203
See also: Paul Gilroy 75 ■ Edward Said 80–81 ■ Elijah Anderson 82–83 ■
Saskia Sassen 164–65 ■ David Held 170–71 ■ Stuart Hall 200–01
CULTURE AND IDENTITY
that is imagined as both limited
and sovereign.” He explains that
it is “imagined” because members
of even the smallest nation in the
world will never know or even meet
most of their fellow-members, but
“in the minds of each lives the
image of their communion.”
National consciousness
The idea of the nation is “limited,”
Anderson argues, because even
the largest of nations has finite
boundaries, although these are
“elastic” (due, for example, to
movement from immigration,
emigration, and contested
territories). No nation has ever
entertained the possibility of
making everyone in the world part
of “their nation,” he says, in the way
that a religion, such as Christianity,
would like to see everyone joined
in one, unified belief system.
Anderson claims that one of
the ways in which nationalities
revealed their “elastic borders” was
via the printing industry. In the
16th century, booksellers catered
to the educated, Latin-speaking
minorities, but realized they
needed to reach larger markets for
bigger profits. Unable to cater for
the many regional dialects, they
chose the larger ones, and as these
dialects gained stability in print,
so they created unified fields of
communication and helped define
what the nation should “look like.”Giving life purpose
Sovereignty is also part of this
idea of the nation, Anderson says,
because the concept arose during
the Enlightenment and an era of
revolution. Religions lost their
unquestioned grip on people’s
minds, and it was no longer
accepted that monarchs had been
divinely chosen by God to rule.
The sovereign state allowed the
structure of a nation to exist
without calling on its people to
believe in religious dogma. But
with the death of religious rule,
questions about the meaning of
life went unanswered, according
to Anderson. The rationality of the
Enlightenment did not suggest any
reason for living, or dying—but
with the idea of the nation, a new
purpose arose. Here was something
worth dying for, and it also
provided a sense of continuity of
purpose that people had previously
gained from an idea of the afterlife
(such as heaven).
Some have questioned
Anderson’s theory, in particular
with respect to the Arabic world,
which continues to use a classical
form of language and is still defined
by religious belief. However, at a
time in which political unrest is
rife within “sub-nations” (such as
Scotland or Catalonia) around the
world, Anderson’s idea of imagined
nationhood has proved both
controversial and hugely influential.
Imagined Communities has been
published in 29 languages. ■Benedict Anderson
Benedict Richard Anderson
is professor emeritus of
international studies,
government, and Asian
studies at Cornell University,
US. Born in Kunming, China,
in 1936, he was the son of
an Irish father and English
mother who had been active
in Irish nationalist movements.
The family emigrated to
California in 1941, and
thereafter to Ireland.
Anderson was educated at
Eton College in Berkshire,
England. He took a degree
in classics at the University
of Cambridge in 1957.
A fascination with Asian
politics led Anderson to
undertake a PhD at Cornell
University, which included a
period of research in Jakarta,
Indonesia. His public response
to the 1965 communist coup
there resulted in him being
deported from the country,
after which he traveled in
Thailand for several years
before returning to Cornell
to teach.Key works1983 Imagined Communities
1998 The Spectre of
Comparisons
2007 Under Three FlagsNationality, or... nation-ness,
as well as nationalism,
are cultural artifacts.
Benedict Anderson