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date: 12 February 2025

imagined community 

Source:
A Dictionary of Critical Theory
Author(s):

Ian Buchanan

Benedict *Anderson’s definition of nation. In Imagined Communities (1983) Anderson argues that the nation is an imagined political community that is inherently limited in scope and sovereign in nature. It is imagined because the actuality of even the smallest nation exceeds what it is possible for a single person to know—one cannot know every person in a nation, just as one cannot know every aspect of its economy, geography, history, and so forth. But as Anderson is careful to point out (contra ... ...

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