The Imagined Communities

1. The Imagined Communities The nation is imagined … the nation in anthropological sprit; it is an imagined political community, and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. (p6)

2. Nation/ Nationalism as cultural artifacts • “nation-ness as well as nationalism are cultural artifacts of particular kind” (p4) • “nationalism has to be understood by aligning it, not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that precede it, out of which – as well as against which- it came into being” (p12)

3. The Nation is imagined in a particular way • The community whose size is beyond face-to-face contact are all imagined. • The nation is imagines as limited because a nation holds limited number of people. • The nation is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in the age in which realm of absolutism was destroying by revolution. • The nation is imagined as community because the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.  it is this fraternity that makes it possible for so many millions of people willingly die for their nation.

4. Print Capitalism What makes such imagining possible? Print capitalism (the novels and newspapers) • Origins of national consciousness was print capitalism: The nation was imagined through language • In early time: international publishing houses, ignoring national frontiers, Latin readers. • In the mid 16th century, vernacularizing of print industry.

5. Vernacular Language Press and National consciousness The vernacular print language laid the bases for national consciousness in 3 ways: • They created unified fields of exchange and communication * Print language made possible for people who speak different dialects to communicate * The fellow- readers were connected through print, and they formed the embryo of the nationally imagined community.

6. Vernacular Language Press and National consciousness • Print-capitalism gave a new fixity to language which helped to build the image of antiquity of the nation. * Archive • Print-capitalism created language of power. * High German, King’s English or Central Thai, Tokyo dialect

7. Spread of Nations • The nation came to be imagined, and once imagined; it was modeled, adapted and transformed. • In the colonized countries, the colonial state conditioned the natives to imagined a nation: education for native people • Native bureaucrats in colonial administration, Bilingual intelligentsias have learned nationalism and copied, adapted and improved it.

8. Imagined Colony Imagined nation of colonized countries • The nation’s model of colonized countries was colonial state • Three institutions made such imagination: • Census • Before it was for tax and military but now individual persons are counted • Map and Map-as-logo • The model for drawing the national borders, not the model of • Necessity for administrative mechanisms for troops to back their claims. • Museum • Victorious past (conquest)