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Imagined Communities: by Benedict Anderson, 1983
Imagined Communities: by Benedict Anderson, 1983
Ch 1: Introduction
Nation, Nationality, and Nationalism are innovative, recent concepts, artifacts created in late 18th century due to historical circumstance, but easily transplanted to the rest of the world lack definitions and defy analysis, arouse deep attachments
Definition of nation
An imagined political community that is both limited and sovereign Imagined because members cannot all know each other Limited because no nation encompasses all of mankind, nor even aspires to Sovereign because nations came into being during Enlightenment and strive for freedom Community because a nation is conceived of as a horizontal comradeship of equals
Why?
Why is it that these limited imaginings of fraternity, which have existed for only two centuries, have inspired millions of people to be willing kill and die for them? The answers lie in the cultural roots of nationalism.
Cultural Systems
Prior to the advent of nationality, the primary cultural systems were:
Religious communities
Dynastic realms
or
Religious community:
linked by a sacred language/text which was superior to vernaculars potentially encompass all humanity via conversion suggested a unique hierarchy, unique access to truth ultimately eroded by world exploration/discovery of other great religions and vernacularization
Dynastic realm:
Kingdoms focused on centers, not borders Ruled over heterogeneous populations Sexual politics of dynastic marriage Population is subjects, not citizens, part of a divine hierarchy Principle of automatic legitimacy withered away and dynasties gradually took on nationalist features
Apprehensions of time
Religious world view based on concept of time where there is a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present Innovation of novel and newspaper create a new concept of homogeneous empty time and a new concept of simultaneity A nation can move calendrically through this new time
Print-capitalism
Printing begins in 15th c, aimed at Latin readers, but this market was saturated after 150 years, and focus shifted to vernaculars Even earlier, use of administrative vernaculars began spreading in Europe Print gave language a new fixity, helped create standards and build an image of antiquity
Equality of compatriots
The new middle-class intelligentsia of nationalism had to invite the masses into history Nairn If Hungarians deserved a national state, then that meant Hungarians, all of them; it meant a state in which the ultimate locus of sovereignty had to be the collectivity of Hungarian-speakers and readers; and, in due course, the liquidation of serfdom, the promotion of popular education, the expansion of suffrage, and so on. Anderson
These would not have the same cachet because they are bodies we can join or leave
More on death
War monuments, holidays commemorating battles, holocausts, genocides, and even fraternal (civil) wars serve to bond a nation to a history Tombs for the Unknown Soldier are particularly powerful, for they also reinforce the image of equality
Language
A language is a powerful means to root a nation to a past because a language looms up from the past without any birthdate of its own, and suggests a community between a contemporary society and its dead ancestors Poetry and songs, as national anthems create a simultaneous community of selfless voices
A census
Reifies identities into singular, mutuallyexclusive categories Suggests a quantity of identical units
A map
Focuses on borders rather than on centers Views each as a country from above, filling the space of the planet The shape of a country becomes a logo that penetrates national imagination as an emblem of the country
A museum
Suggests a political inheritance of historical connections and restored monuments that serve as regalia for the modern state
Awakening to language
Sleep permitted those intelligentsias and bourgeoisies who were becoming conscious of themselves as Czechs, Hungarians or Finns to figure their study of Czech, Magyar, or Finnish languages, folklores, and musics as rediscovering something deep-down and always known Despite the fact that the vanguard was often people unaccustomed to using the vernaculars, and that previously no one had thought of languages as belonging to territorially defined groups