Imagined Communities

Benedict Anderson's conception of the nation as an 'imagined political community' — imagined because members will never know most of their fellow-nationals yet hold a vivid image of their communion; limited because every nation has finite boundaries; and sovereign because the concept was born in an age dissolving divinely-ordained dynastic realms. Print-capitalism and vernacular media made this collective imagining possible. National architecture — capitols, monuments, museums — gives the imagined community visible, durable form.