Grant Florian

This is a great book for those studying nationalism and the state and the origins of our current global political system in which people in all places are understood as living inside of countries associated with imagined communities of belonging. The book argues that current conceptions of national belonging emerged with print capitalism that allowed large groups of people to read in the same language and imagine themselves as members of a national community. Anderson looks at earlier political formations as well like empires that did not have clearly demarcated borders, such as the Ottoman Empire. It's been a few years since I read this book and I am about to pick it up again. It's surprising nobody wrote a review, ever. That's what I saw. Be the first to write a review. It's a very influential book in the social sciences. If more people had read this book several years ago maybe not as many people would have as rigid a conception of nation states as they do now, and they would be more likely to see the absurdity of the political policies of people who act as if they live in bounded nations that always were what they are now and always will be the same bounded entities (i.e. the people who think it is normal to do things like build walls separating countries because they countries are understood as timeless entities that always have been and always will be what they are today). The nations we have today are only nations because people imagine they are nations, and if people imagined other nations or other political entities those could become realities. But, right now the nation state that we see on the map with clearly demarcated borders is dominant.