Elements in Benedict Anderson’s thesis

Identifying key elements in Benedict Anderson’s thesis on nations as imagined communities. What implications does his thesis carry for the European Union? In 1983 the publication of Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism established Anderson’s reputation as one of the foremost thinkers on nationalism In the book Anderson theorized the condition that led to the development of nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly in the Americas, and famously defined the nation as an “imagined community.”

The nation is imagined, according to Anderson, because it entails a sense of communion or “horizontal comradeship” between people who often do not know each other or have not even met. Despite their differences, they imagine belonging to the same collectivity, and they attribute to the latter a common history, traits, beliefs, and attitudes. Anderson further defined this imagined community as limited and sovereign: limited, because even the largest nations recognize some boundaries and the existence of other nations beyond them; sovereign, because the nation replaced traditionalkinship ties as the foundation of the state.