Analysis Of Imagined Communities By Benedict Anderson

“Imagined communities,” a book by Benedict Anderson, attempts to answer the question on why people sacrifice their life for a nation? Why people become very nationalist and ready to be killed in the bloodshed of a war for their nation?

Anderson (1991, p. 5) argues that nationality is a cultural object of particular things. Nationality may have a compound intersection with historical powers, capable of being transferred with some changeable degree of perceptions, and may amalgamate congruently with political and ideological assemblages. Indeed, as a recent concept in the late 18th century, the framework of nationality was innovative but it was actually lack of definition or challenged analysis from scholars/thinkers. Anderson mentions, “In

Nationality is “an imagined political community – and imagined as both limited and sovereign” (1991, p. 6). This definition exemplifies four key concepts. (1) Imagined because the members of the nation cannot know/see each other but they share the image of their communion. As Anderson quoted Ernest Gellner (in Anderson, 1991, p. 6), “nationalism is not awakening of nations to self consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.” (2) Limited because no nation involves all of manhood, nor even aspires to. Anderson states, “No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind… for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet” (1991, p. 7). (3) Sovereign because nations was born during Enlightenment and revolution era, where it destroyed the divinely ordained and hierarchy of dynasty, and in the same time endeavor for freedom. (4) Community because a nation is conceived of as a horizontal brotherhood and deep, regardless the tangible disparity and exploitation that may occur in each. Why then, the nations that only exist for two centuries have motivated millions of people to kill and/or die for them? The answers lie in the cultural roots of