Benedict Anderson’s analysis of nationalism takes an interesting course as he tries to justify how our society’s view of a nation is actually an anomaly. Anderson explains that his goal for his book is to explain what a nation is in modern terms. In order to satisfactorily define nation, one has to understand the context of the word, as well as how it came to be. He believes that a nation is simply a socially constructed group or an “imagined political community”.
Anderson spoke about the sense of community that nationalism brings to the table. Even if the country is geographically extensive with a widely diverse population, there is a sort of kinship that accompanies nationalism. People that have no tie, other than the land that they live on, fight against other humans from different lands, and die for people that they don’t know.
On page 12, Anderson quotes what someone might say, “Yes it is quite accidental that I was born French; but after all, France is eternal.” A nation is really an imagined community, most people in the entirety of France- or any other given country- will never meet each other face to face yet “in the minds of each lives the image of communion”.
I found this book- the short part we read at least- fascinating. It contradicts mostly everything I have ever learned about politics. Anderson gives an interesting perspective on the socially imagined community and how powerful it is. Millions of “community” members fight in wars and die in battle for their community of people that they will never entirely meet. Nations fight over land, resources, and leaders, killing thousands until one community or nations win. We create these imagined communities as a result of language, religion, and media, and if they are truly “imagined” as Anderson argues, we must have very powerful imaginations.