Modernity and Anderson's Concept of the Imagined Community - Assignment Example

Relationship between modernity and Andersons concept of the imagined community Over the past few decades, the extraordinary evolution of social and economic globalisation has greatly altered society’s perception of the term community and how it is defined. Despite the fact that there remains wide differences of opinion regarding the extent and specific forms of globalization, few researchers can argue that the convergence of developing economic configurations and advancing electronic technologies have and continue to change the fundamental affiliation between what can be considered local as opposed to global. These dynamics have proliferated theories which have addressed the fundamental relationship between community, culture and modern technology. Benedict Anderson’s works, beginning in 1983, suggest that the intertwined affiliation between community and modern technology is showcased no better than by the influence mass communication instigated when books and newspapers became widely assessable in the late 1800’s. As Anderson reasons, the concept of community was fashioned by regional religious traditions previous to the surfacing of mass access to the printed forms of communication that were not of the church and were written in familiar languages. These longstanding structures of society [churches] were radically and permanently changed when the new technologies [newspapers and books] permitted communities to communicate effectively and therefore subsist without their constituents coming into direct contact with one other. Through technological ties, Anderson theorizes, communities became the product of a collective imagination which was structured by and proliferated as a result of mass communications. This discussion examines the relationship between modernity and Anderson’s concepts of the way communities imagine themselves predominantly within the context of how modern culture has evolved via communication technologies. In 1983, Anderson coined the term ‘imagined communities’ to describe how the collective conscience of a culture has been affected by the development of communication (Anderson, 1991). Though communication technology has progressed by quantum leaps since these theories were published, Anderson’s research on the subject remains relevant and is the basis for other researches on the subject. In addition to examining Anderson’s theory, further research that has been conducted with Anderson’s work as the foundation will be examined to illustrate expansions of the concepts involved and introduce explanations for the possible flaws in Anderson’s theories. Essentially, Anderson suggests that religions decline, brought on by many factors, such as the Enlightenment brought about by a diversified print media, made possible innovative perceptions of time not previously discussed much. This new perception enabled a particular social group to ‘imagine’ their community. Prior to nationalist thought, communities were perceived based on religious structures such as Christianity which utilized Latin as its common language. As the people of Europe began exploring, they came to understand how insulated they were from other cultures and how limited was their conception of reality. The Latin language was in decline during this time as regional vernaculars were proliferating. Prior to this period in history, Europeans imagined their community in religious terms alone with their perception of time bonded together with the dominant religious thought. The present, future and past were not necessarily related but rather dictated by God’s will. As the religious structure within communities dissolved with the influx of new ideas from new cultures and new methods of communication among these societies, different perceptions of time emerged and could be quantified in terms of clocks and calendars. According to Anderson, print technology was the source of the fundamental modification in society’s perceptions of itself. He suggests this technology was the main factor in transforming society’s long-held conception of time. Before print was accessible to the masses, cultures had conceived time as static and defined only by a supreme divine architect. As previously spread-out and diverse communities began to identify with ‘shared imaginings’ which were expressed through print communications, the standard concept of fixed time could not explain nor co-exist with the changeable nature of outside societies. As a result, modernity dissolved the existing perceptions of a fixed time into a time with movement and fluidity which created a void that necessitated other, less static explanations. This opened up a wide array of thought beyond what had been the conventional. Familiar concepts such as the progression of time were already in the process of transformation thus changing community’s concepts of itself. Universal access to the printed word accelerated the evolution of a community’s self-perception. Latin had been a language known by few other than those in the religious hierarchy and those in the ruling class but mass publication technology allowed for books to be printed in all languages. This, combined with global explorations, integrated the perceptions of many cultures and modified concepts of community. Newspapers and books written in regional dialects bonded cultures and strengthened their sense of community, or nationalism. Written language offers a tangible credibility to a given societal group which serves to unify it. Anderson theorizes that nationalistic tendencies resulted from the decline of religions and the diversity of populations in addition to the expansion of communications technologies and capitalism (Anderson, 1991). Anderson’s use of the expression ‘imagined community’ may be a difficult concept to grasp because a community is thought to be readily observable and easily described. A community has borders, a certain number of people, histories and governments, flags, etc., all of the identifying marks that one would define as a communal grouping or nation. People participate in and thus experience the society in which they live. This awareness of community becomes more intense during periods of shared ambitions and interests such as defending the borders, celebrating an event or mourning a collective loss. Anderson theorizes that a very tangible nation is an imagined community because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each life the image of their communion” (Anderson, 1991: 6). People generally sense an instantaneous affiliation with others simply because they speak similarly or are from within the same borders. All people have an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality to some extent. Communities are “imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations” (Anderson, 1991: 7). The perception of a society’s members is that their concept of laws, government and culture is the preferred method of existence.  While differences of ideology, race, class, and religious beliefs are often engrained and unavoidable within the make-up of a community, “it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (Anderson, 1991: 7). Since the publishing of Anderson’s works, many researchers have built upon, confirmed and rejected elements of his theories. Some have argued, for example, that his views concerning the affiliation between religion and nationalistic tendencies cannot be evidenced in all circumstances. However, most have simply expounded on his theories. Some researchers maintain that the technological advances of communication have become increasingly influential and the concept of a communal identity implies an artificial sense of familiarity. In fact, communities in the high-tech society are diverse but still imagined communities. James Carey, a prominent scholar of communications suggests that researchers “should not view communication as a transmission process, in other words, sending messages across geography for purposes of control but as a ritual, the sacred ceremony that draws persons together in fellowship and community” (Carey, 1975: 18). Arjun Appadurai suggests that communities should not be viewed in the geographical sense but as a social entity. Modern communities, Appadurai theorizes, materialize from a displaced public realm which is evidenced by an “uneasy engagement of diasporic people” (Appadurai, 1996: 89). In global historic terms, an example of diasporic peoples is Jews living outside the State of Israel. Appadurai suggests that communities can develop when peoples unite around similar descriptions and perceive themselves as a closed society regardless of geographical circumstances. The advancement of communications technologies have served to proliferate these perceptions within certain groups. Appadurai further theorizes that “such social systems produce communities that struggle in futility to find authenticity. This results in a nostalgic impulse to look back to a world they have never lost” (Appadurai, 1996: 90-91). Stuart Hall offers supplemental emphasis on the wide-ranging relevance of social configurations and the universal inclinations that accentuate the perceptions of the imagined community on a local basis. Hall suggests that recognition within local imagined communities is pervasive, but as he suggests, “the structure of identification is always constructed through ambivalence between a sense of self and a sense of the other” (Hall, 1997: 47). Furthermore, Hall emphasizes that the struggle for group identity “is always in part a narrative, is always a kind of representation thus, the process of imagining communities is related to an idealized past, but never directly” (Hall, 1997: 49). George Lipsitz theorizes that popular culture tends to be the main identifying component of communities. Modern societies turn to various forms of media as a means by which to gauge themselves against others in the imagined community. Newspaper and books have been joined by music, movies, television and the internet among forms of mass communications as mechanisms which influence the idea of community. Lipsitz furthers his argument by suggesting that television programs in particular gives society a clear picture of their imagined communities. The concept of community, no matter how small the number or geographic area is regularly provided by television. All classes and ethnicities are portrayed, though many would argue to a disproportionate percentage, thus every subculture of a community is identifiable. People have a physical, intellectual and emotional attachment to popular culture because it is engaging on many levels of human activity and draws upon familiarity. Lipsitz believes that by researching popular culture when examining society’s imagined perceptions of community will open new avenues of research in the field and is essential in the evolution of its study. “Popular culture reflects the key motives and affiliations implicit in the identification strategies that an imagined community uses to maintain itself” (Lipsitz, 1990: 20). Within the framework of the theories supported by Anderson, Hall and Appadurai, Lipsitz asserts that popular culture symbolizes the “unfixed imaginary nature of contemporary social systems.” He further contends that “popular culture both performs the dirty work of the economy and the state and it retains memories of the past and hopes for the future” (Lipsitz, 1990: 20). Each of these researchers’ points of view reinforces Anderson’s fundamental contention – Imagined communities are personified through forms of ever-modernising communication technologies and endorsed by evolving communal traditions. Bolter and Grusin (1999) also further discuss imagined communities with regards to Anderson’s basic premise. They suggest that people have a seemingly inherent desire for the various media forms to continue developing increasingly closer to their experiences in ‘real life’ terms. They argue that the communications technologies have followed their eventual evolutionary path from the printing press through to cyber-optics technology because of people’s seemingly insatiable desire for immediacy and realistic images of what they perceive themselves to be. They also point out, however, as the media evolves, the more transparent it becomes to its audience thus divulging the ways it is unlike ‘real life’ experiences. Still, both admit communication technologies are able to interact with people in ways never previously anticipated. As media evolves, it furthers the association between people and their imagined communities as was Anderson’s premise. A 1970’s study of the ‘The Walton’s’ television series addressed the methods by which a sense of community was defined through characters in a fictional setting. The study concluded that fictional characters on television provide an influential mythic purpose in the shaping of a community’s sense of identification and collective values. However, the televised illusion of idyllic characters and situations seems to leave its audience feeling unfulfilled because they must ultimately deal with the disjuncture between reality and the myth (Roiphe, 1976). Similarly, another study observed the ritualistic involvement of persons who were asked to watch reruns of the 1950’s television series ‘Perry Mason’ repeatedly. The study examined the values and themes contained in the people’s ritualistic performances while watching the program. It concluded that that, in regards to this scenario, these rituals serve as the “churches of everyday life. These popular culture rituals provide symbolic atonement for the guilt implicit in contemporary social conditions” (Hickey, 1997: 142). As with the way religious rituals shaped the concept of community in years past, rituals involving television programs offer a similar sensation of permanence and stability. The popular culture factor is not addressed in the postmodern surroundings that Anderson, Hall and others describe but its foundation was laid, as were those of Halls and Appadurai, based upon the theories of Anderson. John Rowe, in his studies, focused on the wide-ranging effects of regarding television’s responsibility in the creation and reproduction of popular culture in the ‘postmodern’ era. He suggests that many appraisals of television programs which have postulated that it generates a sedative-type effect is problematical because these appraisals perceive that those who view television do so passively. To the contrary, Rowe suggests that “it is more useful to view television as an enacted in a socially significant ritual recitation” (Rowe, 1994: 117). Rowe asserts that television characterizes “a larger rhetoric of an economy of representation.” Television’s principle objective, according to Rowe, “is not marketing commodities but to produce narratives capable of being retold by viewers.” To allow its audience to restate narratives the television media “relies on a narratological flexibility that often is missing in traditional narratology” (Rowe, 1994: 103). The ritualistic attraction to television depends on associations that connect the experiences of the viewer to differing programs so as to “construct a ‘memory’ in viewers” (Rowe, 1994: 98). Rowe’s conception of memory with respect to television viewing is important because it unites significant issues regarding memory, narration and imagination on a practical as well as a theoretical level while furthering the theory of Anderson’s imagined community. The narrative theory is recognized as an influential methodology when examining ritual enactments within imagined communities. The narrative theory encompasses various philosophical studies each of which advances either directly or indirectly Anderson’s theory. They all make modifications on the contention that “the physical sciences and nature do not provide the boundaries necessary for humans to distinguish time and causality” (Martin, 1986: 73). Therefore, people employ narrative, fictional characters and stories to structure their perception of community. Otherwise, to imagine a particular community would be all but impossible. In terms of internet-based communities, the interaction involved in cyber societies are extremely comparable to in-person communications. “Similar to a face-to-face community, the full spectrum of personalities and issues emerge spontaneously from a cyber community” (Horn, 1998). The use of technology in the cyber community is the lone exception to in-person communications. The infusion of this type of technology into interpersonal communications allows internet-based communities to be more focused and selective. The dynamics surrounding the technological and social factors and the way they unite to define an imagined community is a fascinating and significant exploration of the human psyche on numerous levels. This research theorizes that these dynamics reveal fundamental relationships between philosophy, communication technologies and imagined communities. This decidedly ritualized behavior characterizes a distinctive combination of learned social behaviors. These rituals first theorized by Anderson bind together the imagined community. A community is imagined if there is a close-knit comradeship amongst its members. Communications technologies beginning with the printed word has propagated the concept of community which generally creates an ever-increasing association between those perceived members. Though globalization, by way of broader means of communication, has brought together many of the world’s societies economically and culturally, the bond that imagined communities develop through mass communication can rise to fanatical levels. “Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings” (Anderson, 1983: 5). Why societies bond and form their perceptions of community is not simply a question for philosophers and psychiatrists to ponder. The ramifications of imagined communities are of global concern but the many dynamics regarding cause and effect of these perceptions remains a relatively new and as yet underdeveloped field of study. References Anderson, Benedict. (1983, 1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, Arjun. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Bolter, Jay & Grusin, Richard. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge and London: MIT Press. Carey, James W. (1975). “A Cultural Approach to Communication.” Communication. Vol. 2, pp. 1-22. Hall, Stuart. (1997). “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities.” Culture, Globalization and the World System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. Anthony D. King (Ed.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, pp. 41-68. Hickey, Dave. (1997). Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy. Los Angeles: Art Issues Press. Horn, Stacy. (1998). Cyberville: Clicks, Culture and the Creation of an Online Town. New York: Warner Books. Lipsitz, George. (1990). Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Martin, Wallace. (1986). Recent Theories of Narrative. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press. Roiphe, Anne. (1976). “Ma and Pa and John Boy in Mythic America: The Waltons.” Television: A Critical View. Horace Newcomb (Ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 66-73. Rowe, John C. (1994). “Spin-off: The Rhetoric of Television and Postmodern Memory.” Narrative and Culture. Janice Carlisle and Daniel Schwarz (Eds.). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, pp. 97-121. Read More