A much more nuanced modernist take on Nationalism

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	• Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New Edition) Benedict Anderson Verso, 2006 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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A must-read

No need to comment. This is one of the classics and a must for any student of nationalism. Even if you don't agree with Anderson's account on the origins of nationalism, you still have to read it.

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Insightful but dry.

This book is something of a classic of sociology but not a light read. Very briefly, the thesis of "Imagined Communities" is that political nations are the creation of modern communication networks (definition of modern: post-Gutenberg). When one stops to think about it, this insight seems intuitive. After all, how can people relate to other people unless there is first communication among them? In a world in which most people are illiterate and never travel beyond their villages, of course they would not think of themselves as belonging to a great nation of people since they would most likely be unable to imagine such a concept. With widespread literacy, the possibility exists of having communities of people who are not in direct contact with one another. Benedict Anderson takes this insight about nationhood and discusses how these imagined communities of people not directly in contact with one another may be formed. It is not surprising that the nations of Europe have formed around linguistic communities since having a common language facilitates communication. However, a sense of alienation from a ruling class may also facilitate a sense of nationhood, as it did in the Americas in the late 18th century when our founding fathers (and those of Latin America)felt themselves excluded from the political lives of their mother countries. Having the means to communicate throughout their colonies made possible the recognition of common feelings among these colonials. Futhermore, a sense of nationhood may be fostered by a state that creates through its educational system and its media a sense of shared experiences (eg, national holidays, national heroes, and national myths). Prof Anderson also describes how the predecessors of today's European nations "created" their national languages as well as their myths. This is a very sketchy overview of what I believe to be the major points of this book. "Imagined Communities" is not a book which flows easily. I believe that Prof Anderson might have made life a bit easier for his readers had he been able to express himself a bit more clearly. For example, he is describing how a sense of history is essential for the concept of nationhood. In order to think of oneself as belonging to a nation, one must think of oneself as being related to others who share only the circumstance of living at the same time. Furthermore, it is necessary to imagine a different relationship with those who have gone before. Here is a passage describing this idea: "What has come to take the place of the medieval conception of simultaneity-along-time is, to borrow again from Benjamin, an idea of 'homogeneous, empty time,' in which simultaneity is, as it were, transverse, cross-time, marked not be prefiguring and fulfillment, but by temporal coincidence and measured by clock and calendar." I think that this should give some idea of the flavor of Prof Anderson's prose. Is it all worth the effort? I think that anyone who is trying to understand the problems created by 20th (and 21st) century nationalism will not find much help here. A better book for understanding the lunatic-type nationalism which causes so much trouble would be Eric Hoffer's classic book, "The True Believer." However, as a primer for understanding how the modern nation came to exist in the first place, this book does offer some thought-provoking ideas.

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A short-lived idea?

The thesis: "Nations" are imagined communities. They don't exist per se, as we will never know the overwhelming majority of our fellow compatriots. Nations don't respect ethnicity, religion, or preferences. They are not entities formed out of voluntary association. They are not optional at birth. They are political concoctions, perceived as limited and sovereign. Independently of the existing inequalities, they are conceived as horizontal fraternities. This book traces the development of this very recent and peculiar concept, unknown during the greater part of human history. It sprung from the vanishing of two preceding principles of organization as such: religion and dynasty. It owes its existence to the capitalist press's expansion, and its necessity of a uniform and general language, as well as to the art of the novel and its expression of the simultaneity of time for different local communities. Capitalism and its expansive force were central to the creation of Nationalism which, as an idea, was born in America, created by Europeans born already there, but without a history and in need of creating identities that would permit them keep power from the indigenous masses and the slaves or former slaves. In Europe, by contrast, Nationalism was basically linguistic, but never before had language been strictly identified with territory or race. Truly national languages were created by the press, and the threat of dissolution of empires created Official Nationalism as a defense mechanism of dynastic powers. In the European colonies, the census, maps, and museums created by the metropolises awakened (invented) in the various subjugated countries a national "conscience", which created nations there where the concept had no meaning, with the disastrous results we are witnesses to every day, mostly in Africa and the Middle East. There was no such thing as "Israel" and "Palestine". "Irak", "Kuwait", "Saudi Arabia" and many other "nations" are in reality nothing but partitions of former colonial territories. Especially in Africa, tribes were divided and ancestral enemies piled together without their consent into artificial nations.

This is an excellent book, well written and documented, with abundant examples and original and convincing theses. In the end, "nations" are nothing but inventions by politicians eager to keep their power, and it is likely that the model will change as communications, travel, immigration, supranational entities, and other developments affect the way communities organize around the globe. It will be (it is being) an exciting and interesting phenomenon to watch.

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A much more nuanced modernist take on Nationalism

While ostensibly a modernist, Anderson's "Imagined Communities" differs from his peers as he, like the primordialists before him, believes that language is central to creating a sense of community or nationalism, although language was not necessarily a decisive factor or the most essential. For Anderson, nationalism is an anomaly which is not accounted for by either Marxian or liberal theory. Instead, nationalism is bound up in mortality, religion, language and culture. While acknowledging the centrality of language, Anderson also proposes there are three sequential causes resulting in the rise of nationalism: "print-capitalism," the rise of new elites (particularly in the Americas), and the bureaucratic "weld" or grafting of nations onto empires (particularly as with Great Britain, Russia, and France). The nationalism that flourished in the Americas was marked by its hostility of their colonial elites towards the authority centers or metropoles in Europe. Nationalism in the decolonization era was marked by the same hostility towards the European metropoles, but emphasized the use of indigenous languages and class consciousness by nationalists to create communities where none had existed before, such as in Indonesia, or to shore up diverse multi-ethnic entities as in China or Vietnam. Anderson differs most markedly from other modernists, such as Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm, by countering that nationalism is not so much about ideology as it is an anthropological phenomenon, hence Anderson's use of the term "Imagined Communities." While nationalism to Anderson is the product of modernity, it is an inclusive rather than exclusive phenomenon, driven by ever-changing factors which varied from region to region, and from age to age, focusing on what diverse peoples have in common. Anderson's approach is that nationalism draws extensively upon the past as a means of creating new social structures.

As a result, Anderson's argument is closer to more recent scholarship by other modernists such as David A. Bell, Linda Colley, and Lisa Cody, who argue nationalism predated the 19th Century by a hundred years or more.
As opposed to Gellner and Hobsbawm, who advance the theory that nationalism is a more recent phenomenon dating to the 19th Century and driven by ideology, capitalism and industrialization, Anderson and the others advocate that the modern age is much older and that language and other cultural factors played a much larger role in the origins and evolution of nationalism. Countered against the arguments made the more recent ethnosymbolist scholarship by Patrick Geary and Anthony D. Smith, Anderson makes an interesting and compelling argument that is less rigid than earlier modernists like Gellner and Hobsbawm. If anyone has a chance of redeeming modernist interpretations regarding nationalism then Anderson certainly is among those with a chance of making the case.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

The definitive book on nationalism?over a quarter of a million copies sold worldwide. Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's brilliant book on nationalism, forged a new field of study when it first appeared in 1983. Since then it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is widely considered the most important book on the subject. In this greatly anticipated revised edition, Anderson updates and elaborates on the core question: what makes people live, die and kill in the name of nations? He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was adopted by popular movements in Europe, by imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa, and explores the way communities were created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism and printing, and the birth of vernacular languages-of-state. Anderson revisits these fundamental ideas, showing how their relevance has been tested by the events of the past two decades. .

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