on the history of nationalism. His acclaimed Imagined Communities is one of the most cited works in social science. In A Life Beyond Boundaries, Anderson recounts a life spent open to the world. Born in China, he spent his childhood in California and Ireland, was educated in England and finally found a home at Cornell University, where he immersed himself in the growing field of Southeast Asian studies. Here he reveals the joys of learning languages, the importance of fieldwork, the pleasures of translation, the influence of the New Left on global thinking, the satisfactions of teaching, and a love of world literature. He discusses the ideas and inspirations behind his best-known works.