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Benedict Anderson

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition Paperback – November 17, 2006

by Benedict Anderson (Author)

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The world-famous work on the origins and development of nationalism

The full magnitude of Benedict Anderson’s intellectual achievement is still being appreciated and debated. Imagined Communities remains the most influential book on the origins of nationalism, filling the vacuum that previously existed in the traditions of Western thought. Cited more often than any other single English-language work in the human sciences, it is read around the world in more than thirty translations.

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.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Verso
Publication date

November 17, 2006
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.75 x 8.23 inches
ISBN-10

1844670864
ISBN-13

978-1844670864
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“One of the greatest … deserves still to be central to our thinking about the world.”
—T. J. Clark, London Review of Books

“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 scholar¬ship, and who seek to live accordingly.”
—Nation

“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.”
—New York Times

“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.”
—Jeet Heer, New Republic

“Everything Anderson wrote was boldly original … He was never content to tell an audience what they wanted to hear.”
—Anthony Reid, Guardian

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

“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

“Everything Anderson wrote was boldly original … He was never content to tell an audience what they wanted to hear.”
—Anthony Reid, Guardian

“A brilliant little book.”
—Neal Ascherson, Observer

“Sparkling, readable, densely packed.”
—Peter Worsley, Guardian

About the Author

Benedict Anderson was Aaron L. Binenkorp Professor of International Studies Emeritus at Cornell University. He was Editor of the journal Indonesia and author of numerous books including A Life Beyond Boundaries, Java in a Time of Revolution, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World and The Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anticolonial Imagination.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso; Revised edition (November 17, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1844670864
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1844670864
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.23 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #911,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #439 in Nationalism (Books)
- #5,031 in Political Science (Books)
- #74,605 in Reference (Books)

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4.5 749 ratings

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Benedict Anderson

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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.

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Clay Garner

''Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers'' (33)

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2017

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Anderson highlights the ''imaginary'' part of nationalism. The nation is just a mental construct, and a recent one at that. This can require a shift in mental gears to one who feels devotion to his 'nation' is what makes life significant. And anyone that feels his group is connected to some eternal past/future will be stunned. Anderson covers abundant historical and emotional evidence to support his theme.

For example, what unites millions of diverse individuals? What shared customs confirms their connectedness? Not daily prayers to God, but morning/evening mental unity with all fellow news readers/listeners. -

''The significance of this mass ceremony –Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers –is paradoxical. It is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull.''

How can this isolated, individual action produce unity?

'''Yet each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion. Furthermore, this ceremony is incessantly repeated at daily or half-daily intervals throughout the calendar. What more vivid figure for the secular, historically clocked, imagined community can be envisioned?'' (33)

Each reader/listener knows exactly the thoughts of all! What connection. What unity!

1 Introduction
2 Cultural Roots
3 The Origins of National Consciousness
4 Creole Pioneers
5 Old Languages, New Models
6 Official Nationalism and Imperialism
7 The Last Wave
8 Patriotism and Racism
9 The Angel of History
10 Census, Map, Museum
11 Memory and Forgetting Travel and Traffic: On the Geo-biography of Imagined Communities
Bibliography
Index

Anderson is not sympathetic to nationalism. From the introduction -

''It is characteristic that even so sympathetic a student of nationalism as Tom Nairn can nonetheless write that: ‘ “Nationalism” is the pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as “neurosis” in the individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world (the equivalent of infantilism for societies) and largely incurable.’'

Wow!

The connection/contrast of nationalism with religion surfaces consistently.

''The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all the members of the human race will join their nation in the way that it was possible, in certain epochs, for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet.''

This distinction is crucial for modern nationalism.

''It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith’s ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.''

Key idea. Nationalism is a recent invention due to the demise of Christendom.

Many other insights. Writing is not always smooth or clear. Sometimes feels like reader is thrown into the middle of a conversation without background. Some subjects seem to continue beyond what is needed. Examples so detailed that idea submerged.

Nevertheless, interesting and eye opening.

(This note added 6/2/18. Recently found the work of Professor Hans Kohn. Spent lifetime of scholarship on Nationalism, history, meaning, impact, etc., etc.. Great!)

57 people found this helpful

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Thomas W. Robinson

Extremely interesting

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2013

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Although published in 1983, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities is still one of the standard works on nationalism. As Anderson points out numerous times in the book, although nationalism has become the dominant political force of the modern world, there is no agreed upon definition of nationalism. Political theorists and historians generally agree that nationalism first rose in the late eighteenth century, but beyond that the picture is muddled. Arguing against Marxists who underrate nationalism, Anderson thinks the successful revolutions of the twentieth century have all been nationalist. More important than that, though, is Anderson's contention that the nation is an imagined community and that nationalism is perceived as destiny.
As such, Anderson's book very much is in line with the books assigned for this course. Anderson argues that nationalism triumphed in the Americas due to friction between revolutionary creoles and the imperial governments that ruled them. In many ways, the creole nationalists would have been content with the European government that ruled them if they could be part of the political process. But, after being shown they were expendable and/or unnecessary, the creoles attempted to create a national consciousness.
One area where Anderson and several of the books we read disagree is on the role of patriotism and racism. Anderson argues that racism should be disassociated from racism and attached instead to class. Disagreeing with this, historians of whiteness studies and several historians of the South, including Stephanie McCurry, have shown that race was often linked to national identity. Especially in the United States, to be a white man was to be American for essentially the entire nineteenth century.
In many ways, Anderson's book is a discussion of what makes people not only unite as a nation, but see themselves as part of a group of people, especially when they will never meet their other countrymen. This is certainly a question that has been explored in many of the books we have read. What makes an American? Based on the books we have read this semester, there are different answers to that.
One of the more interesting answers might be Stephanie McCurry's. Although she is talking about the Confederate States, she successfully argues that while the government was founded with the idea that only white men were members of the community, white women were able to make their voice heard. So, in some ways, the mere act of interacting with the government makes one "American."
Other historians, such as Charles Sellers, would argue that it is the economics of the United States that link the nation together. Capitalism, and the market, allowed Americans to feel unified. Still others, like Sean Wilentz, would point to the politics of the United States as what links everyone together. To be sure, not everyone agrees on politics or even participates, but Wilentz argues that it was participatory democracy that unified the country.
The interesting thing is that none of these historians, except maybe McCurry, were even discussing nationalism. However, it is nearly impossible to discuss the sense of unification of a country and not touch on nationalism. As such, nationalism has become more prevalent in the past thirty years or so. However, there still does not seem to be an agreed-upon definition of exactly what nationalism is. Because Anderson's book has been so influential, though, his definition has become one of the standards in the field.

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Renato Pereira

Bad book. Great Ideas

Reviewed in Canada on March 8, 2023

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Title says everything, this book is not well written, it constantly contradicts itself, the evidence and argumentation used is very weak; nevertheless, the idea of imagined communities has deeply impacted academic studies about identity. The central idea of the book is amazing and makes this book worth the read, but everything else is not so good.

Lucca Canizela De Camargo

Superb

Reviewed in Brazil on May 22, 2022

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Very informative book!

S. Veren

Benedict Anderson

Reviewed in Germany on November 24, 2022

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I wish more people would read this text by Benedict Anderson as early as school age. It would be useful for many to understand the origin of nationalisms, both those that are now extinct and those recently established, and perhaps to avoid certain mistakes from which the human species has unfortunately failed to learn.

Pablo

Buen libro que dar a conocer el origen del nacionalismo y hacer reflexiones en torno a eso.

Reviewed in Spain on November 12, 2021

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Considero que esto es un libro que nos da entender como se originan los primeros nacionalismos y las raíces que tienen en ellos. Descubrirás los principios y los valores sobre los cuales se fomentan estos nacionalismos, siempre haciendo la oposición al gobierno central.

Muy recomendado para todos aquellos que eran descubrir llamar a Tast profunda este concepto de nacionalismo y cómo se origina en la sociedad.

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Daniela Lemus

Lindo, portátil y con un contenido increíble!

Reviewed in Mexico on July 4, 2020

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La edición es muy linda, el tamaño es ideal para llevarlo a todos lados. Además, el texto es muy claro, lo que ayuda ya que no hay ediciones en español disponibles.

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