Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, New Edition | 
 enlarge | Author: Benedict Anderson
Publisher: Verso
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.23
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 3027
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 1844670864
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.54
EAN: 9781844670864
ASIN: 1844670864
Publication Date: November 16, 2006
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Product Description
A new edition of the definitive book on nationalism—over a quarter of a million copies sold worldwide.
Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's brilliant book on nationalism, forged a new field of study when it first appeared in 1983. Since then it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is widely considered the most important book on the subject. In this greatly anticipated revised edition, Anderson updates and elaborates on the core question: what makes people live, die and kill in the name of nations? He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was adopted by popular movements in Europe, by imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa, and explores the way communities were created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism and printing, and the birth of vernacular languages-of-state. Anderson revisits these fundamental ideas, showing how their relevance has been tested by the events of the past two decades.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Unreadable Gibberish December 12, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Though some interesting and provocative ideas are presented shedding some light on the idea of the rise of nationalism, this was largely a poorly written book that will not add an iota of understanding to what motivates human behavior.
 An amazing introduction November 11, 2007
If you want a scholarly introduction to nationalism and its history, this is an excellent book to start with. Anderson begins with a discussion of how the concept of the nation first came into being, with emphasis on the factors that enabled people to imagine communities beyond their immediate surroundings. He then brings in more abstract concepts such as spatial/temporal relations and its relation to maps and museums... well, you'll have to read the book, since he explains it much better than me.
My only complaint is that he did focus much more on Western nationalism than on Eastern- two very different topics. Nonetheless, this is a wonderful introductory text.
 Thought-provoking but unsatisfying July 17, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This short book/long essay offers some interesting insights on nationalism, but is limited by its Marxist-materialist perspective. Anderson obviously knows his history and his typology of three essential nationalisms (the new republics of the Americas in the late 18th-early 19th centuries, popular national revival movements in 19th-century Europe, and suffocating official nationalisms such as the British and Russian empires) is based on the history of capitalism, the development of printing, mass communication, class conflicts, and world trade. Anderson argues that these models were adapted in one form or another in the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia after World War II.
Psychology is the unmentioned elephant in the drawing room. There is no consideration of group/crowd psychology or built-in human aggressiveness and territoriality, the human need to define oneself in a group in opposition to others, or the way that nations are felt by many people to be a kind of family, with rulers as parent figures. The absence of psychology causes Anderson's argument to run out of steam toward the end, when he offers only a few pages about patriotism and racism, and here becomes shallow and unconvincing.
Some nation-states are no doubt very artificial (as Anderson's "imagined" title suggests), and borders between countries are often artificial. But cultural and linguistic differences between groups are very real. Anderson recognizes the importance of language differences. At one point he quotes a distinguished Indonesian author, leaving the quote untranslated. (Are we supposed to be impressed because Anderson reads Indonesian and we, presumably, don't?) However, Anderson does not give much consideration to cultural (including religious) differences, other than some mention of this issue in his discussion of Japan and Indonesia.
There are other curious omissions. Anderson does not note that people often have multiple and conflicting loyalties (allegiance to a nation, but also to a region, or to a religion). He never mentions the Roman Empire, says little or nothing about the Arab world, diaspora populations or stateless peoples.
Anderson is an academic writing for other academics. He wants to be quoted and to be considered clever, hence the catchy title. Readers outside academia may become irritated with his gassy, excessively precious and self-indulgent style (phrases like "discontinuity-in-connectedness"). Anderson's references to trendy authors (Foucault, Bakhtin) do not really contribute to his argument and the authors in question are no longer as trendy now as they were in the early 1980s.
This book can certainly stimulate your thinking on this important topic, but will leave many questions unanswered.
Imagine that...! July 12, 2007
Great book! I am using it for academic research and have found it great from a theoretical perspective. That said, it is a bloody brillant read for anyone who is just simply interested in understanding what the big deal is about nations or wanting to just have a more general understanding behind the more everyday realities of what nation and national identity, like pretty much any other kind of social grouping mean.
One of the seminal works on the evolution of national consciousness June 8, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Anderson's masterful work about the development of national consciousness should be read and treasured by anyone interested in modern politics, political theory, or societal development. Bringing together an impressive array of international and polyglot sources, it is one of the few books that gives a global account of the phenomenon of nationalism and modern nation-building while disabusing readers of most of the truisms concerning nations that people today seem to take for granted. Read it, and then pass it on to your friends and family. It's worth it.
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