Nation As An Imagined Community

Nation as an imagined community
For Anderson, the idea of the "nation" is relatively new and is a product of
various socio-material forces. He defined a nation as "an imagined political
community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign". As Anderson
puts it, a nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in
the minds of each lives the image of their communion". While members of the
community probably will never know each of the other members face to face, they
may have similar interests or identify as part of the same nation. Members hold in
their minds a mental image of their affinity: for example, the nationhood felt with
other members of your nation when your "imagined community" participates in a
larger event such as the Olympic Games.
Benedict Anderson’s Theory of Imagine Communities

An imagined community can be thought of as the formation of a shared national
identity among a nation and its people in which the people perceive themselves as a
homogeneous body despite having never meet the other individual. Anderson
describes the nation as being an imagined political community and imagined as
both inherently limited and sovereign.
There are two key concepts which contribute to the conceptualization of a nation as
an imagined community.
• Limitations and the idea that the nation is sovereign. A nation is thought of as
limited because it has subjected the political boundaries which places restriction on
how much your graphical land area. It can occupy because of where it is located for.
Example: No two nations can share the same political boundaries because each
individual nation occupies a district geographical location on the political map
without borders and boundaries that are put in place to define each nation.
Furthermore, the construction of our national identity similarly maps around the
same political map whereby each nation and its people identify themselves as part
of one in the same community. Because they are part of the sovereign state as
shown on the political map. Thus, the concept of the imagined community is formed
because it was a way of identification for people who lived in the particular state or
nation.
The nation is imagined to be sovereign. Because of the prior to the advent of
nationality, the world and its people will be categorize according to their religious
beliefs. Each religious belief was thought of as a distinctive community however,
because religion is a belief that people from all over the world share and is
subjective to an individual. It would be impossible for each religion to occupy a
specific geographical as such the concept of a nation is imagined to be sovereign as
it was means of breaking away and freedom from a higher power. A nation and the
concept of an imagined community could not be formed without the media acting as
a catalyst which contributed to the construction of a shared identity among a nation
and its people/ print media can be thought as a driving force which formed the basis
of a shed identity prior to the 20th century which took place through the early
stages of European capitalism. European capitalism brought about the
standardization of print languages, newspapers and a means of mass printing and
technology. The standardization or print languages allowed for a common language
to be used along with the advent of newspaper combined with mass printing and
technology. It allowed for the individuals for each nation to share the same
experience. For example, events that were reported in the newspapers and abled all
members to experience the vents, at the same time due to the time symmetry that
newspaper allowed shared experiences that was facilitated by print media and able
individual members of a nation to share a common experience and a shared identity
with another member despite having not met them and interacted with them. Thus,
creating the idea of a community.

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Nation as an imagined community

Benedict Anderson’s Theory of Imagine Communities

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