Imagining Communities: Historical Reflections on the Process of Community Formation

In 'Imagined Communities', first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued that members of a community experience a "deep, horizontal camaraderie." Despite being strangers, members feel connected in a web of imagined experiences. Yet while Anderson's insights have been hugely influential, they remain abstract: it is difficult to imagine imagined communities. How do they evolve and how is membership constructed cognitively, socially and culturally? How do individuals and communities contribute to group formation through the act of imagining? And what is the glue that holds communities together? 'Imagining Communities' examines actual processes of experiencing the imagined community, exploring its emotive force in a number of case studies. Communal bonding is analyzed, offering concrete insights on where and by whom the nation (or social group) is imagined and the role of individuals therein. Offering eleven empirical case studies, ranging from the premodern to the modern age, this volume looks at and beyond the nation and includes regional as well as transnational communities as well

In his groundbreaking Imagined Communities, first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued that members of a community experience a deep, horizontal camaraderie. Despite being strangers, members feel connected in a web of imagined experiences. Yet while Anderson's insights have been hugely influential, they remain abstract: it is difficult to imagine imagined communities. How do they evolve and how is membership constructed cognitively, socially and culturally? How do individuals and communities contribute to group formation through the act of imagining? And what is the glue that holds communities together? Imagining Communities examines actual processes of experiencing the imagined community, exploring its emotive force in a number of case studies. Communal bonding is analysed, offering concrete insights on where and by whom the nation (or social group) is imagined and the role of individuals therein. Offering eleven empirical case studies, ranging from the premodern to the modern age, this volume looks at and beyond the nation and includes regional as well as transnational communities as well.

In 'Imagined Communities', first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued that members of a community experience a "deep, horizontal camaraderie." Despite being strangers, members feel connected in a web of imagined experiences. Yet while Anderson's insights have been hugely influential, they remain abstract: it is difficult to imagine imagined communities. How do they evolve and how is membership constructed cognitively, socially and culturally? How do individuals and communities contribute to group formation through the act of imagining? And what is the glue that holds communities together? 'Imagining Communities' examines actual processes of experiencing the imagined community, exploring its emotive force in a number of case studies. Communal bonding is analyzed, offering concrete insights on where and by whom the nation (or social group) is imagined and the role of individuals therein. Offering eleven empirical case studies, ranging from the premodern to the modern age, this volume looks at and beyond the nation and includes regional as well as transnational communities as well

Introduction /Gemma Blok, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, and Claire Weeda --Meanwhile in messianic time: imagining the medieval nation in time and space and English drinking rituals /Claire Weeda --Diverse origins and shared circumstances: European settler identity formation in the seventeenth-century plantation colony of Suriname /Suze Zijlstra --Imagining Europe: The Peace of Ryswick (1697) and the rise of European consciousness /Lotte Jensen --Gypsy music and the fashioning of the national community /Krisztina Lajosi --'Tired, worried and overworked': an international imagined community of nervous sufferers in medical advertisements, 1900-1920 /Gemma Block --'From heart to heart': colonial radio and the Dutch imagined community in the 1920s /Vincent Kuitenbrouwer --Indonesian nationalism in the Netherlands, 1920s-1930s: long-distance internationalism of elite pilgrims in homogeneous, empty time /Klaas Stutje --Time, rhythm and ritual: imagined communities in L'espoir (1937) and Les sept couleurs (1939) /Marleen Rensen --Stamverwantschap and the imagination of a white, transnational community: the 1952 celebrations of the Jan van Riebeeck tercentenary in the Netherlands and South Africa /Barbara Henkes --'L'Oranie Cycliste, une grande famille': recycling identities and the Pieds-Noirs communitas, 1976-2016 /Niek Pas --Remembering and imagining the national past: public service television drama and the construction of a Flemish nation, 1953-1989 /Alexander Dhoest.