Gellner also argues that nationalism has developed from modern society s need for homogeneity. Anderson s idea that a nation is an imagined community. nationalism, mostly through the making of the myths that exist within the nation. In the case of Somalia and Iran, ethnicity is inherent, and every faction wants leadership of the nation without secession.ģ pages, 1454 words The Essay on Nationalism Has Developed From Modern Anderson Nation Gellner These are nations whose citizens do not share a sense of belonging to the whole, yet remained unified by a variety of factors. Some countries however, are not built around such, and a quick list comes to mind – Somalia, Iran, Zimbabwe, Georgia. Most modern states are built around a unified people sharing a common pride and heritage – they are ‘imagined communities’, as Anderson would put it. Arguments against Anderson’s Thesis Nations do not Have to be Imagined Communities Overall, my thesis is that nations may be imagined communities but must be augured with homogeneity of bureaucracy for them to exist. I posit that republicanism, rather than ‘print capitalism’, is the father of modern nations but at the same time, that nations are not products of modernity.Īll the same, I do agree with a number of Anderson’s approaches, namely that nationalism does lead people to sacrifice even the ultimate price and force the same of opponents, that nationalism is not obsolete in a globalized world, and that access to knowledge is a key factor in modern nationalism. While I agree that nations in many cases are imagined communities, this is not an inherent quality of nations, and neither are nations always sovereign, though they may be limited geographically.

In most of my arguments in this paper, the afore-going statement serves as my point of departure as I largely disagree with most of Anderson’s positions on nationalism. In my view, nationalism is not a new phenomenon.

Examples of imagined communities