BENEDICT ANDERSON

BIOGRAPHY
Full name Benedict Richard OGorman Anderson Born 26th August 1936 in Kunming, China Parents : Veronica Beatrice Mary Anderson and James Carew OGorman Anderson. James was an officer in the Imperial Maritime Customs in China mixed Irish and Anglo-Irish descent, and his family had been active in Irish nationalist movements while Veronica was English and came from a family of conventional businessmen, judges, and policemen. A Sinophile. Formerly served as director of the Modern Indonesia Program and is currently the Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies at Cornell.

Life Chronology

The Anderson family moved to California, where Benedict received his initial education.

1957
He received a B.A. in classics from Cambridge University, England. There, he developed an immense interest in Asian politics and later enrolled in Cornell Universitys Indonesian studies program.

Anderson went to Jakarta, Indonesia as part of his doctoral research.

1941

1961

1966
After the 1965 communist coup and massacres, Anderson published three studies, one of which was an outline of the coup.
This study, in which Anderson argues that discontented army officers, rather than communists, were responsible for *the+ coup and questions the military governments claims to legitimacy (Language 8) became known as the Cornell Paper which caused Anderson to be barred from Indonesia indeterminately.

Andersons infamous analysis of nationalism is presented in his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

1965

1983

IMAGINED COMMUNITIES

 His purpose in writing Imagined Communities is to provide a historical background for the emergence of nationalism its development, evolution, and reception. Anderson defines the nation as an imagined political community that is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Imagined 7).

The Nation is:

Imagined because members . . . will never know most of their fellow members . . . yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion (6). That is, the possession of citizenship in a nation allows and prompts the individual to imagine the boundaries of a nation, even though such boundaries may not physically exist. Limited because even the largest of them . . . has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations (7). The fact that nationalists are able to imagine boundaries suggests that they recognize the existence of partition by culture, ethnicity, and social structure among mankind. They do not imagine the union of all under one massive, allencompassing nationalism. Sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm . . . nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so (7). The sovereign state, therefore, is symbolic of the freedom from traditional religious structure. It provides the sense of organization needed for an orderly society, without relying on the then weakening religious hierarchy. Community because the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship (7). Regardless of the dissent and inequalities within the nation, the imagined alliance among people of the same imagined nation is so strong as to drive men to heroic deaths in nationalistic sacrifice.

Where The Theories Have Been Used :

The most influential book providing a whole set of new directions for the study of nationalism. Has been influential amongst academics who study nationalism and also in other fields of research. All successful political movements rely on the construction of what historian Benedict Anderson refers to as an imagined community. Also, cited by almost every writer who ventures onto the terrain of nationalism, it has become one of the commonest clichs of the literature.

The influence of Benedict Anderson

Using Anderson in this project will help broaden the understanding of communities. The theory of Imagined Communities describes how communities are socially constructed. Anderson understands imagined communities as the creator of nationalism. According to the theory of Benedict Anderson, a nation e.g. Denmark is nothing but a community of people, socially constructed by those who perceive themselves as a part of it.

It is imagined because a non-imagined community would be based on everyday face-to-face interactions. This means that people living in Copenhagen still feel some kind of belonging with those from Aarhus, even though we do not actually meet people from Aarhus. We may never see anyone in our imagined community but we still know they are there through communication and the media. This, Anderson says, is partly because of the invention of the printing press and later on the media in general. This makes it possible for us to be a part of it, and develop these imagined communities (Anderson 1991: chapter 3). We do not need the face-to-face interactions in the same sense as before, because the potential of the media and communication give us knowledge about the whole world. The lack of real relations (face-to-face relations) means that, these communities are imagined in the way that we have a mental image and understanding of our belonging, which can be experienced at e.g. the World Cup, The Olympics etc. Here people sit together and cheer with people they do not know, on a team they do not know either, but this is because we imagine that we have relations to each other. A nation can therefore be understood in this way: A nation is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their sameness (ibid: 6). This again underlines the fact that the imagined communities are indeed socially constructed.

Anderson contributes the creation of Imagined Communities to two major forces. First the decay of the cultural systems and second the change of the apprehension of time and place. Anderson operates with two different types of Cultural systems, the religious community and the dynastic community (ibid: 12). The religious community; has common concepts within each religion, which will be the same no matter where a believer may live. In common for all these religions was that all the religions had holy scripts and languages. Both the language and these scripts were unique to the religion. Thereby bringing a sense of common ground to believers, whenever they would meet face-to-face and this will result in an establishment of a community of some sort. The most obvious example is the Islamic understanding of Ummah (which means community in Arabic). This religious community got disbanded because of two factors according to Anderson. First the beginning of exploring meant that explorers all of a sudden travelled to meet new people and civilisations (ibid: 17). Anderson argues that this creates a need for defining them and thereby also a need for defining us. Here implying that them represents the people and civilisations that the colonial powers (Western society) encountered.

 His second argument was that up through the 1500 century, the language used in popular slowly changed from Latin to the mother tongue. To this Anderson credits Martin Luther and his work of translating the Bible and spreading Protestantism. These factors led to the lack of religion as a combining force, that united people, especially in the western countries (ibid: 18). The second cultural system is the dynastic realm, a cultural system that also precedes the nation. It is the belief in the ruling power, the monarchies to be absolute and often divine, along with the understanding of sovereignty and heritage claim. (ibid: 19) Monarchies would often have vague borders that differentiated now and then, but still some kind of prenation unity existed.

 The other force that, according to Anderson, has an effect upon creating our imagined community is the apprehension of time. Our apprehension of time has partly changed, because of the media, which has led to a calendrically homogenous time (ibid: 24). The understanding of time and place as something related to the calendar is shown, for example in the way newspapers describe events happening in other places. Newspapers descriptions also brings along a feeling of connection and understanding of the event and people described, in such a manner that one might feel connected to it, in some way. The description of somebody treated badly at a workplace is written, in such a way that most people will be able to identify with it. Because it is what makes the paper sell, but this in effect also creates this shared feeling of connection to something we basically are completely unrelated to. The fall of the religious and dynastic systems along with the changing conception of time, is what has created this understanding of imagined communities. Although not completely replaced, they have now more or less become a part of the imagined community according to Anderson, also becoming a part of the foundations of a nation. (ibid: Chapter 2)

 Anderson also puts a great deal of importance into the use of language, especially what he describes as the vernacular language. That is the language of the people, that the popular understood. This, he states, is because of the importance of language as a way to communicate. As well as the effect language has on creating a sense of communality among people (ibid: 134). An example to describe the importance of language and the vernacular could be how Norway, at that time belonging to Denmark, was able to create their own grammar, because of the distinct pronunciations. Hereby developing a need for their own unique Norwegian print-language, which Anderson describes as being the basis of the emerging nationalism (ibid: 75). He also contributes much of the languages importance to the fact that folklore, epic poetry and national epics in effect of the distinct language are creating communality. Language is the medium through which a community is imagined, thereby not meaning that the specific language is creating it, or as Anderson puts it: The sense of belonging and solidarity.

 Language is not an instrument of exclusion: in principle, anyone can learn any language. On the contrary, it is fundamentally inclusive, limited only by the fatality of Babel: no one lives long enough to learn all languages. (ibid: 134) The point Anderson argues, is not that every English-speaking person necessarily is a part of the imagined community of England, but that it opens up for the possibility to be a part of it. In addition language is not locked to one imagined community, but can indeed be the medium for several, e.g. the Australian, English, American etc. This has in the later years greatly improved, as the mass media has created an easy way to conjure the imagined community to the greater population, also the illiterate. As a result of this, the educational system is also a part of creating imagined communities. This is not only because it teaches the medium through which it is communicated, the language, but also because of the imagined community directly created through the educational institutions. This is for example the teachings of the nation-states boundaries in geography, historical events and culture in history etc. all defining what is special and specific in the particular imagined community. (ibid: chapter 7)

 Anderson explains the concept of Imagined Communities and how they are becoming more crucial because of the lack of face-to-face interactions. People feel a belonging to people they have never met because one imagines a belonging. This is in part an effect of the mass media. He also argues that cultural systems are decaying because the dynastic and religious communities are becoming less important. In Andersons theory language is ascribed an important role, because it is the medium for communication between people, and it is through the language a community is imagined.