What does Benedict Anderson's concept imagined community mean when comparing the idea of nationalism - Essay Example

The Imagined Community and Nationalism: What does Benedict Andersons concept “imagined community” mean when comparing the idea of nationalism? Introduction Defining nationalism has been a controversial socio-political discourse characterized not just by heated debates but by numerous principles and theories suggested by a number of theorists that often muddle or confuse our own understanding of the concept. Unarguably, the concept of nationhood or nationalism entails a level of integration that is required by the modern idea of a national association. Not a few social theorists have put forward the principle that a nation is an abstract community. Such position has been widely accepted in socio-political sphere today because it promotes the circumstance wherein cohesion flourishes despite the strong commodification and individualization of the modern world. The argument that the nation or nationalism is such has considerable descriptive resonance with Benedict Anderson’s representation of the nation as imagined political community – an imagining of a kind of fraternity that makes it possible for millions of people to die willingly for a nation and connect with the dead and those who are not yet born. This paper will explore Anderson’s vision and illustrate its relationship with the idea of nationalism. Part I: Definitions It is important to explain first that defining nationalism is different from arguments about how it is built and that only in defining nationalism one could draw the parameters on what are the aspects to be explained, particularly on areas about when or where or how or why it was built. Lord Acton, cited in Anderson’s Long distance Nationalism (1998), said that nationalism is a “principle of legitimacy.” (p. 58) In this perspective there is the concept of “immobility,” a social condition in which people feel connected to the land that nourished them. “Combined with a profound attachment to local soil, this made possible the sedate and stately agglomeration of hundreds of such communities into the huge, ramshackle imperia of legitimacy.” (p. 59) This school of thought is somehow related to the work of Benedict Anderson’s, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1993), from the author’s previous study of Southeast Asian politics. It is perhaps one of the most widely referenced theories in the discourse over nationalism today. In the introduction to his discourse on “imagined community,” Anderson cited several points of view in regard to the definition of nationalism that led him to admit that “nation, nationality, nationalism – all have proved notoriously difficult to define.” (p. 3) As a tentative suggestion he considered the concept as a cultural artefact that was the “spontaneous distillation of a complex ‘crossing’ of discrete historical forces… capable of being transplanted with varying degrees of self consciousness to a great variety of social terrains.” (p. 4) He called the previous difficulty in defining nationalism as an anomaly and that his answer for it was the idea of “imagined community.” He proposed that a nation is “an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” (p. 6) As Anderson sees it, the nation is an imagined political community in the sense that, the sheer number of people that constitutes a nation where no one can possibly know everyone, each person still feels a sense of community with them. From this perspective, nationalism is more than an ethnic affinity and that the relationship that connects everyone are not personalist ones. This is the reason why Anderson does not believe that nationalism will meet its demise in the near future. He said: the ‘end of an era of nationalism,’ so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight. Indeed, nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time. (p. 3) According to Joanne Finkelstein and Susan Goodwin (2005), the discussion on the so-called imagined community is important for demonstrating that national populations do not necessarily have particular shared characteristics but a perception exist that there are sameness and there are those who are excluded from such affinity. (p. 135) Using the concept of imagined community, Finkelstein and Goodwin, outlined that postcolonial nations even attempted to create national identities and nationalism by: 1) by specifying a national language; 2) writing a national history; and, 3) emphasizing national monuments and national icons. (p. 142) Here, the community is created or strengthened by homogenizing a diverse population, possibly one that is consisted by different ethnic groups, by excluding or obscuring other identities. I would like to quote Marc Redfield (1999) in trying to dissect the proposition that there still no end to nationalism in the immediate future. This is his analogy about nationalism in the circumstance of a fast changing landscape of global politics and economics today: That the nation-state should remain the premier vehicle of political and economic legitimation… is unsurprising if one accepts the continuing pertinency and power of Western master-narrative of modernity. (p. 58) For Redfield, the nation or nationalism is the peoples’ answer to the assertion of formal congruence that is enforced by globalization and the Western domination in the economic and political spheres. One of Anderson’s most significant claims is that nationalism is the result of the breakdown of the defining characteristics of premodern society: “the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm.” (p. 7) In addition, Anderson cited a catalyst in the form of the printing technology that facilitated the unification of a territory. But such catalyst can also be found embodied in the earlier forms of “imaginings” - those communities that are based on religion, civilization and face-to-face interactions. Part II: Comparison Discuss the relations between imagined community and nationalism. The concept of imagined community is pivotal in Anderson’s version of nationalism. This is because unlike other social scientists, Anderson is concerned to understand not the political aspects of nationalism but instead the force and persistence of national identity and sentiment. For instance, this is manifested in a person’s or a people’s desire to die for a nation. Imagined community provides a very strong foundation for nationalism as an ideological construction linking a cultural group and the state. In a concept where ethnicity is not considered to be a major force, imagined community is analogous to Timothy Brennan’s concept of “myth” and Homi Bhabha’s (1990) “common narration” – symbols that held various individual’s together. According to Brennan, quoting Malinowski in his work The National Longing for Form: Myth acts as a charter for the present-day social worker; it supplies a retrospective pattern of moral values, sociological order, and magical belief, the function of which is to strengthen tradition and endow it with a greater value and prestige. (p. 45) Bhabha’s account, meanwhile, states that nations are analogous to narratives as they “lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye… An idea whose cultural compulsion lies in the impossible unity of the nation as a symbolic force.” (p. 1) The newspaper consumption as well as the novels form a pivotal part in this kind of narrative that constitutes and/or develops nationalism. This has been elaborated in Anderson’s The Spectre of Comparison (1998) and by Jonathan Culler, Anderson and the Novel. The latter identified at least three aspects that illustrate how a novel becomes an important element in the imagined community: the formal structure of the narrative point of view, the national content of the fiction and the construction of the reader. (Culler, p. 39) What the Brennan and Bhabha arguments underscore is the mutually reinforcing relationship between an idea and a concept: “imagined community” to “nationalism.” In addition, the relationship underscores the assumption that early social/national cohesion does not need institutional action; there is no state action necessary to encourage the process of community cohesion or loyalty. The imagined community allowed Anderson to strengthen his point that “from the start the nation was conceived in language, not in blood.” (p. 133) Apply these concepts to at least TWO detailed examples from popular cultures (film, TV shows, novels, magazines, advertisements). In applying the concepts of imagined community and nationalism, we have the Star Wars films and the electronic/dance music as examples. Star Wars may not have inspired the creation of the sci-fi genre nor was it the first movie to bring divine revelation to the screen but unlike any previous religion, the franchise used modern technology to bypass church, state, and parental authority in mass marketing its vision. The movie was able convert millions of loyal adherents – children and adults alike. A barrage media-driven promotions and campaigns have reinforced a particular subculture that blends religion, politics and technical advancements of scientific hardware. In every Star Wars movie, everyone of these fanatics were all watching at the exact same instant and that they are experiencing Anderson’s imagined community with the deep horizontal comradeship that characterizes the Star Wars experience. Then, there’s the electronic or Trance music, an offspring of the idea that music is a universal language that transcends national and cultural boundaries. Raves are a global cultural phenomenon and trance parties are drawing its adherents from as far as Japan, Hungary, Mexico and Australia. The language is not the one that connects people, instead it’s the rhythm that produces a cohesion that, for its part creates a subculture transcending race, sex, distance and all other factors that distinguishes people. In this context, the category of nation is used to imagine the world – the community is the Earth. In addition, the virtual community of Trance on the net has the meaning of a symbolic entity, providing support, and companionship between actual encounters. The Trance community is kept intact and alive through newsgroups, mailing lists, websites and forums. In a sense the virtual community meets the imagined community. Part III: Limitation Discuss the limits of Benedict Andersons concept “imagined community” and nationalism Partha Chatterjee (1999) criticized Anderson’s view of modern politics “as something that belongs to the very character of the time in which we now live.” (p. 131) He believes that the mistake lies in the one-sided view of modernity. Chatterjee argued that people can only imagine themselves in empty homogenous time because they do not live in it and that it allows for a linear connection of the past, present and future that, in turn, creates the possibility of imagining concepts such as identity, nationhood, progress, among others. (p. 131) In addition to this, some other limitations can be added to this critique. Anderson is one with many theorists who believe that nationalism is a purely modern phenomenon and therefore a modern idea. Here, we encounter a problem. If we are to consider the definition of imagined community, it is possible to believe that it had existed earlier. For example, when the Greeks invaded Persia during the time of Alexander the Great, you had a sense of Persian and Greek identities that distinguished both from each other. But the difference is that this was not conceived in relation to the idea of the territorial nation with specific political boundaries, as that one that characterizes nationalism that is the result of the modern nation-state system. On a different note, Anderson believes that language and the print communication spread nationalism seemed to be problematic in the sense that they are not the only factors that build solidarity. One should remember that common language, literacy, newspapers and books were still scarce and incomplete when early modern European states and societies began to build their nations and that it remained that way even later. In fact, from a different perspective, spreading verbal communication or literacy could have even reinforced local or ethnic differences so one is left to assume that nationalism is not entirely a direct consequence of communication and literacy because the transfer of ideas was not so pervasive nor as unifying as its form would imply or become. Another problematic area, in terms of Anderson’s imagined community and nationalism, is the supposed timing of a specific cohesion of a people. He posited that the spread of communication brought about an immediate inclusive solidarity. But this is not the case. We cannot find this in the history of early modern Europe because such development was prevented by religious, elite and economic strife that characterized the period. Anderson did say that imagined community is both inherently limited and sovereign but he did not tell us how language as well as literacy could produce some form of distinction. The imagined community is successful in defining nationalism in terms of cohesion but not in a particular form of cohesion that forms a nation. Discuss the connections between Imagined Communities and Self-identity. In the imagined community paradigm, self-identity is the same as national-identity that emerges out of social processes of imagining a community. Here, there is an on-going dialogue wherein social networking is experienced through language and mass communication allowing participants to negotiate and renegotiate boundaries of self and of the others. In this context, in imagined communities, there is an affirmation of the membership of self-aware individuals. Specifically, we can see this in the rise of indirect relations that are mediated by technology and the media. For instance, the characters in television shows, celebrities and entertainers, athletes and politicians – each of these figures is perceived today as if he or she exists for those watching them in real and familiar ways. The offshoot is that a kind of identity is established between these figures and their audience in such a way that attachment emerges. The changing public tastes in its diversity and comprehensive span can be attributed to those materials produced by books, biographies, television and print tabloids featuring celebrities’ lives. What this example tells us is that there is a collective disposition for new forms of relationships and identities as a consequence of simulated community and the relationships within facilitated by technology and the media. There is a capacity in imagined communities, in the processes and negotiations within, to produce categorical identities or social types such as men and women, people that are growing older, workers, the rich, African-American, cops and so on that provides images that builds identities as well as opportunity to confirm a sense of difference and exclusion as much as belongingness. Conclusion The process of Anderson’s imagined community is fundamental in understanding the elements of entry and connection in nationalism. It transcends the idea that nationhood is fabricated or merely imaginary discourses. This is the reason why the concept of imagined community is very popular among social theorists. The thesis is not that explicitly constructivist but the idea captures the intensity of the concepts such as nationalism and nationhood. As an imagined community, a nation is provided a narrative meaning for individuals that constitute it by allowing the imagination of a territory of the nation without having personally to encounter it and its inhabitants. The approach does not see nationalism as a discourse of power or one of ideology but one of cultural meaning and cognition. In imagined community”, gaps could still be found – there are limitations in regard to the explanation of the elements that characterize the concept. Indeed, Anderson, himself, have left open several areas and questions because the subject is dynamic. However, these do not entirely undermine the potency of Anderson’s vision. All in all, Anderson’s most significant contribution here is that he was able to address all the anomalies that most theorists have created or was not able to tackle in defining nationalism. References Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso, 1993. Anderson, Benedict, The Spectre of Comparison: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the Work, London, Verso, 1998. Bhabha, Homi, Introduction and DisseminNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation, Homi Bhabha, (ed), Nation and Narration, London, Routledge, 1990. Chatterjee, Partha Andersons Utopia, diacritics, 29:4, 1999, p 128-134. Culler, Jonathan, Anderson and the Novel, diacritics, 29:4, 1999, p20-39. Finkelstein, Joanne and Goodwin, Susan, ‘Imagined Communities’, The Sociological Bent: Inside Metro Culture, Southbank, Victoria, Thomson, 2005. Renfield, Marc, Imagi-Nation: The Imagined Community and the Aesthetics of Mourning, diacritics, 29:4, 1999, p58-83. Read More