Key contexts and challenges

A quarter century ago, Benedict Anderson (1991) published what came to be a seminal book on understanding nationalism and nation states, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Anderson argued that nations were not primarily bounded territories but ‘imagined communities’, created in the mind and heart through the mediation of a number of institutions and processes including schools, public monuments and historical sites, and patriotic ceremonies. It is evident from the case studies in this book that the process of imagining and reimagining communities continues but is not necessarily limited to the context of nation states. China, it appears, is very focused on incorporating the people of Hong Kong and Macau (SARs), as well as their numerous ethnic minorities, into one national imagined community. The EU, on the other hand, is focused on imagining a ‘post-national’ community of communities.1 While the EU moves to a supranational understanding of citizenship, some in the UK imagine devolution of the federal nation state into smaller, more traditional entities. Consistent with Anderson’s original analysis, this reimagining is being fostered through formal schooling, other public institutions such as museums, galleries and historic sites, and cultural ceremonies and traditions. Copyright © 2016 King Man Chong, Ian Davies, Terrie Epstein, Carla L. Peck, Andrew Peterson, Alistair Ross, Maria Auxiliadora Schmidt, Alan Sears and Debbie Sonu.