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A review by frogwithlittlehammer
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson
challenging
informative
3.75
Has screen capitalism surpassed print capitalism in its impact on our ideas of nationhood? That is the question I’m left with.
Anderson spends a lot of his time drawing examples from a truly diverse group of societies, to relay his point of how the act of writing down vernacular and then printing it created this false idea of community and a nation. Religion comes into play a lot as well, but I focused on that less (both because it’s not my area of interest and also seems to serve as more of an extension to his principal point.)
I liked his musings on long-distance nationalism, and I learned a lot about Creole history. I’d been seeking this book for a while, because I’ve been thinking about what causes people to want to live and die for their country. This is exactly the question that Anderson asks as well, and in the end he waxes a bit romantic, or maybe just hauntingly, that there’s probably not a comprehensive answer. He is sympathetic, and for that reason the book was a curious read, not the scathing one I was expecting (and hoping) for.
Anderson spends a lot of his time drawing examples from a truly diverse group of societies, to relay his point of how the act of writing down vernacular and then printing it created this false idea of community and a nation. Religion comes into play a lot as well, but I focused on that less (both because it’s not my area of interest and also seems to serve as more of an extension to his principal point.)
I liked his musings on long-distance nationalism, and I learned a lot about Creole history. I’d been seeking this book for a while, because I’ve been thinking about what causes people to want to live and die for their country. This is exactly the question that Anderson asks as well, and in the end he waxes a bit romantic, or maybe just hauntingly, that there’s probably not a comprehensive answer. He is sympathetic, and for that reason the book was a curious read, not the scathing one I was expecting (and hoping) for.