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Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
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.
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.
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Community Reviews
I am giving this book three stars only because it is a seminal work in the field of historical studies and because it did encapsulate some great basic ideas. However, I found myself completely bogged down by the writing style. To me, the majority of the book felt very jumbled and confused. I could almost feel him sitting behind me going, "Oooh, and let's not forget about this. . .oh oh, don't forget this!" The examples felt very disjoined and almost as if he was including them for the mere purpose of including them. Like, let's see how many different nations we can talk about in the span of fifty pages. Answer -- too many. Additionally, within his example, he jumped around quite a bit and assumed a lot of his audience. It was like he felt his audience should already have a basic understanding of the histories of countries such as Indonesia and Burma. I do not, and so those examples were mostly wasted on me since I did not have the beginning knowledge to more fully appreciate it. The examples he did give from my particular area of expertise were shallow at best even though they would have wonderfully illustrated most of the concepts he was discussing. One of my other big problems was that I felt that sometimes he had too much of a Valley Girl style (e.g. "But I have been informed by scholars of Japan that recent excavations of the earliest royal tombs suggest strongly that the family may originally have been -- horrors! - Korean"). Horrors? With an exclamation point? Are you even kidding me? This is not a blog posting, this is not a travel article for a newspaper, this is a scholarly treatise.
Despite all of that, the ideas here are interesting. Anderson makes many solid points about the connection between the formation of imagined communities and print-capitalism, language and the downfall of dynastic monarchies, among other things. As a text which informed a variety of historical studies and later works, it is a significant work. Maybe I would have liked it if I had read it for a class or in pieces (cutting out some of the seemingly extraneous examples), but since I read it all in two days and for an independent study, I am not too enamored. Better luck next time.
Despite all of that, the ideas here are interesting. Anderson makes many solid points about the connection between the formation of imagined communities and print-capitalism, language and the downfall of dynastic monarchies, among other things. As a text which informed a variety of historical studies and later works, it is a significant work. Maybe I would have liked it if I had read it for a class or in pieces (cutting out some of the seemingly extraneous examples), but since I read it all in two days and for an independent study, I am not too enamored. Better luck next time.
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