Nation-state as imagined community
Jul 30, 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_Communities
That book documents and explains the big movement circa 1700 to 1950 toward identification with the nation-state.
. . . the idea of the “nation” is relatively new and is a product of various socio-material forces. Anderson defined a nation as “an imagined political community.” A nation “is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”
Manifested in the flying of the flag.
* * * *
It’s unsatisfactory.
The next big movement will be identification away from the nation-state toward a more real kind of community.
