"Imagined communities" is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson. He believes that a nation is a community socially constructed, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. Anderson's book, Imagined Communities, in which he explains the concept in depth, was first published in 1983, and reissued with additional chapters in 1991.
Famous quotes containing the words imagined and/or communities:
“At the milliners, the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what diverted me most was, that we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a woman’s dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbons with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)