The nation is an imagined, limited, sovereign political community

Evidence

In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 37

In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 38

Categorization

• DEFINE: The single most famous definition in the field: ‘imagined political community’ as the technical term.
• XREF: Directly scaffolds the Islamophobia toolkit: the imagined community is the container whose boundaries define the ‘Other’ as outside it. — connects to: The nation-state cannot expand by conquest because its legitimacy rests on limited national consent; Caribbean nations are imagined communities whose boundaries extend beyond territory; The nation is conceived in language, not in blood — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 552 (+10 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 37; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 38

Related

• The nation-state cannot expand by conquest because its legitimacy rests on limited national consent (similarity 0.86)
• Caribbean nations are imagined communities whose boundaries extend beyond territory (similarity 0.84)
• Nations are bounded by principle in a way universal religions were not. (similarity 0.83)
• The nation was born from the decline of dynastic and religious legitimacy. (similarity 0.82)
• The nation emerges as a new subject of history distinct from the State (similarity 0.80)
• The nation is imagined as a sociological organism moving through homogeneous, empty time. (similarity 0.80)
• Nationhood is constructed through imagination, not just sovereignty (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• State sovereignty is constituted by the nation-state system, not prior to it #expands (0.85) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 172
• The nation is a construct, not a unit for social analysis #corroborates (0.85)
• Geographic isolation limited the imagined simultaneity needed for continent-wide nationalism. #qualifies (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 238
• The inalienable rights of the abstract individual were immediately fused with national sovereignty #expands (0.80)
• Inner psychological mutation, not independence, is what generates national sovereignty #expands (0.75)
• The nation emerges as a new subject of history distinct from the State #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 158
• Inner transformation precedes and drives national sovereignty #expands (0.70) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 618