‘IC is not my book anymore.’With these words, taken from the epilogue of the 2006 revised edition of Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson closed his keynote lecture delivered at the symposium celebrating his book’s 30th anniversary, at the University of Amsterdam on 12 September 2013. We, the organizers of that symposium and the editors of this volume, took Anderson's words as a cue to explore his conceptual framework for identity formation in the context of the historical academic discipline.

Over the decades Imagined Communities has been a source of inspiration for scholars across the globe. Indeed, the ideas presented in Anderson’s book have been applied to a bewildering variety of communities: in past, present and future, and on a local, national and transnational level. On the one hand, this scholarship is an impressive testimony to the intellectual vitality of the conceptual framework of imagined communities. On the other, however, it might somewhat obfuscate the concept's analytical power. The book's cogency is further complicated by the fact that both regimes and insurgents have used the conceptual framework underlying the imagined community to mobilize support for their political goals.

Anderson himself was keenly aware of this problem, as is illustrated by a joke he shared with us in our email correspondence about feeling part of a global community of Benedicti: ‘Idly I checked out the tenure of the Papal Benedicts, quite amusing: Benedict I – 4 years; Ben II – l year; Ben III, less than one year; Ben IV – 3 years; Ben V – l year; Ben VI – l year; Ben VII – 9 years; Ben VIII – less than one year; Ben IX – 13 years; Ben X – l year; Ben XI – 2 years; Ben XII – 8 years; Ben XIII – 10 years (antipope?); Ben XIII True Pope – 6 years; Ben XIV – 18 years; Ben XV – 8 years, and Ben XVI – 8 years. 95 years in all, average tenure 6 years poor wretches. Ciao, Ben.’

Debating Imagined Communities

In his memoir A Life Beyond Boundaries (which appeared posthumously in 2016), Anderson reflected on the vicissitudes of Imagined Communities within the wider academic debate, including both its conception and dissemination.