Welcome
Today, we’re moving onto our new topic: nations and nationalism. But first, let’s check in.
Your nations
At the end of the last session, you built your own nations in your breakout groups. We now have time for you to present your nations — their songs, their policies, their national foods and dances, their forms of government — to the group as a whole. We can take as long as we need.
Benedict Anderson
I’m now going to put you in breakout groups. In your groups:
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summarise the argument in the extract you have read
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evaluate the argument. Is it plausible? What objections might you have to this argument?
A community to kill and die for
This is perhaps the most famous section of Anderson’s book:
“Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.”
Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities. [edition unavailable]. Verso. Available at: https:// www.perlego.com/book/731064 (Accessed: 26 September 2025). p.7
Imagining Burma / Myanmar
In today’s first activity we are going to apply Anderson’s theory to the context of Myanmar/ Burma.
In your group choose Myanmar/Burma as a nation OR select an ethnic group and specific territory/ state within the current country of Burma (e.g. Chin, Kachin, Rakhine, Shan etc.)
In groups choose your country or territory and then analyse, describe and explain:
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How national identity is constructed within that context. Think about the role of language, education, media, religion, clothes, food, family.
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How do Anderson’s arguments help explain that process? And where (if anywhere) do they fall short?
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How do contemporary political realities either challenge or support Anderson’s argument?
Homework
Read the preface and introduction to Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. The text is on Perlego.