From Imagined Communities to Cultures of Collectivization

This _Essay contributes to the issue of On Culture by asking how concepts like frame or schema could be used to analyze collectivity. It takes on a praxeological perspective which does not presuppose collectivities as given entities but as something that emerges from what we do: doing group, family, gender, nation. Part of these practices is an implicit and incorporated understanding or knowledge (i.e., culture) what it is that we are doing, how to collectivize and what for. These collectivization cultures—a conceptual extension of Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities—can be analyzed as consisting of frames or schemata. The _Essay draws on cognitive theories to distinguish collectivization scripts (e.g., frames of assembling, having dinner together) and collectivization themes (e.g., stereotypes, models of families, enterprises, nations). These again are interrelated, as are practices and practitioners, who carry collectivization experiences from one practice to another and frame nations as extended families or work teams as friendship circles.