Book•
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
01 Jan 1983-
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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TL;DR: The use of the adjective American as a description of a body of writing has been studied for over 60 years as discussed by the authors, and the very professionalism of the field rests on the integrity and the legitimacy of this founding concept.
Abstract: I begin with a simple observation.1 Here is a list of some of the most influential books in the field, published in the past 60 years: F. 0. Matthiessen, American Renaissance (1941); R. W B. Lewis, The American Adam (1955); Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (1978); Myra Jehlen, American Incarnation: The Individual, The Nation, and The Continent (1986); and Walter Benn Michaels, Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism (1995). A lot has changed in the past 60 years, but one thing has not. One word is still there, still holding court. What does it mean to refer to a body of writing as American? What assumptions enable us to take an adjective derived from a territorial unit-an America, a set of spatial coordinates on a map-and turn it into a mode of literary causality: a set of attributes based on the territorial, determined by it, and subsumable under its jurisdiction? Physical space, in this paradigm, is endlessly reinscribed in other spheres of life: it becomes a political entity, an economic entity, a cultural entity. All of these are its replica; all warrant the use of the adjective American. There is a kind of causal chain gang at work here. We assume that there is a perfect fit, a seamless correspondence, between the geographical boundaries of the nation and the boundaries of all its other operative domains. And, because this correspondence takes the form of a lockstepped entailment-because its causality goes all the way up and all the way down-we assume there is a literary domain that lines up in just the same way. This is why the adjective American can serve as literary description. Using it, we assume, with or without explicit acknowledgment, that literature is an effect, an epiphenomenon, of the US, territorially predicated and territorially describable. American literary studies as a discipline is largely founded on this fateful adjective. This governs the domain of inquiry we construct, the range of questions we entertain, the kind of evidence we take as significant. The very professionalism of the field rests on the integrity and the legitimacy of this founding concept.2 Not surprisingly, its disciplinary stranglehold has tightened rather
99 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that neither term can be reduced to the other and suggested that one need to conceptualize the field of history as involving inevitable limits to historical knowledge, such that both history and memory are seen as inadequate.
Abstract: The present paper examines certain salient features of the his tory-memory-identity relation. The common feature underpinning most contemporary manifestations of the memory craze seems to be an insecurity about identity, an insecurity that generates an excessive pre occupation with 'memory'. In the face of memory's valorization, what should be the attitude of the historian? At the present moment there is a pathetic and sometimes tragic conflict between what 'memory' expresses and confirms, namely, the demands made by subjectivities, and the demand, essential to any scientific discipline, for proof. The paper explores this conflict and argues that neither term can be reduced to the other. It suggests that one needs to conceptualize the field of history as involving inevitable limits to historical knowledge, such that both history and memory are seen as inadequate. In this way one avoids both the arrogance of a would-be definitive history and the 'arrogance of authenticity' that all too often accompanies cl...
99 citations
TL;DR: A discussion of sexuality, gender, and nationalism in contemporary India can be found in this article, where it is argued that Mahatma gandhi felt that sexuality and desire were intimately connected to social life and politics, and that self-control translated directly into power of various kinds, both public and private.
Abstract: It is well known that mahatma gandhi felt that sexuality and desire were intimately connected to social life and politics, and that self-control translated directly into power of various kinds, both public and private. Gandhi's enigmatic genius and his popular appeal among India's masses may be attributed, at least in part, to the degree he was able to embody a powerful ideal of sexual self-control that linked his sociopolitical projects to pervasive Hindu notions of renunciation (S. Rudolph 1967). Affecting the persona of a world-renouncer, Gandhi was able to mix political, religious, and moral power, thus translating personal self-control into radical social criticism and nationalist goals. Gandhi's mass appeal was partly effected on a visceral level at which many Hindu men were able to fully appreciate the logic of celibacy as a means to psychological security, self-improvement, and national reform. Although my concern in this paper is not directly with Gandhi's notion of self-control, it is against the larger backdrop of his political legacy that I situate this discussion of sexuality, gender, and nationalism in contemporary India.
98 citations
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: In this paper, the interaction between migrants' social relationships in their community (their social capital) and the development of a stable and integrated society (social cohesion) at the local level is explored.
Abstract: This study explores the interaction between migrants’ social relationships in their community (their social capital), and the development of a stable and integrated society (social cohesion) at the local level. The concept of social capital – the processes by which individuals and groups invest in social relationships and share resources between themselves – resonates with current concerns about the ways in which different communities, notably minority ethnic groups, relate to their wider social world.
98 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: For well over a generation, the public sphere of Islam has been an arena of contest in which activists and militants brought forth challenges to traditional interpretative practices and authority to speak for Islam, especially to articulate its social interests and political agendas.
Abstract: FOR well over a generation, the public sphere of Islam has been an arena of contest in which activists and militants brought forth challenges to traditional interpretative practices and authority to speak for Islam, especially to articulate its social interests and political agendas. Patrick Gaffney (1994) has astutely noted that their claims draw on social and political experience as alternatives both to expertise in textual hermeneutics associated with the learned men of Islam (ulema) and to more illuminationist priorities exemplified in Sufi and generally mystical ways. Opening the social field to new spokespeople and new discursive practices not only challenges authority long since thought settled to interpret what religion requires, but also blurs boundaries between pubic and private discourse and fosters new habits of production and consumption tied to media and particularly to new media. Ideas and issues circulated in intellectuals’ books a generation ago are now found in popular chapbooks (Gonzalez-Quijano, 1998) and on street-corner newsstands (Starrett, 1995); audiocassettes that carried sermons
98 citations