Benedict Anderson and The Nation as Imagined Community
Can it be that our nation is an “imagined” nation? Why did Benedict Anderson call our nation this? How did this type of imagined community originate? What are the three waves of nationalism? How do these differ from the four types of nationalism Anderson identifies? The nation is an imagined political community in that it is imagined as both inherently limited as well as sovereign. National cannot be defined as the awakening of nations to self-consciousness. Anderson discusses the problem of nations in knowing truly knowing the members that form a nation. These questions form the basis of this paper as the meaning of the imagined nation is explained as well as the three waves of nationalism and the four types of nationalism are explained.
