The Middle Class in Emerging Societies by Leslie L. Marsh Hongmei Li

Author:Leslie L. Marsh, Hongmei Li [Leslie L. Marsh, Hongmei Li]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138858824
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2015-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

Methodology: Applying the “Imagined Community” to the RMAH

Benedict Andreson’s concept of the “imagined community” becomes useful to help articulate this point further. In his exploration of nationalism and the power nationality has in mediating our social identity, Anderson suggests that all communities are:

1 Imagined – meaning that communities are large and complex and therefore require shared signs and symbols to represent being and belonging to these complex communities.

2 Limited – meaning no one community is coterminous with humanity, hence, identity politics produce limits across all levels of being and belonging.

3 Sovereign – meaning every community has a “higher power” or an authentic placeholder for the ability to make rules matter to people. Much like the Hobbesian concept of the “Leviathan,” every community must have a “Sovereign”—something great to believe in so that power and the ability to abide by rules (some social contract) is worth believing in it (Hobbes 17).

4 Communities – meaning there is a deeply felt connection amongst people who share these symbols, produce these limits, and contribute to the self-determination of that community (Anderson 10, 48).

This exercise is quite simple. If culture is about the way we imagine it, one must first begin the work of building conceptual frameworks that identify the distinctiveness of those social imaginings.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.