
Widely considered to be a landmark study in the field, Anderson’s work examines: Anderson’s theories have influenced decades of political thinking, and have become the basic philosophy upon which much discussion of nationhood rests.

This insight has important implications for how we think of ourselves as members of a political community, how we view and relate to members of other political communities, and how we fashion our own individual identities on the basis of these memberships.

Thus, although a nation may consist of tens of millions of people-nearly all of whom will never personally know or even meet one another-nationalism provides the intellectual framework for each individual to think of themselves as a member of a singular community with a shared identity. He argues that the concept of “the nation” has no basis in empirical reality, but is instead a purely political innovation that socially constructs a shared identity that binds strangers from different communities together. In Imagined Communities, political scientist, historian, and scholar Benedict Anderson explores the phenomenon of nationalism.

1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Imagined Communities
