Imagined Communities

Rise of Nations

In his ground breaking work Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson argued that all nations are imagined political communities. They are imagined because “the members… never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”[1] They are communities because, “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.”[2] He also explained that imagined communities are distinguishable by the style in which they were created and the community’s self-defined inherent limits of sovereignty. Created to connect individual emotional identities of self as part of a larger construct, they were perceived as immortal and continuous but not necessarily linked to self-consciously held political ideas. Beyond describing the characteristics of imagined communities, Anderson explained the circumstances and methods essential to the formation of nations including the decline of cultural systems, participation of lower classes in politics, the rise of print capitalism and the use of memory, forgetting and naming.[3]

Imagined Community of Tri-Valley

Just as Benedict Anderson described the “imagined communities” of nations, the new vision of Neversink, found in the pages of The Townsman, needed to be “imagined” despite its small population. Because of the geographic separation of the hamlets, many individuals did not regularly interact with people outside of their own local area. These separate hamlets also needed to become a “community” defined by Anderson as a belief in a “deep, horizontal comradeship.” The Townsman proposed horizontal comradeship based on the idea of equality through the common experience of reservoir construction, common rural history, advantages of a centralized school in Neversink, and the ability of every individual to do what was best for the community through democratic and civic participation.[1]

The symbol of the reservoirs was the key element they used to define the boundaries of the re-imagined community. The reservoirs were essential for two reasons. First, the increased tax assessment of the land “improved” by New York City made a centralized school in Neversink possible. Town leaders felt the potential of the reservoirs needed to be understood and embraced by the community. Second, the physical dominance of the reservoirs in the valleys of Neversink made them tangible symbols “that a radical break from the past was occurring.”

The Townsman intended the reservoirs to define the physical boundaries of the new community despite older town and county lines. This idea was continuously repeated in the paper between 1947 and 1951. The editors of the paper stated on 1 October 1947 that "It shall be the policy of this paper to represent no single hamlet within the bounds of its circulation, but rather to represent the governed in that area geographically bound together by the valleys of the East Branch of the Neversink, Chestnut and the upper reaches of the Rondout."[2]

This quote not only redefined the community as a single entity, but defined the boundaries of the community in terms of the reservoirs and the valleys of their three main tributaries.[3] By including “the upper reaches of the Rondout,” the Town of Denning and western portion of Wawarsing were included in the new community. This inclusion was politically necessary since these communities voted to become part of UFD #1 in 1946. In addition to this, their inclusion in a community defined by the reservoirs was appropriate since the hamlet of Lackawack (lost to the Rondout Reservoir) was part of the Town of Wawarsing and served farmers in Denning.[4] The redefined community also excluded the hamlet of Willowemoc which was located in Neversink, but geographically isolated by mountains on the western edge of the town and unaffected by reservoir construction.

The Townsman re-named this new area “Tri-Valley” and referred to the “Citizens of Tri-Valley” in many articles. This term was first seen in the nameplate (masthead) of the first edition of The Tri-Valley Townsman and became the standard term for the new community, news area covered by The Townsman, and the future school district.[5] According to Benedict Anderson, the renaming of a people and area is extremely significant. It served as a mark of the beginning of “a completely new epoch… and a profound rupture with the existing world.”[6] This significance and power of naming was not lost on the state education department when UFD #1 submitted a request to officially change their name to “The Tri-Valley Union Free School.” The state education department responded that the “name was unacceptable” and gave no reason for their decision.[7] Because of the political fight over consolidation and the state intention to divide UFD #1 between two other schools, it was likely that the state was wary of the power naming an area could have on its citizens. Events after 1947 proved that the state education department’s concern was well founded as their non-approval was ignored by The Townsman and citizens of Tri-Valley gained support and political strength.

The paper also embraced the reservoirs when it adopted the motto, “The Best Journal Published by a Dam Site.”[8] This motto was added to the nameplate (masthead) of the paper on 21 July 1948. But, to make the reservoirs a positive symbol of a re-imagined community, The Townsman needed to rely on more than a play on words. Their major strategy to persuade the population to embrace the reservoirs as the symbol for their new community was to use a strategy Benedict Anderson termed “Memory and Forgetting.” They attempted to replace the collective “memory” of the reservoirs as a symbol of forced “dislocation of … inhabitants whose ancestors had lived on the land since the late 1700’s” by a despotic state government with a more positive memory of noble sacrifice.[9]

Masthead of the local newspaper representing the new community hoping to be formed.

In Imagined Communities, Anderson explained how nationalist leaders did this. They spoke “with poignant authority” for the dead. They explained to the nation how the sacrifices of the dead made current opportunities possible and explained what the dead “really wanted” and what they would have wanted their sacrifices to produce.[10] In the case of Tri-Valley, the dead were not individuals, but the five hamlets destroyed by the reservoirs.

While many of the articles connecting the reservoirs with The Tri-Valley Area focused on increased revenue possibilities for the school district provided by the reservoirs, many other articles focused on the memory of the lost hamlets. An essay by Evelyn Huntsberger published as an August 1951 editorial titled “Final Harvest” described how “memories are still an intangible link between the valley and the people who lived there… [and] roots are deep; even after the deepening waters have drowned the land.” She concluded with the acknowledgement that the people of the community lived “in a world continually changing” but “the land between the hills will be forever unchanged.”[11] This essay was one of several that conveyed similar themes in Townsman editorials from 1947-1951. First, Ms. Huntsberger described the continuation of a link to the area and to the community after reservoir construction. This gave citizens a community based and emotional reason to stay in the town independent of any economic reasoning. Second, her final sentence embraced both a link to the past and an embrace of the future. Looking backwards and forward simultaneously was essential to the idea of “Tri-Valley” which represented both a common rural history and a willingness to adapt to a modern world by forming a new community. Both of these ideas were repeated many times during the first five years of the paper’s existence.

Many essays similar to the “Final Harvest” and a series of local history articles by the town historian Bob Dice in The Townsman attempted to change the memory of the reservoirs from one of an inability to resist the will of the state to a more nostalgic belief that the lost hamlets would want the town to form a new community. In addition to changing the community perception of the common experience of the reservoirs, The Townsman also attempted to pull the community together when it defined The Tri-Valley Area as uniquely rural and different from surrounding towns. Many editorials and articles conveyed a fear that the unique morality and rural character of the community needed to be defended from the corruption of those outside Tri-Valley. The paper repeatedly warned of the increased influence of outside urban ideas. According to the paper, the term “urban” included the towns of Liberty and Ellenville who were portrayed as complicit in “the impractical and visionary schemes of the benevolent despots in the state education department” determined to destroy the community.[12] The paper argued that this threat could only be fought through the fostering and growth of town pride and local tradition which was an essential element of the overall re-imagined vision of Tri-Valley.

Examples of this articulation of an outside threat include a 1947 editorial about the growing carnival atmosphere in the annual town fair which had been on-going since 1878. The author complained that this atmosphere "is no isolated instance of the willingness with which rural groups have been giving over their institutions to the control of urban individuals and urban ways. One by one those institutions, essentially rustic in character and inception, upon which the entire American rural scene grew, have been slipping from our grasp."[13]

Even the realm of local sports showed a strong fear of urban influence when the Ellenville basketball players were described as “gimlet-eyed city boys” in a 1949 summary of a basketball game.[14] But the most prevalent defense against “urban” influence could be found in the fight over the “local option” to ban the sale of alcohol which was implemented in Neversink during prohibition. In November 1947, the referendum to allow the sale of alcohol in the town was resoundingly voted against “for the sake of civic pride and the maintenance of a progressive community.”[15]

This fight for the unique rural morality and character of Tri-Valley was important because it provided a moral and cultural link intended to pull the re-imagined community together. This link, in addition to the physical and emotional connection to the reservoirs, was intended to provide individuals with an emotional identity connected to the larger immortal and continuous Tri-Valley construct that combined portions of three different towns (Neversink, Denning and Wawarsing) in two different counties (Sullivan and Ulster). If citizens became convinced of this connection, they would be more willing to sacrifice individual interests for the good of the community.

In addition to these less tangible strategies, the paper also supported the building of other community infrastructure projects including a library, fire departments, civic associations and social groups. The editors hoped that the strengthening of these basic pillars of the community would “provide a very attractive proposition to offer anyone wishing to become a part of our community….”[16] They believed that if the community could grow its population, the likelihood of a centralized school system in the town would be greatly improved.

Citations:

1. Also of note in the case of Neversink, is the decline of decentralized local, state and national political systems resulting from the New Deal and a changing state economy transitioning from agriculture to tourism, construction and prison industries. Much like the decline of the dynastic realm and religious communities in Anderson’s study of nations, the decline in local political control and decline of the agricultural economy made community change inevitable. 2. “Editorial.,” The Tri-Valley Townsman, 1 October 1947, 2.
3. The Neversink River, Chestnut Creek and Rondout River are the three tributaries running into the Neversink and Rondout Reservoir.
4. Coombe, p. 2.
5. The Tri-Valley Townsman, 7 May 1947, 1.
6. Anderson, 193.
7. Coombe, 3.
8. The Tri-Valley Townsman, 21 July 1948, 1.
9. Purcell, 109.
10. Anderson, 198.
11. “Final Harvest.,” The Tri-Valley Townsman, 29 Aug 1951, 2.
12. “Toward a Brighter Future.,” The Tri-Valley Townsman, 14 July 1948, 2.
13. “Editorial.,” The Tri-Valley Townsman, 15 October 1947, 2.
14. “What Happened.,”The Tri-Valley Townsman, 19 Jan 1949, 8.
15. “Editorial.,” The Tri-Valley Townsman,, 13 Aug 1947, 2.
16. “Editorial.,” The Tri-Valley Townsman, 14 May 1947, 2..

Daniel Curry
George Mason University
Last Updated 14 May 2014
copyright May 2014