HOLY NAME UNIVERSITY

College of Arts and Sciences

J.A Clarin St., Tagbilaran City

GEC RIZAL: The Life and Works of Rizal

Lesson 2: Nation as Imagined Community
Outcomes: Trace and evaluate the foundations of Rizal’s national consciousness
with emphasis on his early beginnings.

Concept Notes:

I. Discussion

Nation, State, Nation-State

To better understand nationalism, one must learn first the concepts of nation
and nationhood as well as state and nation-state.

 Nation – a group of people that shares a common culture, history,

language, and other practices like religion, affinity to a place, etc.
 State – a political entity that wields sovereignty over a defined territory.
 Nation-State – a state governing a nation.

Social scientists have fleshed out the nuances of nation, state, and nation-state. A
Nation is a community of people that are believed to share a link with one
another based on cultural practices, language, religion or belief system, and
historical experience, to name a few. A state, on the other hand, is a political
entity that has sovereignty over a defined territory. States have laws, taxation,
government, and bureaucracy-basically, the means of regulating life within the
territory. This sovereignty needs diplomatic recognition to be legitimate and
acknowledged internationally. The state's boundaries and territory are not fixed
and change across time with war, sale, arbitration and negotiation, and even
assimilation or secession.

The nation-state, in a way, is a fusion of the elements of the nation

(people/community) and the state (territory). The development of nation-states
started in Europe during the periods coinciding with the Enlightenment. The
“classical” nation-states of Europe began with the Peace of Westphalia in the
seventeenth century. Many paths were taken towards the formation of the
nation-states. In the "classical” nation-states, many scholars posit that the process
was an evolution from being a state into a nation-state in which the members of the
bureaucracy (lawyers, politicians, diplomats, etc.) eventually moved to unify the
people within the state to build the nation-state. A second path was taken by
subsequent nation-states which were formed from nations. In this process, intellectuals
and scholars laid the foundations of a nation and worked towards the formation
of political and eventually diplomatic recognition to create a nation-state. A third
path taken by many Asian and African people involved breaking off from a colonial
relationship, especially after World War II when a series of decolonization and
nation-(re)building occurred. During this time, groups initially controlled by imperial
powers started to assert their identity to form a nation and build their own state
from the fragments of the broken colonial ties. A fourth path was by way of
(sometimes violent) secessions by people already part of an existing state. Here, a
group of people who refused to or could not identify with the rest of the population
built a nation, asserted their own identity, and demanded recognition. In the
contemporary world, the existing nation-states continuously strive with projects
of nation-building especially since globalization and transnational connections
are progressing.

Nation and Nationalism

As mentioned, one major component of the nation-state is the nation. This

concept assumes that there is a bond that connects a group of people
together to form a community. The origin of the nation, and concomitantly
nationalism, has been a subject of debates among social scientists and scholars. In
this section, three theories about the roots of the nation will be presented.

The first theory traces the root of the nation and national identity to
existing and deep-rooted features of a group of people like race, language,
religion, and others. Often called primordialism, it argues that a national identity has
always existed and nations have “ethnic cores.” In this essentialist stance, one
may be led to conclude that divisions of “us” and “them" are naturally formed
based on the assumption that there exists an unchanging core in everyone.

The second theory states that nation, national identity, and nationalism are
products of the modern condition and are shaped by modernity. This line of thinking
suggests that nationalism and national identity are necessary products of the
social structure and culture brought about by the emergence of
capitalism, industrialization, secularization, urbanization, and bureaucratization. This
idea further posits that in pre modern societies, the rigid social hierarchies could
accommodate diversity in language and culture, in contrast with the present
times in which rapid change pushes statehood to guard the homogeneity in
society through nationalism. Thus, in the modernist explanation, nationalism is a
political project.

The third theory-a very influential explanation-- about nation and

nationalism maintains that these ideas are discursive. Often referred to as the
constructivist approach to understanding nationalism, this view maintains that
nationalism is socially constructed and imagined by people who identify with a
group. Benedict Anderson argues that nations are "imagined communities”
(2003). He traces the history of these imagined communities to the
Enlightenment when European society began challenging the supposed
divinely ordained dynastic regimes of the monarchies. This idea was starkly
exemplified by the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. The nation is
seen as imagined because the people who affiliate with that community have a
mental imprint of the affinity which maintains solidarity; they do not necessarily need
to see and know all the members of the group. With this imagined community
comes a "deep, horizontal comradeship” that maintains harmonious co-existence and
even fuels the willingness of the people to fight and die for that nation. Anderson
also puts forward the important role of mass media in the construction of the nation
during that time. He underscores that the media (1) fostered unified fields of
communication which allowed the millions of people within a territory to “know”
each other through printed outputs and become aware that many others
identified with the same community; (2) standardized languages that enhanced
feelings of nationalism and community; and (3) maintained communication
through a few languages widely used in the printing press which endured through
time.

Nation and Bayan

In the Philippines, many argue that the project of nation building is a

continuing struggle up to the present. Considering the country's history, historians posit
that the nineteenth century brought a tremendous change in the lives of the
Filipinos, including the actual articulations of nation and nationhood that
culminated in the first anti-colonial revolution in Asia led by Andres Bonifacio
and the Katipunan. Furthermore, scholars note the important work of the
propagandists like Rizal in the sustained efforts to build the nation and enact
change in the Spanish colony. Many Filipino scholars who endeavored to
understand indigenous/local knowledge have identified concepts that relate to
how Filipinos understand the notions of community and, to an extent, nation
and nation-building. The works of Virgilio Enriquez, Prospero Covar, and Zeus
Salazar, among others, attempted to identify and differentiate local categories
for communities and social relations. The indigenous intellectual movements like
Sikolohiyang Pilipino and Bagong Kasaysayan introduced the concepts of
kapwa and bayan that can enrich discussions about nationalism in the context of
the Philippines.

Kapwa is an important concept in the country's social relations. Filipino

interaction is mediated by understanding one's affinity with another as described
by the phrases “ibang tao” and “di ibang tao.” In the formation and strengthening of
social relations, the kapwa concept supports the notion of unity and harmony in a
community. From this central concept arise other notions such as
“pakikipagkapwa,” “pakikisama," and “pakikipag-ugnay,” as well as the collective
orientation of Filipino culture and psyche. In the field of history, a major
movement in the indigenization campaign is led by Bagong Kasaysayan, founded
by Zeus Salazar, which advances the perspective known as Pantayong Pananaw.
Scholars in this movement are among the major researchers that nuance the
notion of bayan or banua. In understanding Filipino concepts of community, the
bayan is an important indigenous concept. Bayan/Banua, which can be traced
all the way to the Austronesian language family, is loosely defined as the territory
where the people live or the actual community they are identifying with. Thus,
bayan/banua encompasses both the spatial community as well as the imagined
community. The concept of bayan clashed with the European notion of nación
during the Spanish colonialism. The proponents of Pantayong Pananaw maintain
the existence of a great cultural divide that separated the elite (nación) and the
folk/masses (bayan) as a product of the colonial experience. This issue brings the
project of nation-building to a contested terrain.

Throughout Philippine history, the challenge of building the Filipino nation has
persisted, impacted by colonialism, violent invasion during World War II, a
dictatorship, and the perennial struggle for development. The succeeding
chapters will look into the life and works of José Rizal and through them, try to map
how historical events shaped the national hero's understanding of the nation
and nationalism.