Imagined Communities

Encyclopedia Term: Imagined Communities

Picture a roaring football game. As you look out into the crowd you see different faces. Some are painted with your team’s colors while others wear infuriated looks. The last few minutes of the game are tense, and together with your neighboring fans you begin to chant and cheer for your team. Although you are strangers, you are united in this exciting moment and form a bond, you are on the same team. This community can be described as an imagined community, a term coined by political scientist, Benedict Anderson in his publication, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. An imagined community is a socially constructed group of individuals that share an identity despite knowing very little about each other. Anderson bases this term on the idea of nationalism, which is defined as “loyalty and devotion to a nation”[i]. He argues that this sense of communion between individuals are “invented” or “created” and give meaning and purpose to their lives.

The idea of nationalism is one that provokes many questions. What makes a nation? Is a nation limited? Is it distinguishable from others with a distinct identity tied to it? Are both nations and communities imagined? Anderson emphasizes the use of perception in community identity. Individuals perceive to be part of a group or nation because of birth place, geography, or culture. It is limited because of these boundaries that set them apart from other nations or communities regardless of a vast and diverse population. Its limitations are also evident in the knowledge each member of the community, as not all members know “every aspect of its economy, geography, history, and so forth”[ii]. Anderson believes that all nations and communities are imagined and sovereign, including the political community, and that nationalism and imagined communities are dependent on the existence of the “other”. Immigrants from Italy who immigrated to the United States might find solace and connection with each other because of their shared motherland and form communities based on that association. Similarly, a small group of Mormons who move to the same general area might use geography to mark their identity and form a nation.

Much Anderson’s thinking about imagined communities stems from the formation of nations and nationalism. He credits “print-capitalism” as the biggest players in establishing a unified community. Print capitalism is the use of print (newspapers) and a capitalist society to institute a mainstream language that the mass public will read and “wipe out” other languages (44-45)[iii]. From print-capitalism, nations are generated. Vernaculars are used and communication operates as the nation’s narrative. Newspapers share “a collective experience of the news, irrespective of their geographical distance from each other and of social hierarchies”[iv]. It is easily attainable, produced and distributed, and does not require advanced reading abilities. News media also provides condensed information in a way that defines the values of that community. They are “one-day-bestsellers”[v] that identify the stories worth telling. Chinese newspapers to this day do not write opinion pieces on politics and television as well, as internet posts are monitored closely for anti-government rhetoric. Print-capitalism does promote individuality and class distinctions based on the type of news and altered news that informants decide to publish. In relation to politics of health, print-capitalism in China is evident in media portrayals of autism and other mental illnesses. Cues of shame and peril mark the stigma around autistic patients. The lack of discussion and stigmatized portrayals reflects the feelings of the community and of the politics, since media is regulated by the Chinese government[vi].

Imagined community implies bonding between members of a community that can be used for better or for worse. It can bring meaning to one’s life and respond to existential questions. T.J. Clark agrees with Anderson’s implications that these formed identities, although socially constructed, are meaningful, “The nation gives form to a shiftless and arbitrary being on earth, it offers a promise of immortality, it is oriented time and again towards – and beyond – the individual’s death.”[vii]. Russia identifies the Eastern Orthodox Church as its main, and perhaps only, religion it follows which indicates that spirituality plays a significant role in Russian culture. Such ties reflect Clark’s claim that nationality, and especially nationalism, can provide answers to ideas about morality. Bonds between members are described as “horizontal comradeship”[viii] which entails a loyalty so strong that sacrifice of one’s life is not uncommon. In imagined communities with strong identities, men and women are willing to die on the battlefield for their nation, hoping that their sacrifice will better their nation and prolong their nation’s legacy.

Imagined communities are foundational to health and politics of health. They determine values of a community including stigma around certain illnesses and determine what policies should be set in place for the betterment of the group. They reflect past understandings of health and foreshadow the future of health and wellness. These socially constructed groups have the power to normalize the good, bad, healthy, and unhealthy. For this reason, studying the structure of imagined communities and reflecting how they formed these structure will help future leaders of the community to evolve and prosper.

References

[i] “Nationalism.” Merriam-Webster.com. Accessed March 18, 2017. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nationalism.

[ii] “imagined community.” In . : , 2010-01-01. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095958187.

[iii] Anderson, Benedict. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso, 1991.

[iv] Munro, André. “Benedict Anderson.” Benedict Anderson. Encyclopædia Britannica.

[v] Anderson, Benedict. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso, 1991

[vi] Lu Tang & Bijie Bie (2016) The stigma of autism in china: an analysis of

newspaper portrayals of autism between 2003 and 2012, Health Communication, 31:4,

445-452, DOI:

10.1080/10410236.2014.965381

[vii] Clark, T. J. “In a Pomegranate Chandelier.” Review of Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, by Benedict Anderson and Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, by Benedict Anderson. London Review of Books 28 no. 18 (2006): 6-8, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n18/tj-clark/in-a-pomegranate-chandelier.

[viii] Anderson, Benedict. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso, 1991.