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Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
Written with exemplary clarity, this illuminating study traces the emergence of community as an idea to South America, rather than to nineteenth-century Europe. Later, this sense of belonging was formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, through print, literature, maps and museums. Following the rise and conflict of nations and the decline of empires, Anderson draws on examples from South East Asia, Latin America and Europe’s recent past to show how nationalism shaped the modern world.
Reviews
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“One of the greatest … deserves still to be central to our thinking about the world.”
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“Anderson’s work stands as an inspiration not only to his students, his readers, and all those whose lives have been affected by his work, but also to all those who reject the false choice between politics and scholarship, and who seek to live accordingly.”
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“Anderson transformed the study of nationalism … and was renowned not only for his theoretical contributions but also for his detailed examinations of language and power in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.”
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“Far and away the most influential study of nationalism … As well-versed in novels and poetry as he was in scholarship, Anderson was an eloquent advocate for global culture.”
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“Anderson’s knowlege of a vast range of relevant historical literature is most impressive; his presentation of the gist of it is both masterly and lucid.”
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“Everything Anderson wrote was boldly original … He was never content to tell an audience what they wanted to hear.”
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“A brilliant little book.”
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“Sparkling, readable, densely packed.”
Blog
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Benedict Anderson on 'mapping the terrain' of nationalism
"Nationalism has been ‘around’ on the face of the globe for, at the very least, two centuries. Long enough, one might think, for it to be reliably and generally understood. But it is hard to think of any political phenomenon which remains so puzzling and about which there is less analytic consensus" — in this essay, taken from the Introduction to Mapping the Nation, Benedict Anderson makes sense of some of the difficulties in ‘mapping the terrain’ of nationalism, as well as looking at theorists (including feminist scholarship) who have brought new meaning to this important area of political study.
Benedict Anderson's ground-breaking study of nationalism, Imagined Communities, is out this week in a new edition, and available at a 40% discount through Saturday, October 15th.
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Whither ‘Nation’ and ‘Nationalism’?
Benedict Anderson's classic study of nationalism, Imagined Communities, is out this week in a new edition — available at a 40% discount through Saturday, October 15th.
We'll be posting writings related to the book throughout the week. Below is an essay by cultural anthropologist Katherine Verdery, first published in Daedalus in 1993 and reprinted in Mapping the Nation.
Bulevardi Bill Klinton in Pristina, Kosovo.
Nation and Nationalism: What are They?
During the 1980s and 1990s, the scholarly industry, built up around the concepts of nation and nationalism, became so vast and so interdisciplinary as to rival all other contemporary foci of intellectual production. -
The National Imagination
Benedict Anderson's classic study of nationalism, Imagined Communities, is out this week in a new edition — available at a 40% discount through Saturday, October 15th.
We'll be posting writings related to the book throughout the week. Below is Gopal Balakrishnan's critique of Anderson, first published in New Left Review in 1995, and collected in Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War.
via Wikimedia Commons
Eric Hobsbawm, in his final chapter of a survey on the history of nationalism, claimed that the nation-state had embarked on a declining curve of historical viability, and that the beginnings of its fossilization would clear the way for deeper explorations into its origins, impact and possible futures. Not long afterwards, this judgment appeared to be refuted by the resurgence of national causes in the former Communist world. Hobsbawm, however, had suitably qualified his prediction so as to take into account the outbreak and intensification of national conflicts in such contexts. His claim that the nation-state was no longer a ‘vector’ of historical development meant only that the trend lines in the most dynamic zones of the world system had begun to push beyond familiar national dimensions.
