ANDERSON'S IDEA OF AN IMAGINED COMMUNITY AND ITS

RELATION TO NATIONALISM / ANDERSON'S VIEWS ON

NATION AND NATIONALISM / FACTORS BEHIND THE
GROWTH OF A NATION, ACCORDING TO ANDERSON/THE
INTERRELATION BETWEEN THE NATION AND THE
COMMUNITY, AS EXPLAIN BY ANDERSON [15]

Benedict Anderson's remarkable book Imagined Communities

reshaped the study of nations and nationalism. Strikingly
original, it broke with previous over-emphasis on the
European continent and falsely polarized arguments as to
whether nations were always already in existence or mere
epiphenomena of modern states. Imagined Communities
stimulated attention to the dynamics of socially and culturally
organized imagination as processes at the heart of political
culture, self-understanding and solidarity. This has an
influence beyond the study of nationalism as a major
innovation in understanding 'social imaginaries'. Anderson's
approach, however, maintained strong emphases on material
conditions that shape culture, and on institutions that
facilitate its reproduction - from newspapers and novels to
censuses, maps, and museums.

Benedict Anderson's seminal work Imagined Communities:

Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism from
1983 is one of the most important accounts of the historical
rise and development of nationalism. Its basic insight and
argument is that nations are not ancient communities united
by history, blood, language, culture and/or territory, as
nationalists often claim, but the distinctly modern
imagination of a given state's population as constituting such
an originary.community produced by nationalism.

Anderson explained that nations must be understood as

imagined communities because they are simply too large for
all of their members to actually know one another. It is
therefore only possible for its members to imagine that they
have a relationship with all other members of the nation
across time and space. Of course, the fact that the nation is
imagined does not make it any less real. Nations are very real
real enough that people are prepared to kill and die for them
as Anderson pointed out.

Above all, Anderson presented nationalism as a way of

imagining and thereby creating community. The nation "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" (Anderson, 2006: 9). That this is in some
regards an artificial imagining does not make it less powerful.
The comradeship is felt, even if it is in tension with the
inequalities and sectional divisions. And "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, 2006:
7). This is what is symbolized in the tombs of Unknown
Soldiers - the identity of each with his fellows and his nation
that takes priority over an individual name (Anderson, 2006:
9). National identities are indeed made-invented- but they
are not for that reason simply false any more than any other
act of creativity.

More than a few readers thought Anderson's title suggested

a contrast of imagined to real communities, but it would be
more accurate to say that Anderson thought all community
had to be imagined—at least "all communities larger than
primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even
these)." (Anderson, 2006: 6). What scholars must examine is
not so much the truth or falsity of national imagining, but the
different styles and forms in which nationhood is rendered,
and the material and practical conditions for the production
of national imagining.

Nationalism filled the political and existential void that arose

after the decline of the great religious communities. In their
prime, Latin Christendom and the Muslim Ummah
incorporated vast territories and several peoples in a single
community united by a common (religious) perception of the
world and a sacred language (Latin or classical Arabic), which
local elites also used to communicate among themselves.
These grand religious communities were organized into
smaller political units, where kings ruled over ethnically
diverse and linguistically fragmented populations with the
blessing of god and/or his religious representatives on earth.
It was the crisis and decline of this system that paved the way
for the rise of nationalism in the latter half of the eighteenth
century. But it didn't happen by itself. The emergence of
nationalism was a product of specific historical circumstances
and actors. The historical circumstances Anderson highlighted
was the interaction of capitalism and the development of
printing technology, which resulted in the production of large
quantities of books and newspapers, which contributed to
the development and spread of common ideas - and which
eventually came to form the foundation for the imagination
of the national community.

The circulation of books and newspapers made it possible for

scattered individuals to relate to each other and develop a
common awareness of events, narratives and ideas at more
or less the same time - typically within the framework of a
certain territory and group. The explicitly and implicitly
patriotic literature gradually spread the notion of a specific
national community, which formed the basis of the popular
breakthrough of nationalism.

Andersons identified the colonies of the "New World" in the

Americas as the birthplace of modern nationalism. According
to Anderson, it was the exploitation of the colonies by the
metropole, combined with discrimination of foreign-born
officials within the colonial apparatus, that provided the
impetus for local elites to begin to pursue independence. In
order to realize such projects, however, it was necessary to
unite the population and confront the metropole. The
colonies were already divided into distinct administrative
units that were often geographically isolated and which could
thus form the starting point for the development of the
imagination of national communities in text and speech and
later action.

The political success of North and South American

nationalisms became a model that was imitated and further
developed across the globe. In Europe especially, increased
output of books and newspapers contributed not only to the
creation and spread of common ideas, but also to the
standardization of different dialects and thereby the creation
of national languages, which became a central part of
European nationalism. Nationalism was initially often closely
linked with liberal, democratic and/or revolutionary
tendencies in Europe, where the nation was commonly
rhetorically opposed to the monarchs. However, a similar
model was also adopted and advanced by some absolutist
rulers, who legitimized their dynastic rule through "official
nationalisms." In both cases, the nation was affirmed as the
foundation and legitimation of the modern (nation) states
that emerged from them. These states actively contributed to
building the nation through the promotion of linguistic
standardization, national symbols and a narrative about a
historically unified community that in most cases had never
existed.

Anderson's analysis showed that the nation does not preexist

nationalism. Rather, the nation is the product of modern
nationalism. Contrary to nationalist claims, the nation was
not rooted in ancient history and did not arise spontaneously.
The nation was the product of decidedly modern political
interests and dynamics that took a very specific form but
universal form that originated in the Americas and spread
across the globe from there.

Anderson defined the nation as the product of modern

nationalism and "an imagined political community" that he
insisted was always "imagined as both inherently limited and
sovereign." The nation was, as I have already suggested, an
imagined community insofar as it was impossible for all its
members to get to know each other, and this form of
community therefore had to be imagined. The nation was
moreover imagined as a community, a deep and horizontal
fraternity that united all of its members across age, class,
colour, creed, gender and race - irrespective of actually
existing divisions, inequalities and exploitation.

Anderson defines "the nation" as an "imagined political

community that is imagined as both inherently limited and
sovereign" (Imagined 7).
The nation is:

Imagined because "members... will never know most of their

fellow members... yet in the minds of each lives the image of
their communion" (6). That is, the possession of citizenship in
a nation allows and prompts the individual to imagine the
boundaries of a nation, even though such boundaries may
not physically exist.

Limited because "even the largest of them... has finite, if

elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations" (7). The
fact that nationalists are able to imagine boundaries suggests
that they recognize the existence of partition by culture,
ethnicity, and social structure among mankind. They do not
imagine the union of all under one massive, all-
encompassing "nationalism" (See Maps in Colonialism,
Geography and Empire).

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... nations
dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so" (7). The
sovereign state, therefore, is symbolic of the freedom from
traditional religious structure. It provides the sense of
organization needed for an orderly society, without relying on
the then weakening religious hierarchy.
Community because the nation is "always conceived as a
deep, horizontal comradeship" (7). Regardless of the dissent
and inequalities within the nation, the imagined alliance
among people of the same imagined nation is so strong as to
drive men to heroic deaths in nationalistic sacrifice.

Along with the above historical happenings that laid the path
to the consciousness of nationalism, the practice of print-
capitalism facilitated the imagining of the nation. The
expansion of the book market contributed to the
vernacularization of languages. Print languages created
unified fields of communication, which enabled speakers of a
diverse variety of languages to become aware of one another
via print and paper. These people, consequently, became
aware of the existence of the millions who share their nation
and language. Print-capitalism also gave fixity to language,
which stabilized it and gave print language a sense of
antiquity that enhanced the feeling of nationalism. Finally,
the notion of print capitalism gave dominance to a few
selected languages for their printability, namely dialects that
were closer to print languages than others were the ones that
were commonly used and persisted through history.

While nationalism is practically universal, every nationalism

imagines its particular nation to be unique and distinct from
all others. As such, the nation is consistently imagined as a
limited form of community (unlike, for instance, earlier
religious communities that almost always aspired to
universality) delimited by other nations; even though its
actual borders are often quite elastic in practice. Finally, the
nation is imagined as being sovereign, that is to say, it is
conceived as the highest legitimate political authority within
the political community, which finds its clearest expression in
the form of the modern sovereign (nation) state.

One of the reasons for the spread and persistence of

nationalism, according to Anderson, is to be found in the
existential dimension of nationalism - a dimension that most
other political ideologies neglect. Human beings have always
confronted uncertainty, adversity and ultimately their own
finitude. The great religions managed to alleviate the
pressure of these uncertainties through guarantees of a
cosmological order and the promise of an afterlife.

But after the pluralization and gradual collapse of these

religious systems, the onset of secularization and the
Enlightenment, an existential void opened, which nationalism
came to fill. Nationalism, like religion, inscribes the individual
within a larger historical and social context that transcended
its individual members. In this way, the notion of the nation
functions as a secular substitute for religion.
That perspective may also help to explain the continued
appeal of nationalism in an age of globalization. Although

the sovereignty of nation states is today inscribed within, if

not subordinated to global economic processes, it has not

waned. If anything, nationalism has only gained traction. In

the uncertain and unmanageable world produced by

globalization, nationalism's guarantees of meaning and

continuity only becomes more attractive.

Anderson generally considered nationalism to be a

progressive force. He did not believe that it was inherently
tied to xenophobia and racism. And many nationalisms were
initially progressive and inclusive projects, particularly the
anticolonial national liberation movements of the twentieth
century that he followed closely. However, later
developments call into question his evaluation of nationalism.
Fully developed nationalism is per definition limited to a
single people at the expense of others. As such, nationalism is
based on exclusion and a clear hierarchy, which, during the
twentieth century, has been increasingly closely associated
with chauvinism, xenophobia and war.
While true in some senses, Benedict Anderson's definition
offers no limits on what a nation is, other than that other
nations exist so boundaries must exist between nations.
Benedict Anderson's definition of a "nation" does not
explicitly separate nations from other forms of communal
identity and thus generalizes nations as any form of
community large enough to be "imagined" in his statement
"all communities larger than primordial villages of face- to-
face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined."13
Serious technical issues arise from Benedict Anderson's
definition of a "nation" because it lacks limitations on size
and type of identity. By his definition, a nation could consist
of any community too big for everyone to know each other
and small enough to have other nations. His definition could
account for small towns and extend to the entirety of the
human race, given of course that the boundary of the human
race consists of the "nation" of animals of the "nation" of
aliens. He creates a Russian nesting doll of communities,
where smaller imagined communities fit into larger ones on a
hierarchical scale. He makes no distinction between a so-
called imagined community and a nation, playing only on the
assumption that the reader can distinguish between the two.
A distinction must exist to make his definition more telling of
what a nation does and does not consist of.

Benedict Anderson does little to distinguish political nations

from other communal groups, creating blurred lines about
what constitutes a nation and what does not. Anderson
mentions religious and ethnic groups in passing, but does not
offer a solid distinction between the two groups and a
"nation". He continues to label a "nation" as a political entity,
therefore causing the assumption that he believes religious
and ethnic groups to be some "other," despite the influences
that both religion and ethnicity can have on politics. Ashutosh
Varshney writes about ethnic conflict that extends into
politics with his statement, "ethnic conflicts, while grounded
in ascriptive group identities, are not always about
identities."15 Ethnic conflict can relate to "economic
resources, seats in parliament, and schools, about job quotas
or affirmative action."16 Varshney touches on the idea that
while ethnicities have basis in identity, they can play a
significant role in politics and cause conflict on the national
scale.

Anderson recognized that nationalism is always limited to a

particular nation, but at the same time insisted that the
notion of the nation demonstrated our ability to identify with
people we have never met. He, therefore, rightly, pointed out
that nationalism contained an utopian clement.

Benedict Anderson argues that a nation is a combination of

modern cultures and historical events, yet he does little to
account for internal historical issues in his thesis. He argues
that a nation encompasses a "community," that "regardless
of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in
each [nation], the nation is always conceived as a deep,
horizontal comradeship."28 Yet separatist movements, civil
wars, and other internal unrest have persisted as national
problems for centuries.

Although one can and should be critical of Anderson's neglect

of the exclusive nature of nationalism, his analysis of the
modern origins of nationalism at the same time shows that
the delimitation of the nation is an arbitrary historical and
relatively new process prompted by the interplay of historical
circumstances with specific political projects and interests.

Anderson's analysis shows that nationalist fantasies of

ancient greatness are in fact rooted in modern political
projects based on relatively arbitrary geographical and
linguistic divisions and political interest. There is no pre-
historical or necessary basis for the delineation of our
imagined communities. It is therefore also possible to
imagine other, more inclusive forms of community based on
Anderson's seminal work - forms of community that may one
day move beyond the limitations of the nation state.