Anderson in his book, "Imagined communities," goes on to try to define the impossible by describing nation as an "imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson 1991: 6)." .
The relationship between state and nation is important, a state is "generally recognized by other countries as possessing legal sovereignty over what happens in its territory, being responsible for the institutions of government, who both formulate and enforce the laws of the state, and are responsible for its security and protection" (Brown 1995: 10). The description of nation would technically be very similar, but the term "nation" implies more than a political or legal institution, it also represents the individuals who live within the states boarders, but as observed by Hugh Seton-Watson, "I am driven to the conclusion that no "scientific" definition of nation can be devised; yet the phenomenon has existed and exists" (Seton-Watson 1982: 5). .
"Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist" (Gellner 1964: 169). Nationalism itself is a socio-cultural concept, but in that concept it is seen as limited and finite. Anderson wrote that " nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations Nationalists unlike Christians do not dream of the day where their nation will encompass the entire world" (Anderson 1983: 7). So why is nationalism so predominant in the world today? As nationalism is a function of social cohesion, theorists like Durkheim would argue the more cohesive we are as a society, the better we are likely to function agreeably. Durkheim (1964) wrote that if the State were the only organized structure, the individual would become detached and society would disintegrate.