According to the first, most commonly invoked account, nations were first imagined by means of the printing press. If we ask how nations are imagined, Anderson provides two quite separate explanations. No one has ever seen a nation except “in their mind’s eye.” Nations, for this reason, only exist since we imagine them to exist. Unlike small communities in which everyone knows everyone else, nations have too many members, and the vast majority of whom will never, and can never, meet. That is, they are not natural, organic, or just plain given, but instead the result of an act of creation. Nations are “imagined communities,” we are told. While the book is a brilliant exposition of the nature of nationalism, and well worth its fame, it is more than anything the title of the book that has been turned into a meme. Google Scholar counts some 112,589 citations, a number which should be enough to give you tenure at a major university at least ten times over. Even forty years after its initial publication, it is widely referenced, and a standard feature on reading lists everywhere. Benedict Anderson’s book on nationalism is a modern classic ( Anderson 2006).
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