Short summary of Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
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Course
Nationalisme en racialisering
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Book
Imagined Communities
It's a brief summary with Anderson's main arguments sorted by chapter. This summary is useful for the nationalism and racialization exams that only require you to know Anderson's main arguments.
Belangrijke quotes uit hoofdstuk 1:
- ‘The nation as an ‘imagined community’ is both inherently limited
and sovereign’
o Limited: er zijn altijd mensen uitgesloten
o Sovereign: de natie heeft zelfbeschikking
- ‘There is a difference between nationalism and ethnicity… [but] one
of the worrying things that is going on now’
- ‘…the ‘end of the era of nationalism’, so long prophesied, is not
remotely in sight. Indeed, nation-ness is the most universally
legitimate value in the political life of our life of our time.’
- ‘The nationalists are riding high on promises to close borders and
restore societies to a past homogeneity’
- Nationalisme is ook iets positiefs. Het zorgt voor liefde voor elkaar
- Interview op Youtube: ‘… is that in the old European nations, which
were historically not that closed… there is this growing feeling that…
Englishness that is something in the blood rather than in the
culture…’
o De nadruk van wat de natie is en wie daarbij hoort veranderd
o De natie van vandaag is anders, vroeger was deze meer open
Chapter 2 – Cultural Roots
Nationalism developed against social systems that were already in place,
like religious communities and dynastic realms
Changing experience of time:
1. First: people lived at the end of time. People thought Christ could
come back any moment
2. Later: people started to focus more on the future. After they die time
keeps on going.
There was a more shared sense of time: this was shaped through
newspapers, novels, and shared rituals. These created the idea of
linear time experiences
o The newspapers caused for people to imagine a community.
Everyone in the administrative unit got the same
newspaper which shared the news of what happened in this
administrative unit
This idea of simultaneity is the basis of the nation
This can also be called the move from the conception of
simultaneity-along-time towards a simultaneity of homogeneous and
empty time
Main points of the chapter:
- Nationalism developed against dynastic systems and religious
communities
, - A new idea/ sense of time developed which was mainly caused
because of newspapers and novels
Chapter 3 – The Origins of National Consciousness
- Because of printing capitalism, printing languages were created, this
caused for a connection between people
o People wanted to make more money (capitalism), so they
created a language everyone could read which caused for a
single/ a few important languages in a nation
Interaction between three things that caused for the origins of national
consciousness which made the new communities imaginable:
- System of production -> capitalism
- New technologies -> print technology
- Fatality (onvermijdbaarheid) of linguistic diversity: There will always
be multiple groups with multiple languages. The printers started
printing in vernaculars, which caused for the loss of many
languages, but there will always be diversity. Language is important
for creating the idea of an imagined community.
They interplay -> capitalism uses technology which has an
impact on the fatality of languages
Print languages laid the foundation for national consciousness:
- Unified fields of exchange of communication
- Fixity to language
- Languages of power
Chapter 4 – Creole pioneers
Creoles: people who came from Europe and lived in America
They were not seen as European nor American
They were the first to develop nationalism
Peninsulars (people born in Spain who live in America) were in
power
2 main causes for the feeling of nation-ness:
1. Tightening control of Madrid -> creole functionaries could not move
up in rank like the peninsulars, and had not the highest position
which made them frustrated at Madrid
o Example of pilgrimage: the pilgrimages are a metaphor which
makes people more connected with other. All these
functionaries moved through these administrative unit and
met each other, which made them realize that there were
other people with the same struggles and the same
frustrations.
o Due to the newspapers and the pilgrimages the creole
functionaries started imagine a community and a sense of
belonging -> ‘pilgrim creole functionaries and provincial creole
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