A nation is:

‘a named human population sharing an

historic territory, common myths and
historical memories, a mass, public culture, a
common economy and common legal rights
and duties for all members’
(Anthony Smith, National Identity, 1991: 14).
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1991)

“The nation is an imagined political community and imagined as both inherently

limited and sovereign”

"It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most
of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each
lives the image of their communion.

"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.

"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. 

"Finally, 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
 Montserrat Guibernau, The Identity of Nations

Five Dimensions to National Identity

1. Psychological: consciousness, felt closeness, emotions.

2. Cultural: Shared symbols, values, beliefs and customs
3. Historical: shared historical myths and foundational events
4. Territorial: bounded, finite, territory
5. Political: relations to the modern nation-state
 Ernest Renan, What is a Nation? (1882)

What is a Nation? (1882)

"Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of
a nation.“

“Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors have made
us what we are.”

“A nation’s existence is […] a daily plebiscite.”

“Nations are not something eternal. They had their beginnings and they will end. A
European confederation will very probably replace them.”

“The existence of nations is a good thing, a necessity even. Their existence is the
guarantee of liberty […]”

“A nation is a moral conscience […]”

Ernest Renan 1823 –1892

  Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition

 Invented traditions is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by

overtly or tacitly accepted rules or symbolic nature; which seek to inculcate
certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically
implies continuity with the past.
 Repetition is important in order to make it feel like it is a “tradition.”
 Inventing tradition defies the very basic idea of primordial nationalism
 The nation, nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, histories and the
rest, all rest on exercises in social engineering which are often deliberate and
always innovative
 Dulce et Decorum Est
On youtube

Wilfred Owen
1893-1918
Graceville War Memorial, Queensland,
Australia

“It is good to die

for our country.” Memorial Amphitheater - rear
Tel Hai, Israel Queen's Park, Toronto pediment - Arlington National
Cemetery