Shared journeys among strangers create the sense of an imagined community

Evidence

To see how administrative units could, over time, come to be conceived as fatherlands, not merely in the Americas but in other parts of the world, one has to look at the ways in which administrative organizations create meaning. The anthropologist Victor Turner has written illuminatingly about the ‘journey’, between times, statuses and places, as a meaning-creating experience. All such journeys require interpretation (for example, the journey from birth to death has given rise to various religious conceptions.) For our purposes here, the modal journey is the pilgrimage. … In a pre-print age, the reality of the imagined religious community depended profoundly on countless, ceaseless travels. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 223

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the pilgrimage as the modal meaning-creating journey, a concept the book will carry forward into how bureaucracy creates national consciousness.
• XREF: connects to: An imagined community only solidifies when educational and administrative pilgrimages coincide — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 472; Singing together bodily enacts the imagined community as unisonance — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 551; Sacred-languistic community imagined membership as alchemic absorption rather than adherence — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 64 (+8 more)

Related

• Educational and administrative pilgrimages built national imagined communities (similarity 0.85)
• Absolutism created meaning through bureaucratic pilgrimages that fostered solidarity (similarity 0.82)
• Shared bureaucratic pilgrimage transforms colonial states into national states (similarity 0.82)
• An imagined community only solidifies when educational and administrative pilgrimages coincide (similarity 0.81)
• Absolute-monarchy bureaucracy turns career advancement into a shared pilgrim’s road (similarity 0.80)
• A universal imagined community was reproduced through countless particular local forms (similarity 0.79)
• Educational and administrative pilgrimages forged national identity (similarity 0.79)