01:050:101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Imagined Communities, Byrsonima Crassifolia, Class Conflict

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: American Studies
• Course: 01:050:101
• Professor: Jefferson Decker

Document Summary

Through: benedict anderson, imagined communities: re ections of the origins and. In the beginning, asks, what is nationalism? tries and fails to answer this question in a truly satisfying way. Allows reader (and class) to try to gure out how to answer it better. Had a theory of how history was unfolding and would continue to unfold. Capitalism creates a new wealth (in factories and nance) that destroys the old feudal order (which was based on land and inherited title) But capitalism turns peasants into factory workers whose repetitive, soul-crushing jobs make other people rich. Inevitably, those workers will rise up and seize control of the means of production and run the factories on their own behalf: marx had a theory of the nation-state. The nation-state existed for 2 purposes: to protect private property and to defend against military aggression.