Source: http://www.city.fukuoka.lg.jp/fu-a/en/culture_prizes/detail/52.html, October 22, 2012.
Benedict Anderson is best known for his work regarding Nationalism in his book Imagined Communities.
Anderson defines the nation as, “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” (Anderson, B., 1983, p.6).
“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…It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which the 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 occur in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship” (Anderson, B., 1983, p.7).
Question 1. Do we agree with Anderson’s definition of the nation?
- Nationalism as a Positive Force
During an interview at the International Literature Festival in Stavanger, Anderson makes the case for nationalism as a positive force:
“I must be the only one writing about nationalism who doesn’t think it ugly. If you think about researchers such as Gellner and Hobsbawm, they have quite a hostile attitude to nationalism. I actually think that nationalism can be an attractive ideology. I like its Utopian elements”
A link to the full interview can be found below:
https://www.uio.no/english/research/interfaculty-research-areas/culcom/news/2005/anderson.html
In Imagined Communities, Anderson argues that nationalism is not linked with racism:
“The fact of the matter is that nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies, while racism dreams of eternal contaminations, transmitted from the origins of time through an endless sequence of loathsome copulations: outside history…The dreams of racism actually have their origin in ideologies of class, rather than in those of nation: above all in claims to divinity among rulers and to ‘blue’ or ‘white’ blood and ‘breeding’ among aristocracies” (Anderson, 1983, p.149).
However, in their review, the Influence of Benedict Anderson, McCleery and Brabon (2007) argue that, “whenever civic nations (as they imagine themselves)raise barriers against immigrants and even those seeking asylum, they almost always do so on a racialized basis”.
Question 2. To what extent do we agree with Benedict Anderson and his view that nationalism is a force for good?
- Imagined Communities: Language
“What the eye is to the lover – that particular, ordinary eye he or she is born with – language – whatever language history has made his or her mother-tongue – is to the patriot. Through that language, encountered at mother’s knee and parted with only at the grave, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed” (Anderson, 1983, p.154).
Anderson argues that language plays a key role in national identity and nationalism throughout Imagined Communities.
Claims are made that Flemish speakers in Belgium have been marginalized. This has given rise to a Flemish nationalist movement which has seen recent political success. Relevant articles can be found below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19943890
http://www.academia.edu/1416130/The_long_language_ideological_debate_in_Belgium_2011
Source: http://www.flags.net/BELG.htm, October 22, 2012.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vlaamse_vlag.jpg, October 22, 2012.
Question 3. Do the recent political gains of Flemish Nationalists prove Anderson right? How does this compare with other nations and nationalist movements?
- Imagined Communities: Sport
Anderson (1983) suggested that while the most members of one single nation will not know each other, they are brought together by the image of their communion. Anderson’s concept of imagined communities carries the idea that nations can be re-imagined and therefore transformed.
Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3634426/How-Nelson-Mandela-won-the-rugby-World-Cup.html, October 23, 2012.
The Springboks team, explicitly supported by President Nelson Mandela was projected as a symbol of democratic multi-racial South Africa. The team’s success projected a positive image and rapid political changes that took place in South Africa. The victory of South Africa is not like any other sporting victory, but as a victory of the nation over continuous racial wars. The media directly links this rugby game to political rhetoric, which is supposed to reinforce South African national identity and promote country’s status of a ‘new’ stable nation. “Nations are what their citizens imagine them to be, and nation-building occurs not only through political and economic processes, but also in cultural and symbolic contexts. In this regard, arenas such as sport, and representations of sport and nation in the media, are crucial sites for imagining and re-imagining the nation” (Farquharson & Marjoribanks, 2003, p. 45).
Interesting images to look at:
Source: http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2007/england-never-surrender/, October 23, 2012.
Source: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/rbs_lets_get_behind_scotland, October 23, 2012.
Source: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/burton-will-the-u-s-ever-host-the-olympics-again-1.3902451, October 23, 2012.
Question 4. Do you agree that sporting events create and reinforce imagined communities, for example, how effective was the London 2012 Olympics in conveying an imagined community?
Imagined Communities, Diasporas and the Impact of Modern Technology
As we saw, Anderson’s definition of a nation assumes some level of “contrasting” with an “Other” (the limited aspect) – it is therefore all the more interesting to apply his definition of a nation to diaspora and migrant communities.
Consider two somewhat different examples. One is the issue of Sikh nationalist and separatist movements in Canada. While most Sikhs worldwide are believed to have abandoned the notion of an independent Khalistan, a separate Sikh state (in the territories more or less corresponding to Punjab in India), there is still evidence that separatism is flourishing in Canada, believed to have the largest Sikh diaspora in the world (for more details see: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/804021–sikh-separatism-still-alive-and-festering-in-canada ). But this issue, while rising to prominence in Canadian politics, has not had a huge impact on politics in India.
On the other hand, if you look at the impact of Arab and Jewish diasporas (and their nationalisms) on the politics of numerous Western powers as well as Middle Eastern states, not to mention their home countries, you can see the level of influence is quite different.
This raises certain questions regarding the impact of current technological opportunities (media, internet, and also travel) on the spread of certain nationalisms from country to country and from continent to continent. How do diasporas then relate back to their compatriots in the countries of their origin and what impact does this have on the nationalism back home?
Question 5. How do you see the “imagined communities” growing and spreading their nationalism in new areas in the modern world?
Barbara, Euan, Luba, Mar-Lisa.
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