Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society

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

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17450100500489189

Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings

The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth- Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art

The author of this text explores notions of authenticity in German and American folklore studies from the 18th century to the present. She demonstrates how authenticity was used to foster national causes and uphold a belief in cultural essence against feelings of loss inherent in modernization.

In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies

Tourists at the Taj: Performance and Meaning at a Symbolic Site

Universitätsverlag Göttingen Universitätsverlag Göttingen W happens when UNESCO heritage conventions are ratifi ed by a state? How do UNESCO’s global efforts interact with preexisting local, regional and state efforts to conserve or promote culture? What new institutions emerge to address the mandate? The contributors to this volume focus on the work of translation and interpretation that ensues once heritage conventions are ratifi ed and implemented. With seventeen case studies from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and China, the volume provides comparative evidence for the divergent heritage regimes generated in states that differ in history and political organization. The cases illustrate how UNESCO’s aspiration to honor and celebrate cultural diversity diversifi es itself. The very effort to adopt a global heritage regime forces myriad adaptations to particular state and interstate modalities of building and managing heritage.

Heritage Regimes and the State

Discussions of tourism andfolklore usually stress the economic motivations that lead to the creation offolkloristic displays and until recently decried the impact of tourism on "authentic"folklore. Using the case ofInterlaken, a Swiss resort, this article postulates that natives may not necessarily gear theirfolkloric inventions toward theforeign guests, but thatfolkloric spectacles can be a means of creating and asserting local identity in theface ofseasonal massforeign invasion.

Tourism and Cultural Displays: Inventing Traditions for Whom?

In the 1990s, a critical cultural historian could exclaim, with considerable
frustration, ‘Suddenly, cultural heritage is everywhere’ (Lowenthal 1996: ix).
Since then, scholarship on heritage practices has enjoyed a boom of its own.
It is as difﬁcult to categorise the scholarship about it as to comprehend the
phenomenon: constitution, use, evaluation, and critique of cultural heritage
intertwine in scholarly discourse as much as they do in heritage itself. Thus
the 2003 volume Rethinking Heritage, edited by Robert Shaman Peckham,
assembles contributions from geography, history and art history, landscape
planning and philology. This hybrid composition signals that heritage concerns everyone, from the tourism expert to the philosopher of late modernity.
Each grouping of practitioners and experts harbours its own conception of
heritage; their expectations seldom harmonise with one another. In his
introduction, Peckham tries to simplify the range of meanings as follows:For most people today ‘heritage’ carries two related sets of meanings. On
the one hand, it is associated with tourism and with sites of historical
interest that have been preserved for the nation. Heritage designates
those institutions involved in the celebration, management and maintenance of material objects, landscapes, monuments and buildings that
reﬂect the nation’s past. On the other hand, it is used to describe a set of
shared values and collective memories; it betokens inherited customs and
a sense of accumulated communal experiences that are construed as a
‘birthright’ and are expressed in distinct languages and through other
cultural performances.

Regina Bendix

Papers

In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies

Tourists at the Taj: Performance and Meaning at a Symbolic Site

Heritage Regimes and the State

Tourism and Cultural Displays: Inventing Traditions for Whom?

Heritage between economy and politics: An assessment from the perspective of cultural anthropology