Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities is an intriguing attempt at explanation of the phenomenon of nations and nationalism. Anderson's approach centers around the socio-cultural aspects of the explanation. For him a nation is by definition an imagined community, that is a community, the members of which are aware of each other's existence but, even for a lifetime do not meet or come to know a substantial number of the rest of the members of that community. Yet through a number of media they acquire a sense of belonging to this larger group. This definition which can be derived from the text leads Anderson to explore the origins of this sense of commonality. In his view three major factors have contributed to the emergence of these communities. One is the fragmentation of the previously single religious community. The Reformation, which led to the emergence of new Christian denominations constituted an assault on the Catholic Church and thus an assault on the principle of universality that the Church was promoting. Also, the geographical discoveries broadened the universe of the man of the Middle Ages to whom, previously, that same universe had been confined to the realm of Christendom. As universality was particularized and as the world suddenly broadened this for the first time gave the people the opportunity to compare and contrast their lives to those of others, very unlike themselves. The world and life had become more complex and the straightforward and, what is more important, traditional explanations of the church of life and death and suffering no longer sufficed. A comparison with Karl Deutsch (1966) shows certain similarities in this understanding of the origins of nations and nationalism. The process of the church losing its authority as the source of all the answers and thus the emergence of the sense of insecurity as a result of the loss of the secure firm ground of easy and unquestionable answers is one of Deutsch's examples of the reasons leading to "social mobilization". Anderson argues that one of the major components of the environment in which nations emerged was language. The decline of the usage of the old universal languages and the standardization of certain versions of each vernacular language (with the appearance of print-capitalism) led to the emergence of larger groups with shared identity on the basis of common language. So, Anderson argues that with the appearance of the bourgeois class (which alone had both the means - the market - and the incentive - profit - to spread printed books to the point of saturating with them the literate strata of society), a profound change began, a change that would eventually lead to the formation of nations, to the emergence of nationalism. Two more factors in Adnderson's argument could be regarded as central to the origins of nationalism - the decline of dynastic realm and the changing apprehensions of time. The former was important because it called for a new foundation of legitimacy and, in due course of time, nations came to be regarded as providing that foundation. The ruling elites even started at some point to consciously try and shape emerging nations in a certain desired way through the instrument of nationalist ideology. The changing apprehension of time allowed for the first time a look to the past as to history and not as a reflection of the future or realization of the future. It allowed for the first time a look at the future as to an essentially limitless period of time. The present became the calendaric present and not the Biblical "end of time", not the eschatological expectation of the end of the world. This allowed for new opportunities of "manufacturing" commonality, creating a sense of belonging to an established community. History, in the most general sense of the word, became instrumental in this respect - the map, the census and the museum served excellently to create a sense of tradition and continuity that would be convincing enough to create the community in the imagination of the people. Anderson emphasizes the role of the newspapers and, later, the radio in this process of creation. With respect to the nationalism in the former colonies, Anderson introduces the notion of "pilgrimage", meaning the mobility of the members of some key social strata between positions of authority (control). Where the upward (to the higher positions) or the centripetal (to the metropolitan country) mobility was restricted, this created additional conditions to the identification of the affected strata with a community (albeit imagined) distinctly different from that of the colonial state. Anderson introduces here aspects of Karl Deutsch's notions of "assimilation" and "alienation". Anderson's approach is very strongly psychological in orientation. He is discussing the influence of different processes (or events) on the formation of nations primarily in terms of their impact on the individual and from there on the group psychology. His analysis has much to do with apprehensions and perceptions. In that as well as through the points he makes in the text he implies that nations are above all something subjective, imagined. They exist only to the extent that they exist in people's imagination. Thus the sense of belonging to a nation, and the nation itself depend on individual perception rather then on objective factors. Yet the argument, concerning the era before the appearance of the bourgeoisie could be adapted to serve in the new conditions - one is born and brought up to speak a certain language, to have a certain religion (or be an atheist or agnostic), to live in a society that is shaped around certain values, experiences, history (no matter how it is interpreted to serve certain nationalist ideology), a sense of common future. These factors are objective to the single individual. He/she has no choice, especially in the early stages of life, no opportunity to grasp the partiality of these experiences as related to the entire world. For a considerable period of time the individual's immediate surroundings are his only universe and to many people they remain the only universe until the end of their lives. The very fact (which Anderson mentions) that the world today has turned the notion of nation and thus nationality into a universal concept, that people are EXPECTED to be of CERTAIN nationality is an objective factor. The nation then should be considered in terms of its objectiveness as well not only in terms of perc

I was first introduced to this book in a college course that examined the intellectual history of the 'Western' world from the French Revolution onward. Anderson's book serves as a thorough examination of the forces that shaped the nation, and also makes some unique assertions as to nationalism's origins. Some of his supporting examples are rather specialized (e.g. Indonesia), and Anderson tends to quote rather long passages in foreign languages without the benefit of a translation. However, his fantastic observations of the construction of nationalism as an 'Imagined Community' make this text worth a spot in anyone's library.

'Imagined communities' refers to the awareness of nationalism which began to arise among non-European groups at the turn of the century. A southeast Asian specialist, Anderson provides an intellectual discussion of the reasons and implications of nationalism. Fascinating and thought-provoking.