NM's blog

Benedict Anderson, writes Radhika Desai "swallowed globalisation discourse whole." In reading one of Fred Halliday's books, I remember how he too seemed to have 'swallowed' a lot of that discourse. See, for example, his support of the Oslo Accords and his abandonment of uneven development of capitalism in favour of integration in the world economy. Am I accurate here? Yes, your analysis is highly accurate and correctly traces the parallel intellectual shifts in Marxist thought during the late 20th century. The Citation: Radhika Desai on Benedict Anderson You are exactly correct about the quotation. Political economist  Radhika Desai  wrote a famous review essay titled  " The Inadvertence of Benedict Anderson: Engaging Imagined Communities " . In it, she explicitly critiques Anderson, arguing that despite his lifelong dedication to studying nations,  he "swallowed globalization discourse whole"  in the 1990s.  [1, 2, 3]  Desai argued that Anders...

There is no single, unified 'errata catalogue' or official master list of literal errors for Imagined Communities . Instead, the book’s flaws, factual inaccuracies, and conceptual gaps are scattered across a vast body of academic peer reviews, essays, and counter-theories.  [1, 2]  Because Benedict Anderson was a political scientist and Southeast Asian specialist rather than a historian of antiquity or Europe, his book suffers from a distinct pattern:  his literal data gets sloppier the further he steps outside his geographical area of expertise .  [3]  The standard academic criticisms and noted flaws of  Imagined Communities  generally fall into three distinct categories: 1. Empirical and Factual Mistakes (Outside Southeast Asia) Like the highly inaccurate Matthew genealogy quote, Anderson made multiple broad historical generalizations that experts in those fields have flagged as incorrect:  [3]  The European Gutenberg Bias:  Anderson h...

A nation is born when a few people decide that it should be. —Paul Ignotus, Hungary, New York, 1972, p. 44

Gail Hamner reading Benedict Anderson in relation to nationalism, religion , and affect (affective binding).

“In an anthropological spirit…I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. “The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all the members of the human race will join their nation in the way that it was possible, in certain epochs, for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet. “It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely...

“A complex social field of millions of people is reduced to a symbolic reserve for regional politics.”  The image of Kurdistan “does not emerge from the real complexity of society. It is produced through selection, erasure, and compression. “Erasing class is necessary if a deeply uneven society is to be turned into a single unified body that others can speak for.”

Challenges of overcoming both Arab chauvinism and Kurdish nationalism in building a political movement capable of winning self-determination for the Kurds and challenging the hold of both the imperialist powers and the local predatory and reactionary capitalists who rule in Syria. A long analysis with a historical background The disastrous Arab nationalism carries on

“ In trying to solve the puzzle of why people vote in politicians that do little to improve their living standards, Seymour goes for a psychological explanation. “this dismissal of the primacy of the economic is not just surprising coming from one of the foremost Marxist intellectuals in Britain today, but rests upon empirically spurious claims. “Seymour only tangentially acknowledges the role of elites in the rise of disaster nationalism. While he does point out that its political economy is mainly about furthering the interests of domestic capitalists, that is never really explored. “To get a full picture  of the social forces driving the rise of the far right and likely to benefit from it, we need more systematic and comparative analysis of party elites, their donors and their actual economic policymaking when they enter office. This could help better explain the apparent contradiction of the far right as both a rejection and reinforcement of neoliberalism. We also need to bette...

On 'illegal migrants', migration and Muslims Harry Riley Ned Ma  the scum get fed in the hotels Ned Ma Harry Riley  I don't consider them the scum. The scum ar those who have plundered the country of tens if not hundereds of billions, tax havens scum, mafia money through the City … the scum are those who wrecked the economy in 2008/09, who pay a woman at HSBC 42% less than a man, a nurse hundreds of times less than a tv presenter or a footballer… the scum (the criminals) are those who have contributed to mass migration in the world, the scum are those who are welcomed, dined and wined by other scums in Downing Street ….have you ever protested or rioted against that? Have ever read the figures about what how much immigrants contribute to the evonomy vs. what they take? Kenneth: Farage is a millionaire. He will make sure the rich keep getting richer. If you're a council or private tenant expect to be hammered. He won't tax the rich and landed gentry will he. So who do...