(Re)Collecting: Southeast Asia at the Johnson Museum

As a scholar and professor in the Government Department, Ben Anderson is known for his interdisciplinary approach to his scholarship. Ben came to Ithaca as a graduate student under George McT. Kahin in the early 1960s and began teaching in the Government Department in 1967. According his colleagues and students in the Government Department, Ben was very much Kahin’s student as he combined his scholarship with political engagement. With Ruth McVey, Ben wrote the Cornell Paper that chronicles the massacre of alleged communist party after the military coup in October 1965 and refutes the official state narrative. Due to this, Ben was subsequently banned from entering Indonesia in 1972. The ban was finally lifted after the collapse of the New Order regime under President Soeharto in 1998. Ben’s interdisciplinary perspectives and methods also informed one of his most influential books, Imagined Communities that he published in 1983.

Despites his focus on politics, Ben also shared Claire Holt’s passion for arts and culture and often incorporated or used them as a way to look at and analyze power relations in his works. When Ben came to Indonesia for his fieldwork in 1962, Claire Holt sent him with letters of introduction and suggested that Ben start with the Balinese artist, Ida Bagus Made. From Ida Bagus Made, Ben received the Dalem mask as they parted ways at the end of Ben’s fieldwork in Indonesia.