Benedict Anderson’s

Imagined Communities
by Mikkel Flohr | 25 Apr 2023

KEY CONCEPT

Benedict Anderson’s seminal work Imagined Communities: Reflections

on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism from 1983 is one of the most
important accounts of the historical rise and development of
nationalism. Its basic insight and argument is that nations are not
ancient communities united by history, blood, language, culture and/or
territory, as nationalists often claim, but the distinctly modern
imagination of a given state’s population as constituting such an
originary community produced by nationalism.

Anderson explained that nations must be understood as imagined

communities because they are simply too large for all of their members
to actually know one another. It is therefore only possible for its
members to imagine that they have a relationship with all other
members of the nation across time and space. Of course, the fact that
the nation is imagined does not make it any less real. Nations are very
real — real enough that people are prepared to kill and die for them as
Anderson pointed out.

Nationalism filled the political and existential void that arose after the
decline of the great religious communities. In their prime, Latin
Christendom and the Muslim Ummah incorporated vast territories and
several peoples in a single community united by a common (religious)
perception of the world and a sacred language (Latin or classical
Arabic), which local elites also used to communicate among
themselves. These grand religious communities were organized into
smaller political units, where kings ruled over ethnically diverse and
linguistically fragmented populations with the blessing of god and/or
his religious representatives on earth.

It was the crisis and decline of this system that paved the way for the
rise of nationalism in the latter half of the eighteenth century. But it
didn’t happen by itself. The emergence of nationalism was a product of
specific historical circumstances and actors. The historical
circumstances Anderson highlighted was the interaction of capitalism
and the development of printing technology, which resulted in the
production of large quantities of books and newspapers, which
contributed to the development and spread of common ideas – and
which eventually came to form the foundation for the imagination of
the national community.

The circulation of books and newspapers made it possible for scattered

individuals to relate to each other and develop a common awareness of
events, narratives and ideas at more or less the same time – typically
within the framework of a certain territory and group. The explicitly
and implicitly patriotic literature gradually spread the notion of a
specific national community, which formed the basis of the popular
breakthrough of nationalism.

The origin and development of nationalism

Andersons identified the colonies of the “New World” in the Americas
as the birthplace of modern nationalism. According to Anderson, it was
the exploitation of the colonies by the metropole, combined with
discrimination of foreign-born officials within the colonial apparatus,
that provided the impetus for local elites to begin to pursue
independence. In order to realize such projects, however, it was
necessary to unite the population and confront the metropole. The
colonies were already divided into distinct administrative units that
were often geographically isolated and which could thus form the
starting point for the development of the imagination of national
communities in text and speech – and later action.
The political success of North and South American nationalisms
became a model that was imitated and further developed across the
globe. In Europe especially, increased output of books and newspapers
contributed not only to the creation and spread of common ideas, but
also to the standardization of different dialects and thereby the creation
of national languages, which became a central part of European
nationalism. Nationalism was initially often closely linked with liberal,
democratic and/or revolutionary tendencies in Europe, where the nation
was commonly rhetorically opposed to the monarchs. However, a
similar model was also adopted and advanced by some absolutist rulers,
who legitimized their dynastic rule through “official nationalisms.” In
both cases, the nation was affirmed as the foundation and legitimation
of the modern (nation) states that emerged from them. These states
actively contributed to building the nation through the promotion of
linguistic standardization, national symbols and a narrative about a
historically unified community that in most cases had never existed.

Anderson’s analysis showed that the nation does not preexist

nationalism. Rather, the nation is the product of modern nationalism.
Contrary to nationalist claims, the nation was not rooted in ancient
history and did not arise spontaneously. The nation was the product of
decidedly modern political interests and dynamics that took a very
specific form but universal form that originated in the Americas and
spread across the globe from there.

Defining the nation

Anderson defined the nation as the product of modern nationalism and
“an imagined political community” that he insisted was always
“imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” The nation was,
as I have already suggested, an imagined community insofar as it was
impossible for all its members to get to know each other, and this form
of community therefore had to be imagined. The nation was moreover
imagined as a community, a deep and horizontal fraternity that united
all of its members across age, class, colour, creed, gender and race –
irrespective of actually existing divisions, inequalities and exploitation.

While nationalism is practically universal, every nationalism imagines

its particular nation to be unique and distinct from all others. As such,
the nation is consistently imagined as a limited form of community
(unlike, for instance, earlier religious communities that almost always
aspired to universality) delimited by other nations; even though its
actual borders are often quite elastic in practice. Finally, the nation is
imagined as being sovereign, that is to say, it is conceived as the highest
legitimate political authority within the political community, which
finds its clearest expression in the form of the modern sovereign
(nation) state.

The nation as secular religion

One of the reasons for the spread and persistence of nationalism,
according to Anderson, is to be found in the existential dimension of
nationalism – a dimension that most other political ideologies neglect.
Human beings have always confronted uncertainty, adversity and
ultimately their own finitude. The great religions managed to alleviate
the pressure of these uncertainties through guarantees of a cosmological
order and the promise of an afterlife.

But after the pluralization and gradual collapse of these religious

systems, the onset of secularization and the Enlightenment, an
existential void opened, which nationalism came to fill. Nationalism,
like religion, inscribes the individual within a larger historical and
social context that transcended its individual members. In this way, the
notion of the nation functions as a secular substitute for religion.

That perspective may also help to explain the continued appeal of

nationalism in an age of globalization. Although the sovereignty of
nation states is today inscribed within, if not subordinated to global
economic processes, it has not waned. If anything, nationalism has only
gained traction. In the uncertain and unmanageable world produced by
globalization, nationalism’s guarantees of meaning and continuity only
becomes more attractive.

Imagining community differently

Anderson generally considered nationalism to be a progressive force.
He did not believe that it was inherently tied to xenophobia and racism.
And many nationalisms were initially progressive and inclusive
projects, particularly the anticolonial national liberation movements of
the twentieth century that he followed closely. However, later
developments call into question his evaluation of nationalism. Fully
developed nationalism is per definition limited to a single people at the
expense of others. As such, nationalism is based on exclusion and a
clear hierarchy, which, during the twentieth century, has been
increasingly closely associated with chauvinism, xenophobia and war.
Anderson recognized that nationalism is always limited to a particular
nation, but at the same time insisted that the notion of the nation
demonstrated our ability to identify with people we have never met. He,
therefore, rightly, pointed out that nationalism contained an utopian
element.

Although one can and should be critical of Anderson’s neglect of the

exclusive nature of nationalism, his analysis of the modern origins of
nationalism at the same time shows that the delimitation of the nation
is an arbitrary historical and relatively new process prompted by the
interplay of historical circumstances with specific political projects and
interests.

Anderson’s analysis shows that nationalist fantasies of ancient

greatness are in fact rooted in modern political projects based on
relatively arbitrary geographical and linguistic divisions and political
interest. There is no pre-historical or necessary basis for the delineation
of our imagined communities. It is therefore also possible to imagine
other, more inclusive forms of community based on Anderson’s
seminal work – forms of community that may one day move beyond the
limitations of the nation state.

Anderson on the Nation as

Imagined Community
The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion
living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations … It is imagined
as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were
destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm … Finally, it is
imagined as community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may
prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this
fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so
much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings …
An American will never meet, or even know the names of more than a handful of his … fellow
Americans. He has no idea of what they are up to at any one time. But he has complete confidence
in their steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity …

We know that [newspapers] … will overwhelmingly be consumed … only on this day, not that …
The significance of this mass ceremony—Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a
substitute for morning prayers—is paradoxical. It is performed in silent privacy … Yet each
communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by
thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he does
not have the slightest notion.

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London: Verso. pp.7, 26, 35.