Benedict Anderson

Com o presente artigo, pretende-se abordar o tema do “jogo de futebol” e as estratégias utilizadas por seus mediadores – os narradores esportivos – para construir a enunciação esportiva e, consequentemente, vincular-se aos participantes da experiência do evento em questão, formando na recepção um sentimento de “comunidade imaginada”, conceito trabalhado por Benedict Anderson. Em seguida, esboça-se considerações sobre a especificidade da enunciação esportiva, explicitando estratégias observadas como intrínsecas no processo de produção desse tipo de discurso.

Este artículo examina diferentes conceptos de nación que van desde lo étnico, lo moderno, y lo utópico. Esboza la evolución del significado de la palabra nación desde el Renacimiento al siglo XXI y distingue entre la nación y el estado-nación que secuestra el papel de la primera. Para entender el concepto durante el Renacimiento se acude a los Comentarios reales del Inca Garcilaso, así como diversos diccionarios del período. Para entender el concepto a partir del siglo XIX, se acude a las teorías de Benedict Anderson y Eric Hobsbawm, y las ideas de Mario Vargas Llosa al respecto. Se ofrecerá algunas conclusiones aplicables al Perú.

Abstract: During the televised broadcast of the rite of voting of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, the pre-arrangement of a programmed environment was exposed, in which, due to the audiovisual recording planning, an ontological locus expressions of the national imaginary in that political ceremony. The symbolic systems are considered to make possible inter-subjective relations and the predominance of meanings in the hegemonic constitution of the current visual and discursive order. The ideological instrumentalization of the aesthetic experience is investigated to integrate itself with the institutions of the capitalist current of monopolistic stage of the Brazilian nation-state like category of hierarchy and classification in the project of the power; the aesthetic experience of self-symbolizing social actors, provoked by intentionalities and immanence, fulfills a political role in relation to an ethical-pedagogical horizon through historiographically shared and lived references in contexts, instituting collective memory of the groups and participatory of the formation of brazilian national imaginary symbolically colonized.

Resumo: Durante a transmissão televisionada do rito de votação do impeachment da presidenta Dilma Rousseff, expôs-se a pré-disposição de um ambiente programado, no qual, em função do planejamento de gravação audiovisual, viu-se imperar um locus ontológico como cenário de expressões do imaginário nacional naquela cerimônia política. Considera-se os sistemas simbólicos possibilitando relações inter-subjetivas e a predominância de sentidos na constituição hegemônica da ordem visual e discursiva corrente. Investiga-se a instrumentalização ideológica da experiência estética a integrar-se às instituições da atualidade capitalista de estágio monopolista do Estado-nação brasileiro como categoria de hierarquização e classificação no projeto do poder; a experiência estética auto-simbolizadora dos atores sociais, provocada por intencionalidades e imanências, cumpre papel político em relação a um horizonte ético-pedagógico por intermédio de referências historiograficamente partilhadas e vivenciadas em contextos, instituintes da memória coletiva dos grupos e participativas da formação do imaginário nacional brasileiro simbolicamente colonizado.

In his classical book “Imagined Communities”, Benedict Anderson attempted to outline the historic causes and process that lead to the rise and spread of nationalism all over the world, and in doing so came up with some innovative ideas, such as that of “imagined communities”, “limited pilgrimages”, and “modularity”. He dived his analysis in four different phases, placing the formation of post-colonial nations within the so-called “last wave” of nationalism, and claimed that they had been shaped by their colonisers, and that they were merely “copying” the models that had been previously created by American and European nations.
I argue that Anderson’s reflections are severely limited by his approach, namely historic materialism. Anderson provides a wealth of insights and good general theories on the rise and spread of nations and nationalisms, but his analysis is limited to visible phenomena, political and social structures, while failing to acknowledge the cultural and “spiritual” dimension. Anderson is mainly concerned with highlighting patterns and similarities between nations and nationalisms, while ignoring differences and specificities, and how the post-colonial process evolved throughout the decades. When it comes to explaining the process of nation-building in post-colonial societies (“The Last Wave”), he focuses excessively on the role of colonial states and the structures they left behind, while ignoring to look at “Who imagines what, when, and how?” Moreover, his analysis is hugely limited by the fact that he only studied the cases of Dutch-ruled Indies and French-ruled Indochina, and after comparing the two cases, extended his conclusions to all post-colonial nations at large.

The word “cacique” usually refers to a local strongman, boss, or warlord, and “democracy” denotes the political system that has put such powerful figures in command of politics at the national level. A prototype of this politics first appeared in 1897 when Emilio Aguinaldo, the former mayor of Kawit, Cavite, took over the leadership of the revolution and then became president of the First Republic. Ever since the election of former Davao city mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, as president in 2016, the notion of "cacique democracy" has all but been confirmed in the eyes of most political observers. But what are the origins of this discourse? How did the term "cacique," originally from the Carribean, come to define Philippine politics, and what is wrong with its present use?

(Published  version of a previously uploaded paper with the same title)

The phrase “the Chinese problem” is used to describe the fragmentation of the ethnic Chinese group from the Indonesian nation, and their subsequent discrimination . In other words, the failure for ethnic Chinese Indonesians to be accepted as ‘fully’ a part of the Indonesian imagined community- following the definition of a nation as an imagined community, provided by Anderson . Ethnic Chinese Indonesians are a minority group in Indonesia, large in number and strong in the economic and trade industries . Recorded to make up 3% of the population according to the latest 2010 census , they are not a homogenous group, as Chinese in Indonesia have historically come from diverse ethnic backgrounds including Hakka, Hokkein, Teochieu and Cantonese. The minority is also religiously diverse. However, it has become commonplace in the literature for the primary distinction to be made between totok (Chinese migrants) and pernanakan (ethnically ‘mixed’ Indonesian born) Chinese. There has existed an unshakeable tendency for discrimination towards the Chinese minority, that has manifested into violence several times since the beginning of the Suharto era. Although the Chinese have existed in Indonesia since the pre-colonial period and are in many ways another segment of the diversity that Indonesia is characterised by, there remains a distinct attitude from pribumi (indigenous Indonesians) of racialized animosity towards Chinese Indonesian groups. This was demonstrated in 2017, when huge riots occurred which resulted in the arrest of the ethnically Chinese former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known by his Hakka nickname ‘Ahok’). This essay asks the question; What are the fundamental causes of this longstanding discrimination? The problem seems to boil down to a history of tension over several issues. Economic jealousy provides the dominant explanation, coupled with a nationalist suspicion of the peranakan as holding loyalties to China, not Indonesia. Homogenisation of peranakan and totok groups, a lack of cultural assimilation, and religious differences are also factors. All of the aforementioned causes have, at some point, been perpetuated by the actions (or inactions) of Indonesian governments. Ergo, this essay primarily uses a state centred approach, grounding its analysis in Indonesian political eras in order to better understand the history and origins of the discrimination of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. It begins with an analysis of the colonial era at the end of the 19th century.

"فإذا كانت القومية علاقة إنتماء لجماعة متخيلة فهى تتضمن الحب طبعا. اما منتجات القومية الثقافية من شعر، ونثر قصصي، وموسيقى، وفنون تشكيلية، فتظهر هذا الحب بوضوح شديد في آلاف الأشكال والأساليب. ومن جهة آخرى كم من النادر حقا أن نجد منتجات قومية مماثلة تعبر عن الخوف والنفور.."

يقدم لنا المؤلف تصديره للطبعة المنقحة الخاصة بكتابه الأشهر (الجماعات المتخيلة)، حيث يفسر نقط التنقيح والتعديل التى قام بها وأسبابها.
اعادة نشر هذا التصدير من الممكن ان تلفت النظر الى مسألة القومية بصورة أعمق من مجرد البحث حول التعريف بها. الأمر الذى من المحتمل أن يؤدى الى ايجاد مسار للبحث حول ظاهرة من الظواهر المرتبطة بها وهي الشخصية الفنية القومية/الفن القومي.

Benedict Anderson’s great work, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Anderson 1983; hereafter IC) has been hailed as the “best known single work in nationalism studies” (Breuilly 2016: 625). His work has had an enormous impact throughout the social sciences. Much of Anderson’s formulation depends on observations about the importance of linguistics, communication, and standardization of language in community formation and identities. It is therefore paradoxical that few linguists have addressed Anderson’s work. Even rarer are discussions of the implications of Anderson’s work from the perspective of pragmatics. This essay is an attempt to begin
an exploratory discussion of the many pragmatic issues raised by the concept of Imagined Communities as laid out in Anderson’s important work.

Beeman, William O. 2018 Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. In Östman, Jan-Ola and Jef Verschueren, Eds. Handbook of Pragmatics 21. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp. 81-110.

The geological divergence of the North American and Eurasian plates creates a geological border known as the mid-Atlantic ridge. The continual diverging forces and intense volcanic activity of the sub-oceanic ridge have given birth to the landmass we know as Iceland. Symbolically, the geographical emergence of Iceland is a direct result of the distancing of both the old and new worlds. Iceland and its people rest at the crossroads of two very different societies, making it hard to share a sense of belonging with either continent, despite the unifying forces of globalization. Iceland's unique history and geographical isolation have resulted in a weak sense of belonging with either the historically rich European or progressive North American continents, thus fostering a strong ethnic and nationalistic identity. In lieu, Iceland has formed and maintained its own unique identity with help of both continents, becoming a geographic and cultural halfway intersection between both. This strong cultural identity can be best observed at Pingvellir, a lieu de mémoire representing the history, struggle, and relentlessness of Iceland's thirst for an identity of its own. The ensuing discussion outlines this thirst and how it paved the micronation's development of a strong national identity resistant of global cultural hybridization.

Pre-publication version of a chapter in The Adrián E. Cristobal Lecture Series 2010-2017 (Manila, 2018), which features the AEC Lectures of Gémino H. Abad (2011), Virgilio S. Almario (2012), Resil Mojares (2013), Reynaldo Ileto (2014), Marites Danguilan Vitug (2016), and Alfred Yuson (2017)

Музей нь үүсэн байгуулагдсан цаг үеийнхээ төрийн байгуулал, дэглэмийн
бэлгэдлийн эрх мэдэл (Бурдьё 1984), бүх төрлийн ноёрхол үүнд жишээ нь жанжлах ёсыг (Грамчи [1936] 1971) шинжлэн судлахад хамгийн тохиромжтой талбар юм. Түүнчлэн музейн бас нэгэн онцлог шинж чанар бол орчин цагийг даган гарч ирсэн агуулга болоод төсөөллийн буюу нүдэнд үзэгдэж гарт баригдах боломжгүй утга санааг биет хэлбэрт хувиргаж хүний оюун санаанд буулгадаг юм. Энэ ч утгаараа музей нь орчин үеийн үндэстэн дээр тулгуурласан улс байгуулсан түүхийг өгүүлдэг гэдгийг Шайнер (2001) дурдсан байдаг.
      Иймээс энэхүү судалгааны ажилд Байгалийн Түүхийн Музей Чингис хааны музей болж хувирсан, түүхэн цаг үеийн явцад Монголын Үндэсний Музей яагаад олон удаа нэршлээ өөрчилсөн зэрэг асуудлуудыг тайлах үүднээс музейн гарал үүсэл, хөгжлийн түүхийг улс төр, үзэл суртал, нийгэм, соёлын талаас нь судлан шинжлэхийг зорилоо. Ингэхдээ баруунд үүсэж хөгжсөн, ялангуяа сэргэн мандалт, соён гэгээрлээс улбаатай орчин үежих үзэгдэлийн хүрээнд суддагдсан онолуудын дагуу авч хэлэлцэхийг зорив. Өөрөөр хэлбэл Монгол улсад орчин үежих үзэгдэл музейгээр дамжин хэрхэн нэвтэрсэн, ямар нэг эрлийзжил үүсгэсэн эсэх, орчин үеийн салшгүй нэг институц болох музейг барууны бус 'хөрсөнд нутагшуулах' үйл явц ямар төсөөллийн дагуу, ямар арга замаар дамжиж хэрэгжсэн зэргийг судлахыг хичээлээ. Судалгааны ажлын гол судлагдахуунаар Монголын Үндэсний Музейг сонгон авч, харин харьцуулалт хийхдээ Богд Хааны Ордон Музей болон Чойжин Ламын Сүм Музейд дадлага хийх явцдаа цуглуулсан мэдээллийг ашигласан болно.

Indian Cashmere shawls were costly accessories in nineteenth-century Britain, and they
were ‘imitated’ in Edinburgh, Norwich and Paisley. This article argues that shawls were
at the centre of a key debate within the design reform movement, which viewed imitations
as clumsy copies of a perfectly designed textile. It examines Victorian texts such
as design reformers’ publications and works of fiction, to suggest that their understanding
of shawls that imitated Indian designs was linked, in part, to class prejudices. Paisley
shawls’ stereotyping as an article emblematic of bad taste and a lower-class desire for
social mobility was thus not limited to the writings of a small coterie of design reformers,
but was found also reflected in works of best-selling writers such as Charles Dickens,
Walter Scott and Wilkie Collins.

This essay argues that Anderson’s definition of the nation as a community that is imagined, limited and sovereign, while correctly identifying nations as constructed, is insufficient. In fact, Anderson fails to give a definition at all, by not explaining how the nation is distinct from other ‘styles’ of community. Consequently, his community could be imagined in premodern times.

The subject of this article is Kurdish historiography in Turkey in the 1990s and especially the ways in which it constructs, defines and reworks Kurdish national identity. Although a number of studies exist regarding the relationship between historiography and national identity in the presence of a central state, the Kurdish national movement has not yet been the subject of such inquiry. The sources used are articles from the only Kurdish daily newspaper published in Turkey and partly in Germany (Özgür Gündem [Free Agenda] and its successors), which has hitherto not been a subject of research. Using these sources I will show that Kurdish national history has been a topic of great debate among Kurdish intellectuals. On the basis of analysis of this debate I will put forth the following arguments: (i) the discursive space of this historiography has been mainly determined by the Turkish national discourse in its popular version, and (ii) identity in the Kurdish society has been constructed mainly around the core layer of ethnicity, whereas it was based on religion or class in preceding periods.

This paper aims at answering the question “No nation now but the Imagination”. The author agrees with Anderson’s ideology about imagined communities but questions its validity. The author’s paper focuses on identifying areas where ‘imagining’ is clearly possible in pre-modern times; where Anderson’s prediction of the end of nationalism being not remote is erroneous; and, how the non-allocation for intangible religious ideology in his theory results in its inapplicability to the Muslim society in India.

Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign power, this article examines the dialectics of capitalism/primitive accumulation, civilization/savagery, and law/violence, which are argued to exist in a mutually reinforcing 'trilateral of logics'. In deciphering this triadic system, this article offers a radical (re)appraisal of capitalism, its legal process, and its civilizing effects, which together serve to mask the originary and ongoing violences of primitive accumulation and the property system. Such obfuscation suggests that wherever the trilateral of logics is enacted, so too is the state of exception called into being, exposing us all as potential homo sacer (life that does not count). Proceeding as a diagnostic assessment of sovereign power, where although signposted by Cambodia's contemporary experiences of violent land conflict, this article is not intended as a fine-grained empirical analysis. Instead, it forwards a theoretical dialogue where Cambodia's neoliberalizing processes offer a window on how sovereign power configures itself around the three discursive-institutional constellations (i.e., capitalism, civilization, and law) that form the trilateral of logics. Rather than formulating prescriptive solutions, the intention here is critique, where in particular it is argued that the preoccupation with strengthening Cambodia's legal system should not be read as a panacea for contemporary social ills, but as an imposition that serves to legitimize the violences of property.

This article examines the relationship between the fan community of Arsenal Football Club and time-space distanciation. Since the end of European imperialism, the English football club has been quietly colonising the minds of spectators everywhere, introducing them to cultural forms that had once been unique to England. Now a global phenomenon, the North London club has an estimated 113 million fans worldwide. Using Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined community,” I analyse the conditions that have enabled fans from Lagos to Los Angeles, and from Beijing to Bangalore, to identify with a sporting institution based in a country they may have never visited. To explore the paradoxes of this long-distance relationship, this article analyses information about Arsenal that appeared in newspapers, blogs, and social media websites from 2004 to 2014. The study concludes that, with the advent of digital technologies, Arsenal is simultaneously embedded in English culture and accessible to the millions of fans living in the interminable spaces beyond its country’s borders. In an age marked by constant social and technological change, fans find in the football club a universal community capable of contributing to their sense of ontological security.

Keywords:  imagined community, identity, football fandom, Arsenal, time-space distanciation, mediated experience, liquid
society, globalisation.

This paper offers a discussion of the modernist approaches to the nation and the critique of it. First, I will offer brief accounts of the scholars who argue that the nation is a modern construction. Later on, I will turn to the pre-modern approaches to the nation and offer criticisms to the modernist theories. The paper will be arguing that although modernity and associated phenomena are significant for the nations, the roots of the nations are older than the modernity. The paper will end with concluding remarks.

Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" has become the bible of nationalism in which he examines the origin and spread of nationalism. The purpose of this article it to go beyond Anderson's colonial and postcolonial time periods and discover to what degree his perspective of „imagining community‟ helps us explain events in a modern nation today, in this case Austria. As we will see, the time frame, reasons and circumstances for „imagining nation‟ are different in Austria; however, we will discover how this powerful idea of „imagining community‟ remains the same today as it was in colonial and post-colonial periods and how it can be used not only to create nation but also to re-create one like in Austria.

This essay appears in the book Enchanting David Bowie, edited by Toija Cinque, Christopher Moore and Sean Redmond and published by Bloomsbury Academic Press, July 2015.

Abstract :
Among all the fabulist baubles of five decades of David Bowie's work, is there one damn song that consciously tries to make us break down and cry, one that is uniquely political and uniquely emotionally real? Yes; there is his hit song 'Young Americans.'
By no coincidence, 'Young Americans' is also Bowie's singular foray into the rich tradition of the American Anthem, that long chain of storytelling songs that set out to portray the state of the nation. This great songbook opens with the classical American Anthem itself but of course the pro- nationalist tradition takes a critical, modernist turn in the 1950's as the U.S. folk movement writes Critical Anthems for the anti-war and civil rights movements. Suddenly the tree begins producing strange fruit; the Anthem's formal choral nature, featuring many people pursuing many objectives and faiths but all united by a certain pursuit of happiness, is suddenly ironically appropriated. In the resulting Critical Anthem, a myriad of American characters are all lost in a morally-empty American landscape, their naïve faiths shattered.
The pop-chart debut of 'Young Americans' in 1975 marks the withering end of the modernist Critical Anthem. Here Bowie's unparalleled skills as a vocal, lyrical and character menagerist peoples a materialist landscape with no myth left from the Ghetto, no hope to be found in marriage or sex, no way to tell emotion from alienation. But, whereas other Critical Anthems use many personal stories to express a political problem, Bowie brilliantly flips this to make the political personal, using the political exhaustion of the US after Nixon as itself a metaphor for the country's exhausted gender- roles and paralyzed pop-cultural hopes. And so, as the story ends in a swirling choral cacophony of unsatisfied desires, it also opens the Post-Modern chapter, the inner turn, of the Critical Anthem songbook.
This essay appears in the book Enchanting David Bowie, edited by Deakin's Toija Cinque, Christopher Moore and Sean Redmond and published by Bloomsbury Academic Press, July 2015.


For an earlier draft of this essay, please contact me at amedeo.dadamo@gmail.com.

Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation, I argue, constitute a response to what I call the problem of stability: how in the moment of crisis can a rational state stably be realized. The crisis, for Fichte, is both political and philosophical. I argue, by employing the concept of an imagined community, that Fichte’s response to the problem of stability is a philosophical nationalism that understands an existential commitment to freedom, as developed in his Wissenschaftslehre, to define what it means to be German. I suggest that his view of the German language resembles that of sacred languages which were understood as giving expression to a divine reality. Likewise, the German language gives expression to rational life so that spiritual culture, or Wissenschaftslehre, can intervene in the life of a people. In conclusion I compare Fichte’s response to the problem of stability to Rawls’s reflections on stability.

Although literacy and print were essential tools of the New Zealand colonial project ultimately designed to ‘amalgamate’ Māori into the modern Pākehā-dominated world, ironically they also helped in the evolution of a collective Māori consciousness. This collective sense of being manifested itself in such pan-Māori movements as the Kīngitanga, Kotahitanga and Te Aute College Students Association. Māori were not passive recipients of print culture, and each of these movements utilized newspapers as a means of disseminating their discourses. Utilizing aspects of Benedict Anderson’s theory on the role of print in the formation of national consciousness, this essay looks at how Pākehā-run newspapers assisted in the development of a collective Māori consciousness, and how each of these movements projected this identity in their own publications.