The city you live in is not likely to be surrounded by a wall since most cities no longer need to employ such methods of keeping out danger, yet it has boundaries that people adhere to despite the fact that there is no visible line separating one foot of “insider” space from a foot of “outsider” space. These concepts also pertain to members physical communities which have few physical boundaries. Anderson’s ideas can prove useful in determining the potential ties and structuring of imagined community spaces such as World of Warcraft, Instagram, the Twitterverse, and Pinterest. These communities feel no less real than a neighborhood community, but they are all imagined outside of a physical reality. This idea becomes even more interesting when applied to digital spaces and online communities that are forged between members who will almost definitely never meet one another, and share only threads of interest to bind them together. For instance, Americans accept others as Americans (as members of a national community) based on a specific list of qualifications, but it is ultimately the title that is adhered to since most Americans will never even have a realistic opportunity to actually meet and verify their membership in any way. His primary argument comes from how nations gain and then maintain community status with members readily owning the titles and responsibilities that come with it while also embracing other members that they will never even meet. Anderson’s focus in this book is on what binds members of communities together when physical proximity is removed as a factor, and how communities exclude in the same context. Imagined Communities by Benedict Andersonīenedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities was the first book of the semester.

Imagined communities book