The theoretical position also rests on the premise that capitalism was a prerequisite. Anderson ascribes the development of the imagined national community to the spread of books. It was only with the establishment of a standardised vernacular and readily available printed matter that the imagined community could come into existence.

Here we can see that the nation is regarded as a mutable construct and is, therefore, part of a continuously discursive process. Todorova’s Imagining the Balkans reveals the constructive element in common in the title. As always the really interesting question relates to who has the power to define, maintain and enforce the parameters of those constructions.