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a community which normally tends to produce a state of its own

an ideological construct

an imagined community

a relative community of character

a symbolic community

a totality of men united through community of fate into a community of character

As a form “imagined community”, the nation is both example and instigator of the process by which identities that are constructed or imagined come to assume the force of nature . One useful way to approach the significance of the nation as a source of modern identity is to think about the relationship between nations and nationalism. Our usual, common-sense way of understanding the relationship is to see the nation—a people defined by collective belonging to an extensive community, usually defined in relation to a specific territory—as primary, with nationalism as a frequent, though not inevitable by-product.   Recent theories of the development of nations (Anderson, Gellner) suggest that the relationship might best be understood as working the other way around: that is, nations are how the ideological impulse of nationalism is legitimated and given concrete shape. See also Close-Up box 7.3 in textbook.

Nation was a live music/club venue located at 1015 Half Street, in Washington, D.C. Its size exceeded any club in the DC area with three levels indoors and the multi-level outdoor patio. Its large atmospheric rooms, powerful sound system made it a popular haunt of the rave, goth, and drum&base scenes, as well as the gay community.