Bureaucracies defended the homogenization of language, to secure political power. Old Languages, New Model: Colonialization, imperialism brought about scientific ‘discovery’ and examination of ‘new’ societies. Colonialization brought intermingling, and ‘contact’ with ‘others’ created need for stratification system to designate belonging and boundaries. Documentation worked to take laws away from persons, transfer rules past rulers. The pilgrimage as a journey of meaning-making, related distant places to local ones. Unification through Latin helped ‘translate’ documents and ideas, offered permanence and order to language, and gave way to certain hierarchies within unwritten languages (offers belonging within sub-nationalities, despite marginalization).Ĭreole Pioneers: Cultural revolutions in Latin America, particularly slave revolts, worked to accentuate power of masses, power of non-elites. The Origins of National Consciousness: Emergence of book as a media worked to pass on ideations of belonging, capitalism, religion, political centralization, language, (though stratified by literacy, class) - the passing of this information facilitated by intersections of production, shifts in religion, expansion of territories – all essential to the ability to imagine a community. Imagined communities have linkages between each other (purported and reported in the media). Dynasties as a combination of border and sexual politics – globalizing from early eras. Languages as critical to creating boundaries (^authenticity?) in religions (truths, knowledge – creating hierarchies), states – ‘sovereignty’ of faiths, though some considered more ‘true’ than others. Though imagined, national communities have real life consequences.Ĭultural Roots: Predecessors to nationality – religious communities and dynastic realms – (though does not say that nationality replaces these). “Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6). Difficulties in navigating objectivity in historical experience, versus antiquity in nationalists’ view (^this presumes that historians have some sort of objectivity to be offered, um, naw) how we define and assign nationality – does/should everyone have/identify with one? nationalism’s lack of great political thinkers.

Introduction: Since WWII every successful revolution has defined self through national terms – Marxist/nationalist, subnationalism within borders. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition.

Imagined communities meaning