Contemporary articles citing Anderson B (1991) Imagined Communities

nationalism, national, states, nation, identity, practices, politics, provide, institutional, them

Goldberg, Chad. 2011. "The Jews, the Revolution, and the Old Regime in French Anti-semitism and Durkheim's Sociology*." Sociological Theory. 29:4 248-271. Link

The relationship between European sociology and European anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is investigated through a case study of one sociologist, Emile Durkheim, in a single country, France. Reactionary and radical forms of anti-Semitism are distinguished and contrasted to Durkheim's sociological perspective. Durkheim's remarks about the Jews directly addressed anti-Semitic claims about them, their role in French society, and their relationship to modernity. At the same time, Durkheim was engaged in a reinterpretation of the French Revolution and its legacies that indirectly challenged other tenets of French anti-Semitism. In sum, Durkheim's work contains direct and indirect responses to reactionary and radical forms of anti-Semitism, and together these responses form a coherent alternative vision of the relationship between modernity and the Jews.

Goldberg, Chad. 2008. "Introduction to Emile Durkheim's ``anti-semitism and Social Crisis''." Sociological Theory. 26:4 299-323.

Emile Durkheim's ``Antisemitisme et crise sociale,'' written in 1899 during the Dreyfus Affair in France, is introduced. The introduction summarizes the principal contributions that ``Antisemitisme et crise sociale'' makes to the sociology of anti-Semitism, relates those contributions to Durkheim's broader theoretical assumptions and concerns, situates his analysis of anti-Semitism in its social and historical context, contrasts it to other analyses of anti-Semitism (Marxist and Zionist) that were prominent in Durkheim's time, indicates some of the revisions and additions that a fuller and more complete Durkheimian theory of anti-Semitism would entail, and highlights the significance of Durkheim's ideas for the contemporary study of ethnic and racial antagonism. While noting the limitations of Durkheim's analysis, the introduction concludes that ``Antisemitisme et crise sociale'' has sadly regained its relevance in the light of a revival of anti-Semitism at the turn of the millennium.

Saito, Hiro. 2006. "Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma." Sociological Theory. 24:4 353-376. Link

This article examines historical transformations of Japanese collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by utilizing a theoretical framework that combines a model of reiterated problem solving and a theory of cultural trauma. I illustrate how the event of the nuclear fallout in March 1954 allowed actors to consolidate previously fragmented commemorative practices into a master frame to define the postwar Japanese identity in terms of transnational commemoration of ``Hiroshima.'' I also show that nationalization of trauma of ``Hiroshima'' involved a shift from pity to sympathy in structures of feeling about the event. This historical study suggests that a reiterated problem-solving approach can be efficacious in analyzing how construction of national memory of a traumatic event connects with the recurrent reworking of national identity, on the one hand, and how a theory of cultural trauma can be helpful in exploring a synthesis of psychological and sociological approaches to commemoration of a traumatic event, on the other.

Fine, GA & B Harrington. 2004. "Tiny Publics: Small Groups and Civil Society." Sociological Theory. 22:3 341-356. Link

It has been conventional to conceptualize civic life through one of two core images: the citizen as lone individualist or the citizen as joiner. Drawing on analyses of the historical development of the public sphere, we propose an alternative analytical framework for civic engagement based on small-group interaction. By embracing this micro-level approach, we contribute to the debate on civil society in three ways. By emphasizing local interaction contexts-the microfoundations of civil society-we treat small groups as a cause, context, and consequence of civic engagement. First, through framing and motivating, groups encourage individuals to participate in public discourse and civic projects. Second, they provide the place and support for that involvement. Third, civic engagement feeds back into the creation of additional groups. A small-groups perspective suggests how civil society can thrive even if formal and institutional associations decline. Instead of indicating a decline in civil society, a proliferation of small groups represents a healthy development in democratic societies, creating cross-cutting networks of affiliation.

Friedland, R. 2002. "Money, Sex, and God: the Erotic Logic of Religious Nationalism." Sociological Theory. 20:3 381-425. Link

God is once again afoot in the public sphere. Politics has become a religious obligation. For a new breed of religious nationalist the nation-state is a vehicle of the divine. This essay seeks to accomplish four things. The first is to argue for an institutional approach to religious nationalism in order both to interpret and explain it. Second, I argue that religion and nationalism partake of a common symbolic order and that religious nationalism is therefore not an oxymoron. Third, the essay seeks to explain why religion has become such a potent political force in our time. And fourth-the task that will take up the bulk of the text-it seeks a principle of intelligibility in the ``semiotic order of religious nationalism that can comprehend its preoccupation with both women's erotic bodies and monies out of national control.

Jepperson, RL. 2002. "Political Modernities: Disentangling Two Underlying Dimensions of Institutional Differentiation." Sociological Theory. 20:1 61-85. Link

This article recommends that we recover two old contrasts from the history of social thought in order to facilitate the recently renewed discussion of multiple variants of European political modernity. Recovering them greatly aids in clarifying the different ``modernizing'' paths that the European-system polities took during the state-consolidation and nation-building periods of the ``long nineteenth century.'' Specifically, the basic polity forms delineated in this article capture strikingly well the distinctive ``institutional logics'' and political cultures of the Anglo, Nordic, Germanic, and French orbits, legacies enduring through the 1960s and beyond. Clarifying these polity forms also helps in isolating underlying institutional changes occurring in the contemporary (post-World War II) period (current institutional convergence, for example).

Meyer, JW & RL Jepperson. 2000. "The ``actors'' of Modern Society: the Cultural Construction of Social Agency." Sociological Theory. 18:1 100-120. Link

Much social theory takes for gr anted the core conceit of modern culture, chat modern actors-individuals, organizations, nation states-are authochthonous and natural entities, no longer really embedded ill culture. Accordingly while there is much abstract metatheory about ``actors `` and their ``agency, `` there is arguably little theory about the topic. This article offers direct arguments about how the modern (European, now global) cultural system constructs the modern actor as an authorized agent for various interests via an ongoing relocation into society of agency originally located in transcendental authority or in natural forces environing the social system. We see this authorized agentic capability as an essential feature of what modern theory and culture call an ``actor,'' and one that, when analyzed, helps greatly in explaining a number of otherwise anomalous ol little analyzed features of modern individuals, organizations, and slates. These features include their isomorphism and standardization, their internal decoupling, their extraordinarily complex structuration, and their capacity for prolific collective action.

Torpey, J. 1998. "Coming and Going: on the State Monopolization of the Legitimate ``means of Movement''." Sociological Theory. 16:3 239-259. Link

Following the imagery of ``expropriation'' used by Marx to describe the process of capitalist development and by Weber to characterize states' monopolization of the legitimate use of violence, I argue that modern states have also ``expropriated the legitimate means of movement'' and monopolized the authority to determine who may circulate within and cross their borders. Against this background, we should reconsider the metaphor of ``penetration'' typically used to discuss the enhanced capacity of modern states relative to their predecessors, and instead think of states as ``embracing'' populations, identifying persons unambiguously in order to control their movements and to distinguish members from nonmembers.

McLaughlin, N. 1996. "Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape From Freedom Revisited." Sociological Theory. 14:3 241-261. Link

The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wing authoritarianism has again put the issues of violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory. German psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm's work provides a useful theoretical microfoundation for contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Fromm's analysis of Nazism in Escape from Freedom (1941), in particular outlines a compelling theory of irrationality, and his later writings on nationalism provide an existential psychoanalysis that can be useful for contemporary social theory and sociology of emotions. Escape from Freedom synthesizes Marxist, Freudian, Weberian,and existentialist insights to offer an original theoretical explanation of Nazism that combines both macrostructural and micropsychological levels of analysis. After forty-five years of research into the social origins of fascism and with recent theorizing in the sociology of nationalism and emotions, Escape from Freedom, its analysis of Nazism, and Fromm's larger theoretical perspective are worth reconsidering.

TILLY, C. 1994. "States and Nationalism in Europe 1492-1992." Theory and Society. 23:1 131-146. Link

GOLDSTEIN, J & J RAYNER. 1994. "The Politics of Identity in Late Modern Society." Theory and Society. 23:3 367-384. Link

VANDERGEEST, P & NL PELUSO. 1995. "Territorialization and State Power in Thailand." Theory and Society. 24:3 385-426. Link

VANDERGEEST, P & NL PELUSO. 1995. "Territorialization and State Power in Thailand." Theory and Society. 24:3 385-426. Link

Zolberg, VL. 1998. "Contested Remembrance: the Hiroshima Exhibit Controversy." Theory and Society. 27:4 565-590. Link

Loveman, M. 1999. "Making ``race'' and Nation in the United States, South Africa, and Brazil: Taking Making Seriously." Theory and Society. 28:6 903-927. Link

Zubrzycki, G. 2001. "``we, the Polish Nation'': Ethnic and Civic Visions of Nationhood in Post-communist Constitutional Debates." Theory and Society. 30:5 629-668. Link

Larson, MS & R Wagner-Pacifici. 2001. "The Dubious Place of Virtue: Reflections on the Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton and the Death of the Political Event in America." Theory and Society. 30:6 735-774. Link

Brubaker, R, M Loveman & P Stamatov. 2004. "Ethnicity as Cognition." Theory and Society. 33:1 31-64. Link

This article identifies an incipient and largely implicit cognitive turn in the study of ethnicity, and argues that it can be consolidated and extended by drawing on cognitive research in social psychology and anthropology. Cognitive perspectives provide resources for conceptualizing ethnicity, race, and nation as perspectives on the world rather than entities in the world, for treating ethnicity, race, and nationalism together rather than as separate subfields, and for re-specifying the old debate between primordialist and circumstantialist approaches.

Gerteis, J & A Goolsby. 2005. "Nationalism in America: the Case of the Populist Movement." Theory and Society. 34:2 197-225. Link

As a marker of national identity, the term ``American'' is culturally meaningful but also difficult and contradictory. In the first part of this article, we develop the claim that analyzing nationalism as discourse provides a meaningful lens for the study of this boundary-making process. In particular, the distinctions between civic/ethnic and inclusive/exclusive forms of nationalism have proved nettlesome for a consideration of American nationalism. In the second half of the article, we use data from the Southern Populist movement of the late nineteenth century to provide both relational and cultural analyses of the use of the term ``American.'' Although its use was primarily ``civic,'' it had important but complex racial implications.

Itzigsohn, Jose & Matthias Hau. 2006. "Unfinished Imagined Communities: States, Social Movements, and Nationalism in Latin America." Theory and Society. 35:2 193-212. Link

Perrin, Andrew, Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Lindsay Hirschfeld & Susan Wilker. 2006. "Contest Time: Time, Territory, and Representation in the Postmodern Electoral Crisis." Theory and Society. 35:3 351-391. Link

Prior generations' electoral crises (e.g., gerrymandering) have dealt mainly with political maneuverings around geographical shifts. We analyze four recent (1998-2003) American electoral crises: the Clinton impeachment controversy, the 2000 Florida presidential election, the Texas legislators' flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the California gubernatorial recall. We show that in each case temporal manipulation was at least as important as geographical. We highlight emergent electoral practices surrounding the manipulation of time, which we dub ``temporal gerrymandering.'' We suggest a theory of postmodern electoral crises, in which the rules of time and space are simultaneously in flux. These crises expose concerns with early American democratic theory, which was based on an understanding of ``the people'' as geographically and temporally unidimensional. Representative systems, therefore, were designed largely without reference to geographic and temporal complexity.

Shenhav, Yehouda. 2007. "Modernity and the Hybridization of Nationalism and Religion: Zionism and the Jews of the Middle East as a Heuristic Case." Theory and Society. 36:1 1-30. Link

This article looks at nationalism and religion, analyzing the sociological mechanisms by which their intersection is simultaneously produced and obscured, I propose that the construction of modem nationalism follows two contradictory principles that operate simultaneously: hybridization and purification. Hybridization refers to the mixing of ``religious'' and ``secular'' practices; purification refers to the separation between ``religion'' and ``nationalism'' as two distinct ontological zones. I test these arguments empirically using the case of Zionist nationalism. As a movement that was born in Europe but traveled to the Middle East, Zionism exhibits traits of both of these seemingly contradictory principles, of hybridization and purification, and pushes them to their limits. The article concludes by pointing to an epistemological asymmetry in the literature by which the fusion of nationalism and religion tends to be underplayed in studies of the West and overplayed in studies of the East/global South.

Brown-Saracino, Japonica. 2007. "Virtuous Marginality: Social Preservationists and the Selection of the Old-timer." Theory and Society. 36:5 437-468. Link

Social preservation is a bundle of ethics and practices rooted in the desire of some people to live near old-timers, whom they associate with ``authentic'' community. To preserve authentic community, social preservationists, who tend to be highly educated and residentially mobile, work to limit old-timers' displacement by gentrification. However, they do not consider all original residents authentic. They work to preserve those they believe embody three claims to authentic community: independence, tradition, and a close relationship to place. Underlining their attraction to these characteristics are resistance to the evolution of neighborhoods and towns, and the notion that certain groups have a greater claim to authentic community than others. These beliefs, and, secondarily, local institutions and boosters, influence their preservation of certain groups. While the quest for the authentic is typically viewed as affirming the authenticity of its seekers, social preservationists measure the authenticity of others' communities against their own in authenticity. That is, they are committed to virtuous marginality, which exists when people associate authenticity with, and highly value, characteristics they do not share, and consequently, out of a desire to preserve the authentic, come to regard their distance from it - their marginality - as virtuous. This article reveals the consequences of definitions of authenticity, and more generally of ideology, by demonstrating how they shape preservationists' lives, particularly their experience of community.

Hansen, Randall. 2009. "The Poverty of Postnationalism: Citizenship, Immigration, and the New Europe." Theory and Society. 38:1 1-24. Link

Over the last decade and a half, in a literature otherwise obsessed with citizenship in all its forms, a broad array of scholars has downplayed, criticized, and at times trivialized national citizenship. The assault on citizenship has had both an expansionary and a contractionary thrust. It is expansionary in that the language of citizenship is no longer linked with nationality, but rather protest politics. An earlier generation of social scientists would have described these actions as lobbying; they have now become ``citizenship practice.'' It is contractionary in that what one might have thought to be the core of citizenship; nationality, the possession of a nation-state's passport is viewed as less and less relevant to citizenship. Scholars have dislodged both the substance of citizenship, what it is, and the location of citizenship, where it ``happens,'' from the nation-state and national citizenship. The article challenges this devaluation of citizenship and the nation-state on empirical, conceptual, and normative grounds. Empirically, scholars, whom I link together under the umbrella term ``postnationalists,'' have based their anti-statist arguments on evidence that, when subjected to further inspection, wholly fails to support the arguments advanced. Conceptually, postnationalists rely on categories that are confused and untenable, being that national variables are cited as evidence of transnational developments. Normatively, postnationalists have lost the emancipatory thrust that once gave concerns with citizenship real-world purchase.

Kim, Jaeeun. 2009. "The Making and Unmaking of a ``transborder Nation'': South Korea During and After the Cold War." Theory and Society. 38:2 133-164. Link

The burgeoning literature on transborder membership, largely focused on the thickening relationship between emigration states in the South and the postwar labor migrant populations and their descendants in North America or Western Europe, has not paid due attention to the long-term macroregional transformations that shape transborder national membership politics or to the bureaucratic practices of the state that undergird transborder claims-making. By comparing contentious transborder national membership politics in South Korea during the Cold War and Post-Cold War eras, this article seeks to overcome these limitations. In both periods, the membership status of colonial-era ethnic Korean migrants in Japan and northeast China and their descendants was the focus of contestation. The distinctiveness of the case-involving both a sustained period of colonial rule and a period of belated and divided nation-state building interwoven with the Cold War-highlights the crucial importance of three factors: (1) the dynamically evolving macro-regional context, which has shaped transborder national membership politics in the region in distinctive ways; (2) the essentially political, performative, and constitutive nature of transborder nation-building; and (3) the role of state registration and documentation practices in shaping the contours of transborder national membership politics in the long run. By incorporating Korea-and East Asia more broadly-into the comparative study of transborder nation-building, this article also lays the groundwork for future cross-regional comparative historical studies.

Lainer-Vos, Dan. 2012. "Manufacturing National Attachments: Gift-giving, Market Exchange and the Construction of Irish and Zionist Diaspora Bonds." Theory and Society. 41:1 73-106. Link

This article explores nation building as an organizational accomplishment and uses the concept of boundary object to explain how the groups that compose the nation cooperate. Specifically, the article examines the mechanisms devised to secure a flow of money from the Irish-American and Jewish-American diasporas to their respective homelands. To overcome problems associated with conventional philanthropy, Irish and Jewish nationalists issued bonds and sold them to their American compatriots as a hybrid of a gift and an investment. In the Irish case, disagreements about the entitlement to the proceeds resulted in the termination of the bond project. In the Jewish case, the bond served as a boundary object allowing American and Israeli Jews to cooperate despite ongoing tensions. The Israeli bond provided Jewish-Americans with an additional way to invest themselves financially and emotionally in Israel. This bond is an example of a socio-technical mechanism used to create national attachments.

Autry, Robyn. 2013. "The Political Economy of Memory: the Challenges of Representing National Conflict at `identity-driven' Museums." Theory and Society. 42:1 57-80. Link

This article investigates how national histories marred by racial conflict can be translated into narratives of group identity formation. I study the role of ``identity-driven'' museums in converting American's racial past into a metanarrative of black identity from subjugation to citizenship. Drawing on a thick description of exhibitions at 15 museums, interviews with curators and directors, museum documents, and newspaper articles, I use the ``political economy of memory'' as a framework to explain how ideological and material processes intersect in the production of exhibitions. I show that in addition to struggles over the truth and interpretive styles, more prosaic issues of funding, attendance, and institutional capacity-building hve an impact on representational selectivities. I explain how these issues affect black museums operating during the civil rights and post-civil rights eras. I consider the motivations and consequences of ``remembering'' national histories of violence and intolerance through the prism of group identity formation.