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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05 Oct 2012
TL;DR: Tweets and the Streets as mentioned in this paper examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest, arguing that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality.
Abstract: Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the "indignados" protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around "occupied" places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park. An exciting and invigorating journey through the new politics of dissent, Tweets and the Streets points both to the creative possibilities and to the risks of political evanescence which new media brings to the contemporary protest experience.
911 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that anthropological analysis of translators helps to explain how human rights ideas and interventions circulate around the world and transform social life, and argue that translators can serve as knowledge brokers between culturally distinct social worlds, but are also vulnerable to manipulation and subversion by states and communities.
Abstract: How do transnational ideas such as human rights approaches to violence against women become meaningful in local social settings? How do they move across the gap between a cosmopolitan awareness of human rights and local sociocultural understandings of gender and family? Intermediaries such as community leaders, nongovernmental organization participants, and social movement activists play a critical role in translating ideas from the global arena down and from local arenas up. These are people who understand both the worlds of transnational human rights and local cultural practices and who can look both ways. They are powerful in that they serve as knowledge brokers between culturally distinct social worlds, but they are also vulnerable to manipulation and subversion by states and communities. In this article, I theorize the process of translation and argue that anthropological analysis of translators helps to explain how human rights ideas and interventions circulate around the world and transform social life.
906 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the theoretical implications of the observation that ethnic identities are socially constructed for explaining ethnic violence, distinguishing between two classes of mechanisms: individuals are viewed as the agents who construct identities, and constructivist explanations for ethnic violence tend to merge with analyses that stress strategic action by both elites and mass publics.
Abstract: We examine the theoretical implications of the observation that ethnic identities are socially constructed for explaining ethnic violence, distinguishing between two classes of mechanisms. If individuals are viewed as the agents who construct identities, then constructivist explanations for ethnic violence tend to merge with analyses that stress strategic action by both elites and mass publics. In contrast, if discursive formations are the agents that construct ethnic identities, then constructivist explanations tend to merge with accounts that stress internal logics of specific cultures. Using the books under review as a “sample,” we find considerable evidence linking strategic aspects of ethnic identity construction to violence and more limited evidence implicating discursive systems. The most common narrative in these texts has largescale ethnic violence provoked by elites, often motivated by intra-ethnic conflicts. Followers follow, despite the costs, out of increased fear of thugs and armies “let go” by elites (both the other side's and their “own”) and often in pursuit of local grievances that may have little ethnic component. Several other mechanisms are also discussed, including the role of discursive systems in conditioning publics for violence and the role of violent efforts to enforce “everyday primordialism” by policing supposedly primordial ethnic boundaries.
900 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the colonial origins of international law and the legacies of the mandate system: toward the present and conclude that the post-colonization and post-colonial state are the peripheries of the universal international law.
Abstract: Acknowledgements Table of cases Table of treaties Introduction 1. Francisco de Vitoria and the colonial origins of international law (i) Introduction (ii) Vitoria and the problem of universal law (iii) War, sovereignty and the transformation of the Indian (iv) Conclusion 2. Finding the peripheries: colonialism in nineteenth-century international law (i) Introduction (ii) Elements of positivist jurisprudence (iii) Defining and excluding the uncivilized (iv) Native personality and managing the colonial encounter (v) Reconceptualizing sovereignty 3. Colonialism and the birth of international institutions: the mandate of the League of Nations (i) Introduction (ii) Creation of the mandate system (iii) The league of nations and the new international law (iv) The mandate system and colonial problems (v) The mandate system and the construction of the non-European state (vi) Government, sovereignty, and economy (vii) The mandate and the discussion of sovereignty (viii) The legacies of the mandate system: toward the present (ix) Conclusion 4. Sovereignty and the post-colonial state (i) Introduction (ii) Decolonization and the universality of international law (iii) Development, nationalism and the post-colonial state (iv) Development and the reform of international law (v) Permanent sovereignty over natural resource and the new international economic order (vi) The 1962 resolution on PSNR (vii) The 1974 charter of rights and duties among states (viii) Colonialism and the emergence of transnational law (ix) Sources of law and international contracts (x) Overview and conclusions 5. Governance and globalization, civilization and commerce (i) Introduction (ii) Good governance and the third world (iii) Governance, human rights and the universal (iv) International financial institutions, human rights and good governance (v) International financial institutions and the mandate system (vi) Conclusions and overview 6. On making war on the terrorists: imperialism as self-defense (i) Introduction (ii) The war against terrorism (WAT) (iii) The United States and imperial democracy (iv) Historical origins: war, conquest and self-defense (v) Terrorism and the United Nations: a Victorian moment (vi) Terrorism, self-defense and third world sovereignty Conclusion.
864 citations
TL;DR: This article analyzed outbreaks of armed conflict as the result of competing ethnonationalist claims to state power and found that representatives of ethnic groups are more likely to initiate conflict with the government, especially if they have recently lost power, the higher their mobilizational capacity, and the more they have experienced conflict in the past.
Abstract: Much of the quantitative literature on civil wars and ethnic conflict ignores the role of the state or treats it as a mere arena for political competition among ethnic groups. other studies analyze how the state grants or withholds minority rights and faces ethnic protest and rebellion accordingly, while largely overlooking the ethnic power configurations at the state's center. drawing on a new data set on ethnic power relations (EPR ) that identifies all politically relevant ethnic groups and their access to central state power around the world from 1946 through 2005, the authors analyze outbreaks of armed conflict as the result of competing ethnonationalist claims to state power. the findings indicate that representatives of ethnic groups are more likely to initiate conflict with the government (1) the more excluded from state power they are, especially if they have recently lost power, (2) the higher their mobilizational capacity, and (3) the more they have experienced conflict in the past.
851 citations