Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New Edition) [Paperback]

Benedict Anderson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 2006

The definitive, bestselling book on the origins of nationalism, and the processes that have shaped it.

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 and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name?

Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the ‘imagined communities’ of nationality, and explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kinship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of secular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time and space. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was adopted by popular movements in Europe, by imperialist powers, and by the movements of anti-imperialist resistance in Asia and Africa.

In a new afterword, Anderson examines the extraordinary influence of Imagined Communities, and the book's international publication and reception, from the end of the Cold War era to the present day.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A brilliant exegesis on nationalism.” (Nation )

“Sparkling, readable, densely packed.” (Peter Worsley - Guardian )

“A brilliant little book.” (Neal Ascherson - Observer )

“Anderson’s knowledge of a vast range of relevant historical literature is most impressive; his presentation of the gist of it is both masterly and lucid.” (Edmund Leach - New Statesman )

“This is a book to be owned and read, re-read, and treasured.” (Academic Library Book Review )

About the Author

Benedict Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorp Professor of International Studies Emeritus at Cornell University. He is editor of the journal Indonesia and author of Java in a Time of Revolution, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World, Imagined Communities and Under Three Flags.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Verso; New Edition edition (November 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844670864
• ISBN-13: 978-1844670864
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 0.8 x 5.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Nationalism
  • #16 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > European
  • #60 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory

More About the Author

Benedict Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorp Professor of International Studies Emeritus at Cornell University. He is editor of the journal Indonesia and author of Java in a Time of Revolution, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World and Imagined Communities.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 126 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Work in Nailing down Nationalism November 23, 2001

By Charlotte A. Hu

Format:Paperback

In Imagined Communities, Anderson gives a detailed analysis of nation building projects and their relationship to print media. Nationalism has been a difficult concept to define. Some like King Faisal's right hand man, Sati Al-Husri, defined nationalism by language. In contrast, Anderson defines nationalism as a construction created in imagination by print media. "It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members," Anderson explains. Moreover, "It is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings."
Anderson looks at the early communities, which he says were mostly constructed around religious ideologies and were linked by the publication of books on those religious concepts. These original "communities" did not necessarily confine themselves to a given geo-political unit. However, newspapers made it possible for people in a geographically vast region to discuss the same topic at the local coffee shop, coffer or workshop. This, says Anderson, had a powerful impact on the creation of an imagined community, called a nation. Anderson then begins to look at conglomerate pioneers as a contrast to nation-state building projects. In this area, he discusses market-zones, similar to, but preceding organizations like the European Union. Who would die for such a construction? asks Anderson. He makes a distinction between this kind of imagined community and the imagined community of the nation-state.
Anderson's historical examination of the construction of nationalism seems to have merits. However, he leaves open the idea that it is an ongoing and dynamic process. This text lays the foundation for future examinations of "imagined communities" in new forms. Media appears to be a critical social component in Anderson's argument. If that is the case, there is another question that follows. What happens when the forms of media change? What happens when media, that was, at one time, limited to a geographical location becomes global? What happens when media forms that were at one time, linguistically limited, expand to bilingual or possibly even multilingual components? Anderson's book provides a great framework from which to do future scholarship.

59 of 62 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars New Edition disappointing February 19, 2007

By A. Ward

Format:Paperback

I was disappointed in this 'new edition', because it is a missed opportunity.

When it was first published in 1983, 'Imagined Communities' deservedly became a classic in the analysis of nationalism - and an excellent antidote to those who beat nationalist drums. As the new chapter (on the 'geobiography of the book') at the end of this edition outlines, the book has now been published in 30 countries and 27 languages.

Partly inspired by Anderson, the debates on nationalism have moved on considerably in the subsequent 23 years. I was hoping that a new/revised edition would at least note these debates, and preferably comment and analyse them. Unfortunately, this edition does not. Indeed, even though the 'Preface to the second edition' (written in 1991) refers to the excellent 1990 book by Eric Hobsbawm 'Nations and Nationalism', that Hobsbawm text does not get a listing in the bibliography. There is little in the bibliography post 1983, and nothing since around 1990.

While the initial book is still well worth reading (hence the three stars), there is unfortunately little to recommend in this 'new edition'

102 of 115 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A must for students of nationalism February 13, 2000

By "stoyan"

Format:Paperback

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