Reimagined communities - A review of Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

If there is one book on nationalism that every student is expected to read, one book that is certain to be included in any survey of the competing theories, it is Imagined Communities. It is, as Josep Llobera has written of the core conception, 'as if people had been waiting for such an expression to be coined'.1 The appearance of the third edition therefore gives us an opportunity to reassess this original and influential work, but also to identify some of the problems to which it gives rise, problems which are, in part, the very reason for its popularity.