ABSTRACT
Nation-states are relatively recent, post-Enlightenment inventions. They impose common administrative systems upon broad expanses of territory inhabited by heterogeneous populations, which frequently have diverse ethnicities, histories, customs, and cultural values. As a result, nations are, in Benedict Anderson’s (1981) resonant phrase, “imagined communities.” National identities are forged through representational practices that are historically and socially conditioned, dispersed, often incongruous, and frequently tension laden.
