Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

Benedict Anderson rightly described nations as ‘imagined communities’. They have boundaries and resources but are also held together by selective memories of great battles and heroes—and the equally careful forgetting of uncomfortable facts—woven into useful myths that provide a simplified map of the past into which we can insert ourselves, a refer

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Markets and states do so by fostering ‘imagined communities’ that contain millions of strangers, and which are tailored to national and commercial needs. An imagined community is a community of people who don’t really know each other, but imagine that they do. Such communities are not a novel invention. Kingdoms, empires and churches functioned for

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Consumerism and nationalism work extra hours to make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community as ourselves, that we all have a common past, common interests and a common future. This isn’t a lie. It’s imagination. Like money, limited liability companies and human rights, nations and consumer tribes are inter-subjective rea

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