Nation / Home
Benedict Anderson famously described nation-states as `imagined communities´; they could, however, be just as easily, and perhaps more appropriately, be described as `imagined homes´. The imagery of nationhood, in Britain and elsewhere, is saturated with references to home; it is one of the core meanings of the nation. Nation/home comes in a number of versions.
The threatened homeland
This is perhaps the most topical. It is no coincidence that in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack in 2001 a new image appeared in the US, the `homeland´, and a new US Government agency, the Department of Homeland Security. The notion has also passed into political discourse in the UK and elsewhere. By 2004, Hollywood had produced a movie called Homeland Security. The words conjure up an image of exactly what is under threat and is to be protected (home) and, by implication, from whom (those with whom we are not at home). `Keeping the home fires burning´ - with all the emotion that is summarised in the image of the domestic hearth - is another vivid, and older, image in this symbolic register.
Romantic images of home
In addition to its role in the political and cultural modernisation of states, as discussed by Gellner, nationalism also has a Romantic alter ego, classically identified with Herder, and articulated in social science by Smith. Historically imagery of the `homeland´ sits alongside `fatherland´ and `motherland´ in the rhetoric of Romantic nationalism.
The view from the Diaspora
This may perhaps best be considered as vernacular romanticism. Many emigré communities have constructed images of `home´ in order to define themselves in a new context: identifying with home, and against the New World. Classical examples include the Jewish and Armenian diasporas, which might suggest that that religion has a powerful role in this image of home.
Making new homes
Not all migrant communities define themselves by looking back over their shoulders. In many cases it is precisely a place that is no longer `home´ that is being abandoned, in order to make a `new home´ elsewhere. Here one might think of many of the migrations of poor people from Europe during the 19th century, and many of the population movements taking place today.
These four versions of home/nation do not exhaust the possibilities; nor are they mutually exclusive or contradictory. The ways in which different versions of nation/home combine - in calendar images of `traditional´ English villages, for example, or in the domestic uses of national flags in Scandinavia - suggest fertile possibilities for further research into the symbolisation of nation/home. Furthermore, that these images are imagined does not mean that they are imaginary: their affective and political power is significant and has very real consequences.