2012 Reports

Nation and Narrative

Rashid, Hussein

Benedict Anderson, in his seminal work Imagined Communities, talks about the way in which print capitalism helps to craft a sense of national identity. In the twenty-first century, the idea of belonging is extended beyond print into what I refer to as ‘media capitalism’, the multitude of ways in which information is consumed to create a group identification. This media capitalism constructs narratives of belonging to the nation-state. Competing narratives, as much as legal instruments, are integral to understanding how different communities forge a common identification. This paper will consider various popular cultural interventions in the US as they relate to the integration of recent Muslim communities.