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Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

TL;DR: In this paper, Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality and explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialisation of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time.
Abstract: What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? While many studies have been written on nationalist political movements, the sense of nationality - the personal and cultural feeling of belonging to the nation - has not received proportionate attention. In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality. Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialisation of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa. This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the development of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored consumers' perceptions of social relatedness in social media and found that consumers' perceived social-relatedness moderates the effects of consumer motivation on engagement, consuming intention, satisfaction, and trust.

109 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Hunt's observation recalls Sedgwick's analysis of how male bonding is mediated through the figure of woman as mentioned in this paper, pointing both to the centrality of male bonding in the production of nationalist sentiment and to the exclusion of women from the social contract.
Abstract: Modern nations have often been explicitly imagined through familial metaphors. In particular, the construction of the national community as a brotherhood (a fraternity) has pointed both to the centrality of male bonding in the production of nationalist sentiment and to the exclusion of women from the social contract. Within that contract not only were women “subject to men's power; it also implied complementary bonds between men;… women had no place in the new political and social order except as markers of social relations between men.”Hunt's observation recalls Sedgwick's analysis of how male bonding is mediated through the figure of woman. In nationalist discourse representing the homeland as a female body has often been used to construct a national identity based on male bonding among a nation of brothers.

109 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that a majority of European citizens have developed dual identities to their nation state and to Europe, and this Europeanization of national identities is sufficient to sustain carefully crafted (re-)distributive policies on the European level.
Abstract: This article takes issue with the ‘no demos’ thesis about the European Union. Empirically speaking, a ‘demos’ requires a sense of community among the citizens, on the one hand, and a lively public spheres in which political issues are debated, on the other. It is argued in this article, first, that a majority of European citizens has developed dual identities – to their nation-state and to Europe – and this Europeanization of national identities is sufficient to sustain carefully crafted (re-)distributive policies on the European level. Second, the euro crisis has strongly increased the politicization of national public spheres and has also led to their growing Europeanization with regard to issue salience and to the actors represented.

109 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the conceptual frameworks of cross-cultural and cultural psychology should allow for analysis of how major geopolitical events and historical processes bear on people's lives, and argue that colonialism and its legacies exert a powerful influence on many worldwide populations.
Abstract: There has long been a criticism that scholarship devoted to the study of cultural variation in psychology has too easily ascribed the observed differences between different societies to essentialized notions of ‘culture’ while paying less attention to historical forces that shape these differences. In this paper, we argue that the conceptual frameworks of cross-cultural and cultural psychology should allow for analysis of how major geopolitical events and historical processes bear on people’s lives. Specifically, we point to colonialism, a discussion that has been less attended to in psychology, and argue that colonialism and its legacies exert a powerful influence on many worldwide populations. Analysis of colonialism and its legacies necessarily calls for attention to its prominent ideological cornerstones: race and ‘culture’, which are also central concepts in psychology as a global discipline. In psychology, colonialism has primarily been engaged in two ways: the study of the colonial impact on individuals; and the consideration of the colonial impact on the discipline and practice of psychology in formerly colonized nation states. We review this engagement and introduce examples of scholarship from each. This paper challenges the field to pay greater attention to sociopolitical discourses and historical contexts and, in turn, to theorize culture in ways that are responsive to the fluidity and complexity of social lives.

109 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the citizenship practices of urban Aymara in a neighbourhood of El Alto, Bolivia, through an examination of the municipal elections of December 1999, focusing on the instrumental and affective sides of clientelism.

109 citations