--- product_id: 34795759 title: "Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism" price: "VT6940" currency: VUV in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.vu/products/34795759-imagined-communities-reflections-on-the-origin-and-spread-of-nationalism store_origin: VU region: Vanuatu --- # Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism **Price:** VT6940 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism - **How much does it cost?** VT6940 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.vu](https://www.desertcart.vu/products/34795759-imagined-communities-reflections-on-the-origin-and-spread-of-nationalism) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description This “sparkling” and world-famous work examines what drives people to live, die, and kill in the name of nations—revealing the surprising origins and development of nationalism ( The Guardian ). The full magnitude of Benedict Anderson’s intellectual achievement is still being appreciated and debated. Imagined Communities remains the most influential book on the origins of nationalism, filling the vacuum that previously existed in the traditions of Western thought. Cited more often than any other single English-language work in the human sciences, it is read around the world in more than thirty translations. Written with exemplary clarity, this illuminating study traces the emergence of community as an idea to South America, rather than to nineteenth-century Europe. Later, this sense of belonging was formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, through print, literature, maps and museums. Following the rise and conflict of nations and the decline of empires, Anderson draws on examples from South East Asia, Latin America and Europe’s recent past to show how nationalism shaped the modern world. Review: ''Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers'' (33) - Anderson highlights the ''imaginary'' part of nationalism. The nation is just a mental construct, and a recent one at that. This can require a shift in mental gears to one who feels devotion to his 'nation' is what makes life significant. And anyone that feels his group is connected to some eternal past/future will be stunned. Anderson covers abundant historical and emotional evidence to support his theme. For example, what unites millions of diverse individuals? What shared customs confirms their connectedness? Not daily prayers to God, but morning/evening mental unity with all fellow news readers/listeners. - ''The significance of this mass ceremony –Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers –is paradoxical. It is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull.'' How can this isolated, individual action produce unity? '''Yet each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion. Furthermore, this ceremony is incessantly repeated at daily or half-daily intervals throughout the calendar. What more vivid figure for the secular, historically clocked, imagined community can be envisioned?'' (33) Each reader/listener knows exactly the thoughts of all! What connection. What unity! 1 Introduction 2 Cultural Roots 3 The Origins of National Consciousness 4 Creole Pioneers 5 Old Languages, New Models 6 Official Nationalism and Imperialism 7 The Last Wave 8 Patriotism and Racism 9 The Angel of History 10 Census, Map, Museum 11 Memory and Forgetting Travel and Traffic: On the Geo-biography of Imagined Communities Bibliography Index Anderson is not sympathetic to nationalism. From the introduction - ''It is characteristic that even so sympathetic a student of nationalism as Tom Nairn can nonetheless write that: ‘ “Nationalism” is the pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as “neurosis” in the individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world (the equivalent of infantilism for societies) and largely incurable.’' Wow! The connection/contrast of nationalism with religion surfaces consistently. ''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.'' This distinction is crucial for modern nationalism. ''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. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith’s ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.'' Key idea. Nationalism is a recent invention due to the demise of Christendom. Many other insights. Writing is not always smooth or clear. Sometimes feels like reader is thrown into the middle of a conversation without background. Some subjects seem to continue beyond what is needed. Examples so detailed that idea submerged. Nevertheless, interesting and eye opening. (This note added 6/2/18. Recently found the work of Professor Hans Kohn. Spent lifetime of scholarship on Nationalism, history, meaning, impact, etc., etc.. Great!) Review: A compelling read for scholars - The recent rise of nationalism, as reflected by the vitriolic nature of national politics in many countries had inspired me to seek answers in Benjamin Anderson’s seminal work. ‘The Imagined Communities’ was originally published in 1983, and the current revised edition was released in 2006. This is the definitive text on the nationalism. Anderson postulates that nations are a complex, socio-political, and cultural constructs that emerge in the imagining of groups of people. He traces three main, interrelated themes of influence in the imagining of nations. Firstly, he explores the influence of language, script and mass literacy, with the fall of the old ‘sacred’ languages like Latin and the spread of vernacular language through the advent of ‘print capitalism’ (a happy merger between print technology and capitalism). Secondly, the de-authorization of centripetal power structures, like monarchies and dynasties with divinely vested rule is examined. Finally, the very notion of time are reimagined is flat and continuous. Benedict Anderson makes his concepts relevant to global citizens by drawing examples from Europe and the former colonies in the Americas and Asia. The independence achieved by the colonies in the Americas were in a different time and had different influences, compared to the fairly recent colonial independence of the South East Asian countries. Being a South East Asian scholar, Anderson lovingly contrasts the colonies of French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, detailing the influences that caused Indochina to fragment into three separate states (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), while the vast and varied island populations of Dutch East Indies to meld with relative harmony into Indonesia. Also explored are the shaping of a nation’s borders and consciousness by its conquerors by means of economic and military defined maps, national census that require categorisation of people and the propaganda of antiquities in museums. This is a compelling read, albeit a fairly difficult one. Anderson writes mainly in English, but scattered in are words, sentences and paragraphs in innumerable other languages, thus the narration is stunted. Also, the author writes for a more educated audience, as a layperson in the fields of sociology, political science, and history, I struggled with the sometimes unhelpful footnotes and references. Nevertheless, this is a compelling read, and I am happy to note translated to many languages to reach a wider audience. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #70,171 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #10 in Nationalism (Books) #21 in Colonialism & Post-Colonialism #102 in History & Theory of Politics | | Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,024 Reviews | ## Images ![Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61DThfFjhZL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ''Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers'' (33) *by C***R on January 10, 2017* Anderson highlights the ''imaginary'' part of nationalism. The nation is just a mental construct, and a recent one at that. This can require a shift in mental gears to one who feels devotion to his 'nation' is what makes life significant. And anyone that feels his group is connected to some eternal past/future will be stunned. Anderson covers abundant historical and emotional evidence to support his theme. For example, what unites millions of diverse individuals? What shared customs confirms their connectedness? Not daily prayers to God, but morning/evening mental unity with all fellow news readers/listeners. - ''The significance of this mass ceremony –Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers –is paradoxical. It is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull.'' How can this isolated, individual action produce unity? '''Yet each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion. Furthermore, this ceremony is incessantly repeated at daily or half-daily intervals throughout the calendar. What more vivid figure for the secular, historically clocked, imagined community can be envisioned?'' (33) Each reader/listener knows exactly the thoughts of all! What connection. What unity! 1 Introduction 2 Cultural Roots 3 The Origins of National Consciousness 4 Creole Pioneers 5 Old Languages, New Models 6 Official Nationalism and Imperialism 7 The Last Wave 8 Patriotism and Racism 9 The Angel of History 10 Census, Map, Museum 11 Memory and Forgetting Travel and Traffic: On the Geo-biography of Imagined Communities Bibliography Index Anderson is not sympathetic to nationalism. From the introduction - ''It is characteristic that even so sympathetic a student of nationalism as Tom Nairn can nonetheless write that: ‘ “Nationalism” is the pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as “neurosis” in the individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world (the equivalent of infantilism for societies) and largely incurable.’' Wow! The connection/contrast of nationalism with religion surfaces consistently. ''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.'' This distinction is crucial for modern nationalism. ''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. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith’s ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.'' Key idea. Nationalism is a recent invention due to the demise of Christendom. Many other insights. Writing is not always smooth or clear. Sometimes feels like reader is thrown into the middle of a conversation without background. Some subjects seem to continue beyond what is needed. Examples so detailed that idea submerged. Nevertheless, interesting and eye opening. (This note added 6/2/18. Recently found the work of Professor Hans Kohn. Spent lifetime of scholarship on Nationalism, history, meaning, impact, etc., etc.. Great!) ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A compelling read for scholars *by T***N on July 5, 2017* The recent rise of nationalism, as reflected by the vitriolic nature of national politics in many countries had inspired me to seek answers in Benjamin Anderson’s seminal work. ‘The Imagined Communities’ was originally published in 1983, and the current revised edition was released in 2006. This is the definitive text on the nationalism. Anderson postulates that nations are a complex, socio-political, and cultural constructs that emerge in the imagining of groups of people. He traces three main, interrelated themes of influence in the imagining of nations. Firstly, he explores the influence of language, script and mass literacy, with the fall of the old ‘sacred’ languages like Latin and the spread of vernacular language through the advent of ‘print capitalism’ (a happy merger between print technology and capitalism). Secondly, the de-authorization of centripetal power structures, like monarchies and dynasties with divinely vested rule is examined. Finally, the very notion of time are reimagined is flat and continuous. Benedict Anderson makes his concepts relevant to global citizens by drawing examples from Europe and the former colonies in the Americas and Asia. The independence achieved by the colonies in the Americas were in a different time and had different influences, compared to the fairly recent colonial independence of the South East Asian countries. Being a South East Asian scholar, Anderson lovingly contrasts the colonies of French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, detailing the influences that caused Indochina to fragment into three separate states (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), while the vast and varied island populations of Dutch East Indies to meld with relative harmony into Indonesia. Also explored are the shaping of a nation’s borders and consciousness by its conquerors by means of economic and military defined maps, national census that require categorisation of people and the propaganda of antiquities in museums. This is a compelling read, albeit a fairly difficult one. Anderson writes mainly in English, but scattered in are words, sentences and paragraphs in innumerable other languages, thus the narration is stunted. Also, the author writes for a more educated audience, as a layperson in the fields of sociology, political science, and history, I struggled with the sometimes unhelpful footnotes and references. Nevertheless, this is a compelling read, and I am happy to note translated to many languages to reach a wider audience. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Extremely interesting *by T***N on February 9, 2013* Although published in 1983, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities is still one of the standard works on nationalism. As Anderson points out numerous times in the book, although nationalism has become the dominant political force of the modern world, there is no agreed upon definition of nationalism. Political theorists and historians generally agree that nationalism first rose in the late eighteenth century, but beyond that the picture is muddled. Arguing against Marxists who underrate nationalism, Anderson thinks the successful revolutions of the twentieth century have all been nationalist. More important than that, though, is Anderson's contention that the nation is an imagined community and that nationalism is perceived as destiny. As such, Anderson's book very much is in line with the books assigned for this course. Anderson argues that nationalism triumphed in the Americas due to friction between revolutionary creoles and the imperial governments that ruled them. In many ways, the creole nationalists would have been content with the European government that ruled them if they could be part of the political process. But, after being shown they were expendable and/or unnecessary, the creoles attempted to create a national consciousness. One area where Anderson and several of the books we read disagree is on the role of patriotism and racism. Anderson argues that racism should be disassociated from racism and attached instead to class. Disagreeing with this, historians of whiteness studies and several historians of the South, including Stephanie McCurry, have shown that race was often linked to national identity. Especially in the United States, to be a white man was to be American for essentially the entire nineteenth century. In many ways, Anderson's book is a discussion of what makes people not only unite as a nation, but see themselves as part of a group of people, especially when they will never meet their other countrymen. This is certainly a question that has been explored in many of the books we have read. What makes an American? Based on the books we have read this semester, there are different answers to that. One of the more interesting answers might be Stephanie McCurry's. Although she is talking about the Confederate States, she successfully argues that while the government was founded with the idea that only white men were members of the community, white women were able to make their voice heard. So, in some ways, the mere act of interacting with the government makes one "American." Other historians, such as Charles Sellers, would argue that it is the economics of the United States that link the nation together. Capitalism, and the market, allowed Americans to feel unified. Still others, like Sean Wilentz, would point to the politics of the United States as what links everyone together. To be sure, not everyone agrees on politics or even participates, but Wilentz argues that it was participatory democracy that unified the country. The interesting thing is that none of these historians, except maybe McCurry, were even discussing nationalism. However, it is nearly impossible to discuss the sense of unification of a country and not touch on nationalism. As such, nationalism has become more prevalent in the past thirty years or so. However, there still does not seem to be an agreed-upon definition of exactly what nationalism is. Because Anderson's book has been so influential, though, his definition has become one of the standards in the field. ## Frequently Bought Together - Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism - Nations and Nationalism (New Perspectives on the Past) - Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Canto Classics) --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.vu/products/34795759-imagined-communities-reflections-on-the-origin-and-spread-of-nationalism](https://www.desertcart.vu/products/34795759-imagined-communities-reflections-on-the-origin-and-spread-of-nationalism) --- *Product available on Desertcart Vanuatu* *Store origin: VU* *Last updated: 2026-06-06*