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Politics in a Small World 79

humanity as living together, sharing the fate of planet Earth. And,
certainly, the ideal of what we might call cultural cosmopolitanism (as
distinct from political cosmopolitanism) as detachment from the nation
seems to be growing in some circles, amongst global elites, intellectuals,
and supporters of human rights (see Cheah and Robbins, 1998 ; Vertovec
and Cohen, 2002 ). But is this just, in Craig Calhoun ’ s resonant phrase,
the “ class consciousness of frequent fl yers ” (Calhoun, 2002 )? Or are new,
concrete possibilities emerging, in which imagining who “ we ” are begins
to take everyone – not just the elites of global governance, intellectuals,
and those engaged in radical politics – beyond the limitations of national
politics?

Following the enormously influential work of Benedict Anderson (1983) ,
it has become commonplace to see nations as “ imagined communities ” :
“ imagined ” because members of nations never meet most other members;
“ communities ” because the nation is always conceived in terms of deeply
felt comradeship. According to Anderson, the media played a key role in
how the nation was imagined historically. Nationalism developed out of
the revolution enabled by the printed word, which completely transformed
the geography of the Middle Ages through practices of identifi cation with
fellow - nationals. Printing resulted in the replacement of the sacred lan-
guages of the Middle Ages – Latin, Arabic, and Chinese, each of which
united a vast territory with diverse regional, vernacular languages which
were then standardized and spread in novels and newspapers. Anderson
argues that in eighteenth - century Latin America and North America, the
development of print enabled millions of individuals to represent their
fellow - readers to themselves as compatriots. This was particularly marked
in the case of daily newspapers because fellow nationals imagined them-
selves together as they read the same news simultaneously (Anderson,
1983 ). The most important conclusion of Anderson ’ s historical investiga-
tions is that belonging to a nation is an ongoing process of construction
and identifi cation rather than an objective fact or a timeless loyalty to the
land and people (though it may well be imagined in such terms).
Nationalism depends at least as much on love as on hate – as Anderson
points out, people see themselves as willing to die for their country, not
so much to kill for it (Anderson, 1983 : 21). Indeed, as Craig Calhoun has
argued, sociologists tend to generalize from “ bad nationalism ” and to
neglect positive aspects of national solidarity. Nationalism does not
involve only narrow and authoritarian patriotism. It has also been the
basis of affective ties and cooperation between strangers which have been
creative and positive. Most importantly, nationalism has underpinned the
redistribution of wealth between citizens and the setting up of systems of