Nick Barlow reviewed Imagined communities by Benedict Anderson
Still very thought-provoking
4 stars
I first read this as an undergraduate in the early 90s, and have read it again about once a decade since. It's still fascinating book, breaking away from the conventional eurocentric approach to nationalism to focus on the rest of the world - but also to show how developing national identities there would later influence the development of nationalism and national identities in Europe. Understandably dated in a few parts - Anderson himself notes that the late 70s conflicts in SE Asia weren't as important in the long term as they seemed to him then - and suffers occasionally from dropping in large chunks of untranslated text which assumes the reader is impressively multilingual, but still a fascinating read.
