Benedict Andersons formulation of the nation. History It was always difficult to determine nationalism. What is this? Is it simply a great love and devotion to the nation, or cultural and personal feeling of it? In his work, Benedict Anderson, examines the topic of nations and nationalism, and spreading of the imagined communities of nationality. Anderson determines a nation like an imagined political communities. He points that it is limited and sovereign from the very beginning. The author proves that nationality is imagined, based his arguments on the fact that the members of any (even small) commutity will never know most of others. But in our minds we can create the imagined boundaries of a nation, though they are not physically exist.
It proves that only small villages, in which neighbors know each other well, are an exception. A nation is considered to be limited according to Anderson, because people of one nation recognize the difference in ethnical, social and cultural structures among mankind. It is deep in our consciousness the confidence, that beyond the imagined boundaries there are other nations, quite differ from us. Thats why the idea of uniting in one massive nation seems to be unreal. And, finally, as a symbol of the freedom from previous structures, a nation is sovereign. It means that though there are some typical schemes for any regime, but each nation is sovereign in order to organize a society. The process of creating imagined community included a lot of factors, as it was pointed; among them there are territorialisation (according to religious faith), changes of old regimes, and interaction between society and progress.
The Essay on Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson
When reading Imagined Communities, it’s hard not to become reflective of John Lennon’s words in his famed hit “Imagine”, which calls for our imagination to do away with barriers that have created such a divide in humanity. It’s interesting to note that in Benedict Anderson’s analysis of the formation of nations; he accredits this process to our imagination of ...
As an imagined community, a nation is a deep comradeship, and the links inside is so strong, that drive men to heroic deaths in nationalistic base. It proves that the beginning of nationalism has deep cultural roots. In his work Anderson depicts a historical background of nationalism and emphasizes, that it is a modern political main strengths. It goes without saying that nationalism and nationalistic movement reached its culmination at a time of changes. Those changes can be pointed as the changes in the religious community; changes of the ruling classes; and changes of conceptions of time. Taking into account these changes nationalism can be definite as a large cultural system that preceded self consciousness. Lets examine the events from the Middle Ages to the nearest ones. Religious communities had transformation from fatality into continuity and then into meaning. After the Middle age we see unselfconscious links of religion. It was provoked with the exploration of the world.
Old communities lost their confidence and political ideologies led to self consciousness. It is known that states had centers, and they were defined by them. But with the fall of monarchy, high centers declined. From the early ages people considered time to be simultaneous. Nowadays we think about homogeneous or empty time. Science then time became a precise analogue of the idea of the nation; and it became a point moving steadily through history.
Having examined these three changes, we know that people were constantly searching for new ways of spending time together and dividing the power. All these changes can be seen while examining the historical processes in colonial countries. The nationalistic movement in the countries, belonging to Third World, has not only a political character (as anti colonialist resistance in Indonesia and Burma), but also a socio cultural one. Anderson is known to be a great specialist on historical development of these countries and he shows the complex role of the colonialist states mindset in generating of Third World nationalism. From the history we know, that differentiations between nations were based on different socio economic conditions. And in his work Imagined Communities, Anderson pointed on the interaction between capitalism and printing, as one of the factors, that took part in creating nationalism in colonialist countries.
The Essay on Change And Continuity Over Time 2
Change and Continuity Over Time (CCOT): 1 Explain the details of the economic exchanges that occurred on the Silk roads and discuss the social and political impacts that occurred as a result of this trade. Be sure to include continuities. 2 Analyze the cultural and political changes and continuities in ONE of the following civilizations during the last centuries of the classical era. China, 100 ...
Elementary communities were mostly based on religious ideologies. They had no idea to join into a geopolitical unit. But the rise of capitalism and, as a result of it, the rapid spreading of printing, affected the rise of nationalism in colonialist states. Newspapers allowed people from different places to discuss the same problems in spite of distance. It affected the creation of new imagined communities, called nations. So, mass media was a crucial social component in foundation of colonial nationalism.
We can make a conclusion that progress in capitalist world in the 20th century brought the growth and spread of nationalist ideas to places, that could not permit it before, because of some reasons. As a consequence, people knew the fact that there were other communities, and it helped them to imagine the nation and formed the feeling of being a nation. In Burma and Indonesia there is a large number of ethnic groups. They lived isolated on their areas, before colonization by the West. These groups has not only different ethnic and territorial divisions but also religious, linguistic and others. Later they had nothing in common except being organized into an artificial colonial units, made by Europeans. But better roads and communication, and better access to education as well as better enlightenment due to media, allow peaceful interaction of different groups.
There is the other side: all innovations helped to form the national consciousness of people, lived on the same territory before colonization. For example, Indonesia created an Indonesian national culture due to mass education, mass media and nationalism policy of the government. Colonial nationalism often is a network of resistance against colonialists. And it is interesting that it is usually led by persona, who educated in Western nations, so, the Motherland of the colonialists. As a rule colonial existence brings together different ethnic groups. But often in anti colonialist war there is an idea of ultra nationalism, that is based on racial superiority, higher culture and civilization. It is caused with the need to preserve native language culture and traditions.
The Term Paper on Nations And Nationalism Nation Modern State
The question of the continued power of nationalism in the modern world has long been the subject of debate amongst sociologists. One could define nationalism as a set of beliefs which asserts that a particular community of people constitutes an actual or potential nation, or desire for an advancement of that nation and projection of its virtues and powers. In a world of interdependence, trade ...
Having analyzed all factors we can come to the conclusion, that in Burma and Indonesia nationalism was developed from three sources, such as religious and cultural; western education, and contact with other groups by means of media. As to Burma, the first nationalist movements were for revitalization of Buddhism and reducing Western influence. Muslims were the first in Indonesia, who organized a nationalist political party. The main idea of the organization was reform Muslims ideas. From Andersons point of view, nationalism in colonial countries are designed by groups with different experiences. Their experiences were determined by socio economic conditions.
For example, in Indonesia and Burma bourgeois nationalism was developed for a long time. It was in the first place and imperialism was the second. Bourgeois nationalism mobilized the masses only for struggle against imperialism. It still exists in the colonial countries. So, nationalism might not only be challenged by the awakening of the nations self consciousness. Anderson proposed quite new view on the point.
In the work he showed, that nationalism can be assimilated with invention to falsity than to imagining. According to Anderson, a nation has never been created by industrial societies, but can be developed by means of socio cultural links between nations. The author pays much attention to this idea, than to its political side, emphasizing that nationalism is a feeling, a sense of nationality. Anderson opened the ideas that nationalism is dynamic process; and he showed how the processes in Europe were transported and adopted by colonial countries..
