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Imagined Communities: Reflections on the…
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Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (original 1983; edition 1998)

by Benedict Anderson

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3,414283,752 (4.04)19
Nationalism and the nation-state are fairly recent phenomena, dating to the 1500s. How did they come together and how has the idea of nationalism been perpetuated in the modern era? Anderson sees the nation as an imagined political community bound together by such diverse things as common cultural roots, maps, museums, censuses, religion, and political dynasties. The printing press is hence a very critical component to the development of nations. Capitalism and the emergence of imperialism were other important factors that created uniformity through exchange rates, language, education, and a sense of national purpose. Since the end of World War II, all revolutions have been, Anderson argues, national revolutions. ( )
  gregdehler | Jul 4, 2017 |
English (26)  Dutch (1)  Swedish (1)  All languages (28)
Showing 1-25 of 26 (next | show all)
In the spirit of anthropology, I propose to define a nation as an imagined political community—and, as imitated in nature, as a sovereign community at the same time.

In fact, nationalism thinks in terms of historical fatalism, while racism dreams of eternal pollution handed down from time in a never-ending series of disgusting matings—which happened in outside of history.
The roots of the racist dream lie in fact in the ideology of classes, not of nations: especially the rulers' claim to divine mandate and "blue" or "white" blood, and the aristocracy's claim to "education" claims. No wonder that the supposed ancestor of modern racism was not some petty-bourgeois nationalist but Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau. Overall, racism and anti-Semitism do not cross ethnic lines, but emerge within them. In other words, what they want to justify is not so much external wars as internal oppression and domination.
Quoted from Chapter 8: Patriotism and Racism

A nation is an imagined political community.
There are two important historical conditions for this kind of imagination to be possible:
One is the decline of religious communities, dynasties, and oracle-style concepts of time, leading people to imagine nations as a "secular, horizontal, and horizontal" community, and a new concept of time—"homogeneous, empty, The "view of time. Moreover, the emergence of newspapers and novels also provided technical means for the promotion of the concept of nation, that is to say, the concept of nation was first imagined through words.
The second is the need for "the coincidence of capitalism, printing technology, and the diversity of human language destiny." Latin, as the language used by religion, gradually declined with the decline of religious status, followed by the rise of dialect printing language, and printing dialect became popular with the writing carrier, which led to the formation of special groups of people using the same dialect. Cognitive community, this is the prototype of "nation".
Arguments from imagined communities

The coincidence of capitalism, printing technology, and the multiplicity of human language fate makes a new form of imagined community possible, and from its basic form, this new community is actually a precursor to the appearance of the modern nation. The stage is set.

The very concept of a newspaper implicitly implies that even "world events" are refracted into the particular imagination of a dialect readership; How important is the concept of simultaneity to an imagined community
  Maristot | Jun 4, 2023 |

Anderson műve a nacionalizmuskutatás egyik alapszövege, igazi kultszakkönyv. Pedig hát ránézel, és milyen kis csoffadt (nevetséges 170 oldal!) – egy parázs vitában nem is lehetne vele agyoncsapni eszmei ellenfeleinket (ellentétben mondjuk a Bibliával, különös tekintettel a 13 kilós illusztrált-magyarázatos kiadásokra). És mégis: megérdemelten az. Anderson egyfelől áttekinti a nacionalizmus „gondolatának”* kialakulását, és ezen felül külön figyelmet fordít a kérdésre, hogy ugyan mi a fittyfenéért voltak hajlandóak emberek milliói a nacionalizmus hívó szavára odadobni életüket. (Hogy másokét odadobták, az még hagyján, az világos. De hogy a magukét?) Hisz végtére is a nemzet (ahogy Anderson definiálja**) pusztán egy elképzelt közösség – de miképp konkretizálódhat annyira egy mentális projekció, hogy ilyen erős kötődéseket váltson ki? Mindezt a puszta történelmi esszé keretein belül nehezen lehetne megválaszolni, de sebaj, mert e mű igazi tőrőlmetszett interdiszciplináris munka, ami segítségül hív számos egyéb tudományterületet is önmaga alátámasztására – többek között az irodalomtudományt is.

Anderson állításának kiindulópontja az, hogy az egyetemes vallások és a birodalmi gondolat lassú amortizálódása teremtette meg az űrt, ahol a nacionalizmus helyet talált magának. Élénken taglalja a középkori és a modern ember időfelfogásának különbségét, e különbség okait, a „hivatali nacionalizmus” kialakulását, a térkép, mint embléma jelentőségét abban, hogy a nemzet képe vizuálisan rögzülni tudott***, és még sok minden mást. Ugyanakkor tagadja, hogy a nacionalizmus az egyetemes vallásokból**** és a birodalmi gondolatból fejlődött volna ki (bár kétségtelenül egyes elemeiket magába építette), amit talán az is alátámaszt, hogy a hagyományos elképzelésekkel szemben nem Európában, hanem a birodalmak perifériáján, Amerikában jelent meg először.

E könyv tobzódik a (számomra) teljesen újszerű megközelítésekben, amiket gyakran metaforikus példákkal illusztrál***** – pont ez okozza az értékelés nehézségeit is, amit az egyre szaporodó lábjegyzetek is jeleznek. Ez ugyanis egy nyitott mű – nyitott abban az értelemben, hogy nem befejezett, lekerekített gondolatokkal dolgozik, hanem csupa olyasmivel, amit az olvasónak kézbe kell vennie, meg kell forgatnia, és (ha van rá kapacitása) tovább kell építenie. Aminek köszönhetően ha nem vigyáz az ember (és én talán nem vigyáztam eléggé), a puszta recenzió helyett könnyen beleragad valamelyik lenyűgöző levezetésbe, és ott marad, az értékelés pedig ezáltal a végtelenbe nyúlik. Ezt elkerülendő én sietve zárom is soraimat.

* Az idézőjel jelentőséggel bír – Anderson ugyanis leszögezi, hogy a nacionalizmus már csak azért sem tekinthető politikai irányzatnak, pláne filozófiának, mert eszmei tartalma meglehetősen sekélyes. Tele van feloldhatatlan belső ellentmondásokkal – nem véletlen, hogy ellentétben a konzervativizmussal, a szocializmussal vagy a liberalizmussal, egyetlen értékelhető gondolkodót sem tudott kitermelni. Ilyen értelemben a nacionalizmus inkább az olyasfajta hitekkel rokonítható, mint például a birodalmi dinasztiák azon meggyőződése, hogy őket Isten rendelte posztjukra.
** "Az antropológia szellemében tehát a nemzet következő meghatározását javaslom: elképzelt politikai közösség, melynek határait és szuverenitását egyaránt veleszületettnek képzelik el.
Elképzelt, mivel még a legkisebb nemzet tagjai sem ismerhetik meg a nemzet más tagjainak többségét, nem találkoznak velük, még csak nem is hallanak róluk, elméjükben mégis létezik annak képe, hogy egyazon közösséghez tartoznak. Renan erre az elképzelésre utal, amikor a maga bájosan kétszínű módján így fogalmaz: (…) ["A nemzet lényege pedig az, hogy minden egyénnek legyen számos közös dolga, valamint az, hogy jól el is felejtsék a dolgokat."]"
*** Érdemes elgondolkodni azon, milyen erős ragaszkodás alakul ki egy Nagymagyarország-matrica iránt akár olyanokban is, akik még a megyéjükből se tették ki a lábukat.
**** Közbevetőleges megjegyzés. Én eddig úgy voltam vele, hogy a kereszténység és a nacionalizmus (szerintem) meglehetősen kártékony összefonódását a kereszténység mutációjának tekintettem, amit a Biblia felől elég nehezen lehet megokolni. Most viszont épp ellenkezően látom: ezt a kapcsolatot ugyanis könnyebb a nacionalizmus felől értelmezni, amely nacionalizmus a kereszténységben találja meg magának azt az amúgy hiányzó legitimációt, amit annak több ezer éves múltja biztosít.
***** Egyik legkedvesebb levezetésem az ún. „nyomtatás-kapitalizmushoz” kapcsolódik: Anderson itt bemutatja, hogy a könyv, mint piaci termék úgy segítette elő a nacionalizmus kialakulását, hogy a gombamód szaporodó nyomdák kiadványai előbb betelítették a (vékony) latin nyelvű piacot, így aztán a kereskedők kénytelenek voltak új piaci szegmenseket keresni, amit a nemzeti nyelvek között találtak meg. Amivel egy füst alatt csökkentették a latin, mint egyetemes nyelv monopóliumát, és segítettek megerősíteni a nemzeti nyelvek státuszát is. ( )
  Kuszma | Jul 2, 2022 |
I didn't anticipate the book to be so 'academic'. Took me back to university days (why, I even read the footnotes). As with any college assigned reading, it introduced important ideas and concepts - and pointed to further reading. Anderson presents the many means and ways by which nationalisms are 'imagined' (not imaginary). Interesting but it didn't grab me the way a good popular narrative history or historical novel does. So, my rating indicates its relative reading pleasure for me - but make no mistake, this is an important book, especially for our Putin/Ukraine war time. ( )
  heggiep | Apr 3, 2022 |
واحدة من أكثر الدراسات تأثيراً حول أصول القومية. يطرح بنديكت أندرسون سؤالاً أثار حفيظة المؤرخين لفترة طويلة: لماذا أصبحت الأمم مصدراً قوياً للهوية في العالم الحديث؟ بينما يحاول الكتاب الإجابة على هذا اللغز، يتعمق في تاريخ الرأسمالية، الطباعة، الأنظمة الدينية، والقومية.
إن الأمم من وجهة نظر قومية هي مجتمعات ذات حدود يتشارك أبناؤها الاهتمامات والسمات، وقبل كل شيء، اللغة. ومع ذلك، فالانتماء القومي ليس أيديولوجية سياسية، بل نظام ثقافي شبيه بالمعتقد الديني، ويقدم شعوراً بالاستمرارية في هذا العالم العشوائي. بدأت القومية كنتيجة ثانوية لـ ”رأسمالية الطباعة“. فعندما سعى بائعوا الكتب إلى أسواقٍ جديدة تخلوا عن اللغات "المقدسة" كاللاتينية وبدأوا النشر باللغات المحكية الأخرى كالألمانية. سمح ذلك لجماعات القرّاء بتخيل مجتمعات في مناطق أخرى تشاركهم الاهتمامات. أدى توحيد اللغات المحلية وانتشار الصحف إلى ترسيخ هذا الشعور بالوطنية الجماعية وتقويض الامبراطوريات والمطالبة بالاستقلال.
قد يوازي كتاب واحد بمحتواه عشرات الكتب، وهذا كذلك. أمتنعني جداً وزادني علماً ودراية ( )
  TonyDib | Jan 28, 2022 |
Mind-opening book about the interpretation of nationalism. Read this for the anthropology of communication class. ( )
  bellacrl | Jan 19, 2021 |
An absolutely breathtaking work of world-historical scholarship. The artificiality of the "nation" is really brought home here, and so too is the nebulous nature of precolonial politics and societies. Read this, no matter what. ( )
  goliathonline | Jul 7, 2020 |
Very interesting and difficult book about how we conceive Nationalism. I honestly wouldn't have been able to make it through without the context and guidance of my post-colonial lit. class. If you're up for it, though, Anderson's writing style is clear and engaging though the concepts are at times subtle and complex. ( )
  Adrian_Astur_Alvarez | Dec 3, 2019 |
Very interesting and difficult book about how we conceive Nationalism. I honestly wouldn't have been able to make it through without the context and guidance of my post-colonial lit. class. If you're up for it, though, Anderson's writing style is clear and engaging though the concepts are at times subtle and complex. ( )
  Adrian_Astur_Alvarez | Dec 3, 2019 |
這個版本收錄2006年Verso新版所增加的一篇〈旅行與交通〉(採用2007新刷版),描述這本書的翻譯與流佈,也簡短談到作者寫這本書的動機。另外在附錄新增三篇文章:2003年作者欲來台演講的講稿〈帝國/台灣〉、因故未能成行而發表的〈曼谷遙寄〉、譯者吳叡人關於本書與作者的〈黑暗之時.光明之時〉。封面令人費解,有否可能是作者對吳叡人的叮嚀「要打擊帝國,你得要好好瞄準,然後一擲中的。」 ( )
  maoozilla | Apr 2, 2019 |
這是一本瞭解認同、共同體、甚至社區的好書,對於分析台灣目前族問題也有一定的幫助。強烈推薦對台灣族群問題、社區營造、台灣認同的朋友收藏、精讀。(中譯本由時報出版) ( )
  maoozilla | Apr 2, 2019 |
Nationalism and the nation-state are fairly recent phenomena, dating to the 1500s. How did they come together and how has the idea of nationalism been perpetuated in the modern era? Anderson sees the nation as an imagined political community bound together by such diverse things as common cultural roots, maps, museums, censuses, religion, and political dynasties. The printing press is hence a very critical component to the development of nations. Capitalism and the emergence of imperialism were other important factors that created uniformity through exchange rates, language, education, and a sense of national purpose. Since the end of World War II, all revolutions have been, Anderson argues, national revolutions. ( )
  gregdehler | Jul 4, 2017 |
An essential read in comparative and global politics, yet deeply flawed due to significant disregard for the importance of ethnicity and culture without strong evidence to do so. ( )
  bdtrump | May 9, 2015 |
Reviewed here.
  scott.neigh | May 6, 2012 |
This year I'm trying to supplement my usual diet of Latin American/Spanish/Modern fiction with some theoretical texts that, I hope, will help me interact with the books I read in different ways. I'd like to be able to take more from my experiences as a reader, and I think an understanding of the way that social scientists and philosophers view the world and the written word will be of great help to me. I did not fully understand how popular this book by Benedict Anderson is: reviews on LT tend to emphasize its fundamental importance in the study of nationality over the past three decades, and one reviewer mentions that a professor told her that Imagined Communities is currently the most cited book in the social sciences. It was nice to read these things after I finished reading the book, which was intended in my case to complement a re-read of Sarmiento's Facundo. They confirmed the positive impression I had of his explanation of how nations are created/imagined.

I don't aspire to give a really solid synopsis of this book, so I think I'll just list some things I found particularly interesting and relevant to my own interest in Latin America.

a) Anderson defines the nation as an imagined community both limited and sovereign. Nations are imagined because their citizens don't all know each other. I don't know but a tiny fraction of my fellow United States citizens, but we share a nation. A nation is a limited community because, as the author puts it, "no nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind." A nation is sovereign due to the fact that, when nations were formed in the early part of the 19th century, the Enlightenment was undermining the traditional concept of the hierarchic dynastic realm (with nations replacing kingdoms) and it was possible for a the founders of a nation to proclaim it free under God. And it's a community because the members of the diverse nations of the world have felt such horizontal comradeship between each other that they're willing to fight and die for their nation.

b) The world used to be made up of religious communities. These religious communities shared sacred languages that were shared across different peoples with different everyday languages. Across Europe, people spoke their native language in their communities while the religious hierarchy did things in Latin; the same with the Muslim world and Arabic. These sacred languages were not thought of as arbitrary systems of signs; they were thought to be God's word. Then along came the printing press. The book became a commodity (as Anderson puts it, "in a rather special sense the book was the first modern-style mass-produced commodity). The need to reach linguistically-diverse reading publics in Europe that transcended the Latin-educated ecclesiastical minority gave rise to national languages. Over time, there came to be normalized written languages: a printed French or a printed English intelligible to all speakers of a given language. Books were written that were directed to the readers of that language, to be digested by the linguistically-unified audience. Then newspapers gained in prominence: now you not only have a unified audience reading a single text, but they're all reading it at the same time, and it's telling them news that is essentially local. They're a community of newspaper readers, and they feel connected with the people they don't know but who read the paper along with them each morning. This is the gist of how print capitalism created new groupings of readers and contributed to the formation of nation-states.

c) The nation-states of America were the pioneers with respect to the formation of nations as we see them these days. They weren't linguistically distinct communities because they shared a language with their colonial metropoles. Moreover, the different American viceroyalties spoke the same language, Spanish. Anderson looks at a couple of key factors that influenced the formation of nations like Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and Mexico. One is the secular pilgrimage of sorts that those who traveled across the Atlantic took part in. Many of these fellow-travelers were part of the administrative bureaucracy of the Spanish crown, and as such, their lives were a sort of progression up a ladder of posts in the system. There was no "home" to go back to because wherever they were represented the highest point in their ascension, and the people they met along the way, their coworkers and friends, became a part of this community of bureaucrats. Then, when Spaniards in the New World had children, their Creole descendants who formed part of a new colonial upper class community remained under the control of their Spanish rulers: the highest posts in the Spanish viceroyalties were nearly always occupied by men born in Spain. Eventually, the subordination of these Creole aristocracies by Spanish crown became intolerable and these men who shared a common fate and a common history of pilgrimage (and who had also begun reading the same newspaper each morning as the printing press became more common in America over the course of the 18th century) asserted their desire for freedom and sovereignty as nations of Americans in the wars of independence of the early 19th century.

These are just a few notes that I plan to keep in mind when I read Facundo. I'm interested to try and imagine the audience Sarmiento is speaking to and how his book functions as an exercise in nation-building (maybe it'd be better to say nation-refining or nation-correcting, I'm not sure). He originally published the book in serial form, so maybe there are connections to be made between the communities of newspaper readers that later joined together in national brotherhood, and the readers to whom Sarmiento directs his story of Facundo Quiroga and the recently-born Argentine nation. ( )
5 vote msjohns615 | Jan 17, 2012 |
This book wasn't as original as I had hoped. Many of the ideas presented here have gained wide currency in later scholarship and I suppose that's what makes them seem familiar. The book has a broad scope and the author discusses a variety of different cases so it's a good read.
  thcson | Jun 8, 2010 |
Although Anderson's theory is far from perfect, and on the whole I think it's been improved upon, this gets five stars for originality. ( )
  sotirfan | Apr 23, 2010 |
Great book, great concepts, great read
  HelenKanitkarLibrary | Jan 21, 2010 |
One of my professors told me that this is currently the most cited book in the social sciences. A ground-breaking (in the eighties when it was published) study of the origins of nationalism, it nonetheless left me with some questions. And occasionally Benedict Anderson seems like he's been a little too clever in his wordplay and his refusal to translate large passages out of the French. ( )
  TinuvielDancing | Jan 19, 2010 |
Extraordinary book on nationalism, and how we create these images of who we are.

(I took a graduate course in Cultural Anthropology on ethnicity and nationalism, where we read a tremendous amount of the current academic thinking on related topics, and I found nearly all of it appallingly bad: in a world all their own, little touch with reality, and also a ridiculous fog index in the writing. There were a few gems in there, though, and this was the standout, by far. And more than a decade later, it has held up. This book has stuck with me.) ( )
1 vote DaveCullen | Jun 1, 2009 |
This book was something of a difficult read. Anderson does his best, though-- he's actually quite good at clearly separating and enumerating multiple points. There's some great ideas in here, too, about what constitutes a nation, where nations came from, what cultural artifacts constitute a nation, and so on; he attributes nations to the rise of what he calls "print capitalism" as well as the collapse of a universal Catholic Church, among other things. I suppose what makes it inaccessible at times is the supporting data, which often derives from the South Pacific and other areas where I lack historical context and knowledge. Anderson has great ideas, but I feel like they get lost within the book-- discussing it with others and drawing these ideas out is highly recommended. Or, you can just read the chapter of Jonathan Culler's The Literary in Theory where he essentially summarizes the whole book for you. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the book was the food for thought it provides about what comes after the nation-- Anderson doesn't really discuss this at all, but you can't help thinking about it and wondering...
1 vote Stevil2001 | Nov 9, 2008 |
This little book is one of the most important works of historical sociology written in the late twentieth century. Anderson defines the nation as an imagined community built by capitalism on the basis of territory in the modern world. He shows how language, culture, capitalism, and the use of printing intersect and interact to create these imagined communities in the modern world. A triumph of theory-building. ( )
1 vote Fledgist | Apr 12, 2008 |
A fascinating read. Anderson's thesis that nations are essentially imagined took the discussion of nationality in a new direction. A very important book which should be read by anyone interested in the subject of national identity. ( )
  Svetaketu | Mar 15, 2008 |
A thorough attempt to understand the rise of nationalism. He attributes the primary causes to be the decline of religion and the rise of capitalism. Decline of religion caused a different conception of time, moving from a sense of divine plan to an unplanned, almost random sense of time. And nationalism provided a place to put loyalties and sense of identity that was lost to religion. Not a particularly convincing thesis and he doesn't develop it much. He is more convincing on factors that allowed nationalism to flourish, including printing capitalism, colonialism (which created and cemented certain nations), and a decline of dynastic legitimacy. Of course, his big idea of nations being constructed is the most important concept and the big worth of the book. Anyone reading about nationalism needs to read this book, if only because all other books on the subject reference it. ( )
2 vote Scapegoats | Sep 15, 2007 |
An intriguing look at how the sense of "nationality" came to be - it's more recent than you might think, since the advent of the printed page. Anderson uses examples from Southeast Asia, his area of speciality, to illustrate his points. ( )
  waitingtoderail | Jul 4, 2007 |
Wonderful book, one of my favorites. Provides a framework for studying and understanding how cultures change over time, and how people and institutions (including business enterprises and government) react to those changes.

The book also shows how critical print and publishing industries were to the massive societal changes that have occurred over the past few centuries. And it shows how traditional institutions (such as European aristocracies, and later governments) reacted to change and attempted to solidify their institutional control. Especially interesting to me were Anderson’s discussions of the use of state-controlled education and propaganda in the colonies populated by European expansion, to influence native residents or, in some cases, to create a line of segregation between European colonizers and a region’s original inhabitants.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone studying history, societies, or cultural change. It is not always an easy read, but once you grasp what Anderson is trying to say, you’ll see elements of his work (or at least, his essential themes) in anything else on society or culture that you read. ( )
3 vote daleducatte | Oct 16, 2005 |
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