imaginary community

Nationalism and imagined communities

According to Anderson's theory of imagined communities, the main causes of nationalism are the declining importance of privileged access to particular script languages (such as Latin) because of mass vernacular literacy; the movement to abolish the ideas of rule by divine right and hereditary monarchy; and the emergence of printing press capitalism ('the convergence of capitalism and print technology... standardization of national cale…

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According to Anderson's theory of imagined communities, the main causes of nationalism are the declining importance of privileged access to particular script languages (such as Latin) because of mass vernacular literacy; the movement to abolish the ideas of rule by divine right and hereditary monarchy; and the emergence of printing press capitalism ('the convergence of capitalism and print technology... standardization of national calendars, clocks and language was embodied in books and the publication of daily newspapers') —all phenomena occurring with the start of the Industrial Revolution.

While attempting to define nationalism, Anderson identifies three paradoxes:

'(1) The objective modernity of nations to the historians' eyes vs. their subjective antiquity in the eyes of nationalists. (2) The formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept [and] (3) the 'political' power of such nationalisms vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence.'

Anderson talks of Unknown Soldier tombs as an example of nationalism. The tombs of Unknown Soldiers are either empty or hold unidentified remains, but each nation with these kinds of memorials claim these soldiers as their own. No matter what the actual origin of the Unknown Soldier is, these nations have placed them within their own imagined community.