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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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TL;DR: The study of identity offers a possibility to theorize on the human collectives of world politics, to give them an ontological status, and to discuss how they are constituted and maintain themselves.
Abstract: The study of identity offers a possibility to theorize on the human collectives of world politics, to give them an ontological status, and to discuss how they are constituted and maintain themselves. The first part discusses social theorizing of collective identity along the ethnographic, the psychological, the Continental philosophical, and particularly, the `Eastern excursion' of theorizing; Bakhtin, Levinas and Kristeva are lauded for jettisoning a dialectical mode of analysis in favour of a dialogical one which respects difference. The second part discusses how Der Derian, Shapiro, Campbell, the `Copenhagen coterie' and Wendt have brought this theorizing into IR, and assesses their work in terms of that discussed in the first part. The study of identity formation should do away with psychologizing conjecture and focus on the drawing on social boundaries and the role played by groups who are ambiguously poised between the self and the others. Collective identities are overlapping and multifaceted pheno...

325 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article examined the impact of participation in associations on social capital using three dimensions: intensity (active vs. passive participation), scope (many vs. few affiliations) and type (nonpolitical vs. political purpose).
Abstract: Voluntary associations are often ascribed a fundamental role in the formation of social capital. However, scholars disagree on the extent to which face-to-face contact, that is, active participation, is necessary to create this resource. This article examines the impact of participation in associations on social capital using three dimensions: intensity (active vs. passive participation), scope (many vs. few affiliations) and type (nonpolitical vs. political purpose). Whereas those affiliated display higher levels of social capital than outsiders, the difference between active and passive members is absent or negligible. The only cumulative effect of participation occurs when a member belongs to several associations simultaneously, preferably with different purposes. The article challenges the notion that active participation is necessary for the formation of social capital and suggests that more attention should be paid to the importance of passive and multiple affiliations within associations.

324 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors proposes a revised view of culture that is intended to serve TESOL practitioners into the 21st century, or that can at least provide a takeoff point from which such a view may be developed.
Abstract: Culture is a central yet underexamined concept in TESOL. In comparison to other fields such as anthropology and cultural studies, there has been little serious discussion and critique of the concept in TESOL over the last two decades. This article offers a reassessment of the notion of culture in TESOL, taking recent work in critical anthropology and cultural studies, and to a lesser degree TESOL itself, as a starting point. It proposes a revised view of culture that is intended to serve TESOL practitioners into the 21st century, or that can at least provide a takeoff point from which such a view may be developed.

324 citations