benedict anderson imagined communities citation

4 ) – underwent since the book’s publication, including being consigned to the proverbial ‘dustbin of history’ by many, Anderson included (see Desai, 2009b). Inevitably, this assessment is made against the backdrop of the rather drastic swings of fortune which IC’s object of study – nationality, nation-ness, nationalism (p.

Re-reading IC in its new edition – now including a post-face detailing the impressive history of its translations and editions – nearly a quarter century after its original publication has served to crystallize vague unease into overall assessment. My unease was recently heightened when I tried to place IC – the conjuncture in the development of nations and nationalisms at which it intervened and the contribution it made – within a larger historical perspective on nationalism’s evolution over recent centuries, and an intellectual historical perspective on attempts to comprehend it (Desai 2009b). However, I am probably not alone in having long felt a certain unease with IC: not on individual points, though many of these have been criticized (see Özkirim, 2000, for a convenient summary of the principal criticisms of IC), but with slippages between its stated aims and arguments and their real logic. That it is not always attributed to its original creator is testimony to its pervasive acceptance and adoption. Indeed, no single phrase occurs as widely and frequently in the literature on nationalism as ‘imagined communities’. After all, it is one of the most widely cited works in its field and such academic ubiquity is surely review enough.

Like celebrities who ‘need no introduction’, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (hereinafter IC) should need no review. The Inadvertence of Benedict Anderson: Engaging Imagined Communitiesīenedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism London: Verso, 2006, second revised edition (first published 1983, revised edition, 1991).

Benedict anderson imagined communities citation