Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946. Ithaca, N.Y.

: Cornell
Context and influence[edit]
Benedict Anderson arrived at his theory because he felt that neither Marxist nor liberal theory
adequately explained nationalism.
Anderson falls into the "historicist" or "modernist" school of nationalism along with Ernest
Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm in that he posits that nations and nationalism are products
of modernity and have been created as means to political and economic ends. This school stands in
opposition to the primordialists, who believe that nations, if not nationalism, have existed since early
human history. Imagined communities can be seen as a form of social constructionism on a par
with Edward Said's concept of imagined geographies.
In contrast to Gellner and Hobsbawm, Anderson is not hostile to the idea of nationalism nor does he
think that nationalism is obsolete in a globalizing world. Anderson values the utopian element in
nationalism.[3]
According to Harald Bauder, the concept of imagined communities remains highly relevant in a
contemporary context of how nation-states frame and formulate their identities in relation to domestic
and foreign policy, such as policies towards immigrants and migration.[4] According to Euan Hague,
"Anderson's concept of nations being 'imagined communities' has become standard within books
reviewing geographical thought".[5]
Even though the term was coined to specifically describe nationalism, it is now used more broadly,
almost blurring it with community of interest. For instance, it can be used to refer to a community
based on sexual orientation,[6] or awareness of global risk factors.[7]

References
 University Press. 1972. ISBN 0-8014-0687-0.