Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

How to Do Things With Words

Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

Nations and Nationalism

1.. HARD CASES 5. Legal Rights A. Legislation . . . We might therefore do well to consider how a philosophical judge might develop, in appropriate cases, theories of what legislative purpose and legal principles require. We shall find that he would construct these theories in the same manner as a philosophical referee would construct the character of a game. I have invented, for this purpose, a lawyer of superhuman skill, learning, patience and acumen, whom I shall call Hercules. I suppose that Hercules is a judge in some representative American jurisdiction. I assume that he accepts the main uncontroversial constitutive and regulative rules of the law in his jurisdiction. He accepts, that is, that statutes have the general power to create and extinguish legal rights, and that judges have the general duty to follow earlier decisions of their court or higher courts whose rationale, as l

Taking Rights Seriously

Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature
of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined
community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one
can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer,
in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring
the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the
notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind
of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by
definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us
describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.

On Imagined Communities

Drawing on recent survey data, digital ethnography and comparative analysis, this article presents a critical re-appraisal of the interactive blogosphere in China and its effects on Chinese social and political life. Focused on the discursive and behaviorist trends of Chinese netizens rather than the ubiquitous information control/resistance paradigm, it argues that the Sinophone blogosphere is producing the same shallow infotainment, pernicious misinformation, and interest-based ghettos that it creates elsewhere in the world, and these more prosaic elements need to be considered alongside the Chinese internet's potential for creating new forms of civic activism and socio-political change.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0021911811001550

Blogging Alone: China, the Internet, and the Democratic Illusion?

Addressing the problem of the ‘Han’ ethnos from a variety of relevant perspectives—historical, geographical, racial, political, literary, anthropological, and linguistic—Critical Han Studies offers a responsible, informative deconstruction of this monumental yet murky category. It is certain to have an enormous impact on the entire field of China studies.” Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania “This deeply historical, multidisciplinary volume consistently and fruitfully employs insights from critical race and whiteness studies in a new arena. In doing so it illuminates brightly how and when ideas about race and ethnicity change in the service of shifting configurations of power.” David Roediger, author of How Race Survived U.S. History “A great book. By examining the social construction of hierarchy in China,Critical Han Studiessheds light on broad issues of cultural dominance and in-group favoritism.” Richard Delgado, author of Critical Race Theory: An Introduction “A powerful, probing account of the idea of the ‘Han Chinese’—that deceptive category which, like ‘American,’ is so often presented as a natural default, even though it really is of recent vintage. . . . A feast for both Sinologists and comparativists everywhere.” Magnus Fiskesjo, Cornell University “This collection of trenchant, penetrating essays interrogates what it means to be ‘Han’ in China, both historically and today. It will make a valuable and enduring contribution to our understanding of the uniqueness and complexity of Chinese history and culture. Dru Gladney, Pomona College Constituting over ninety percent of China's population, Han is not only the largest ethnonational group in that country but also one of the largest categories of human identity in world history. In this pathbreaking volume, a multidisciplinary group of scholars examine this ambiguous identity, one that shares features with, but cannot be subsumed under, existing notions of ethnicity, culture, race, nationality, and civilization. Thomas S. Mullaney is a professor of history at Stanford University. James Leibold is senior lecturer and Asian studies program convenor at La Trobe University. Stephane Gros is a research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Eric Vanden Bussche is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University. Contributors: Uradyn E. Bulag, Kevin Carrico, Zhihong Chen, Tamara Chin, Mark Elliott, C. Patterson Giersch, James Leibold, Thomas S. Mullaney, Nicholas Tapp, Emma J. Teng, Chris Vasantkumar, and Xu Jieshun Series: New Perspectives on Chinese Culture and Society, vol. 4

/pdf/critical-han-studies-the-history-representation-and-identity-37a4t02sey.pdf

Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority

Reconfiguring Chinese NationalismModern China's Ethnic FrontiersA History of ChinaLabrang MonasteryMissionary Primitivism and Chinese ModernityRevealing/Reveiling ShanghaiNation and EthnicityChinese SocietyGlobal PoliticsAfter EmpireChinaChina's Route HeritageThe Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval WorldsComing to Terms with the NationHistorical Dictionary of Modern China (1800-1949)The People's Republic of China at 60Revolution, State Succession, International Treaties and the Diaoyu/Diaoyutai IslandsWorld Yearbook of Education 2022The Silk RoadChina's Encounters on the South and SouthwestOverseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and NationalismChina Reconnects: Joining A Deep-rooted Past To A New World OrderEthnic Policy in ChinaFamine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet UnionNarrating Southern Chinese Minority NationalitiesChinese National Identity in the Age of GlobalisationChina's Digital NationalismChinese History in Geographical PerspectiveInterpreting China as a Regional and Global PowerThe SAGE Handbook of Contemporary ChinaReconfiguring Class, Gender, Ethnicity and Ethics in Chinese Internet CultureShadow StatesStaging the WorldXinjiang and the Modern Chinese StateCentral AsiaExplorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands, 1880-1950Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860–1960China and the WorldThe Invention of ChinaCulture, Music Education, and the Chinese Dream in Mainland China

Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and its Indigenes Became Chinese

Using the October 2008 slapping incident of historian Yan Chongnian as a case study, this article attempts to contextualize and critically examine the articulation of Han supremacism on the Chinese internet. It demonstrates how an informal group of non-elite, urban youth are mobilizing the ancient Han ethnonym to challenge the Chinese Communist Party's official policy of multiculturalism, while seeking to promote pride and self-identification with the Han race (han minzu ) to the exclusion of the non-Han minorities. In contrast to most of the Anglophone literature on Chinese nationalism, this article seeks to employ "Han" as a "boundary-spanner", a category that turns our analysis of Chinese national identity formation on its head, side-stepping the "usual suspects" (intellectuals, dissidents and the state itself) and the prominent role of the "foreign other" in Chinese ethnogenesis, and instead probing the unstable plurality of the self/othering process in modern China and the role of the internet in opening up new spaces for non-mainstream identity articulation. © 2010 The China Quarterly.

James Leibold

Papers

Blogging Alone: China, the Internet, and the Democratic Illusion?

Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority

Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and its Indigenes Became Chinese

More Than a Category : Han Supremacism on the Chinese Internet.

Reconfiguring Chinese nationalism