Nationalism, Religion, And Print Capitalism In Imagined Communities By Benedict Anderson

Imagined Communities was first published in 1983 by Benedict Anderson. Anderson discusses several themes throughout the novel. A few important themes discussed are Nationalism, Religion, and Print Capitalism. “The fact of the matter is that nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies, while racism dreams of external contaminations” (pg. 149). According to Anderson, racism and nationalism are not related. No one is aware of all members in the community. The communities are limited and sovereign. “Through that language, encountered at mother’s knee and parted with only at the grave, pasta are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed” (pg. 154). Language is a theme throughout the novel. Anderson argues it plays a role in the identity of the people and their nationalism. Capitalism is the economic standing of a country. Printing led to the discovery of print languages, such as Latin or French. Eventually, it shifted to vernaculars. It was a way of communicating in a new form of “imagined community” and built and image of antiquity. Marxism and other theories state many ideas about what nationalism is. Anderson’s major argument was a satisfactory interpretation of nationalism. …show more content…
According to Anderson, nations are imagined as limited, sovereign, and a community. He believes the answer to why millions of people to kill or die for a country begin with the roots of nationalism. A census was a quantity of identical units, a map focused on the antiquity of specific units, and museums were a guardian of historical factors. The decline of religion and antique kinship, the connection between capitalism and print, and the development of languages played an important role in the nationality of the