![]() ![]() The central conceit of Imagined Communities is that nationalism, even the concept of clearly delineated nations as the ultimate form of legitimacy, is recent, and that it was only possible with the rise of print capitalism. ![]() ![]() Essentially, what does it take to convince people that they belong to a group? Why did US citizens identify more with their states than their nation, in the early 19th century? When does state building fail, and when does it succeed? Imagined Communities does not examine those specific questions, but it effectively answers them, and provides a whole bunch of tools for understanding nationalism, and, I ‘unno, separatist movements like the one that is happening right now. Might be worth picking up now for that reason. I heard about this book around the time I was starting to form my own ideas about why people identify themselves as Americans, Porteños, Quebecois-and why other people don’t. Cover of the first German edition, courtesy of Campus Fachbuch ![]()
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