I was similarly interested in Anderson’s discussion of
pilgrimage. The experiencing of a pilgrimage fostered more than companionship for
individual but a “consciousness of connectedness (Why are we here together?)
emerges.” (56) While Anderson discusses these “journeys of imagination” (55) as responsible for creating a sense of absolutism by allowing
individuals to experience a sense
of interchangeability, he focuses his discussion on the movement of bureaucrats
from peripheral areas to government centers. His definition of pilgrimage seems to be limited to members
of a specific social strata who are exchanging positions of authority. What if
we consider the movements of migrant workers, individuals who seek manual
worker in places outside of their home, as a type of pilgrimage and their
movements geared towards both the edges and the center, across national borders
and within countries?
Would we consider this type of pilgrimage nation-making, and
does it breed any form of unification within an imagined community or does it
undermine conceptions of community? Anderson’s feudal nobles exchanged position
and control, religious pilgram exchanged and shared faith and religious
identity, and I am curious, when considering discussions of labor, what is
exchanged or shared between individuals who exist in this type of transience? What
is the premise of this community?
What does it mean when an imagined community exists
simultaneously in a borderless place and within national borders?
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