system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What are the main academic criticisms on Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities"?

Hello,   
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I appreciate it.  
I have just finished "Imagined Communities" and found it to be a great book. I found it explained his theory very clear. After finishing it however I am keen to look at the main academic criticism or counter-theories to his book. Who are the main academics who disagree with his theory? and what do they argue?  
  
I hope this question is understandable and ok. I appreciate anyone taking the time to give me help in any way.
gpt
Anderson is kind of funny. He has one of the most widely cited definitions of nationalism (that nationalism is an imagined community, imagined in that it is both limited and sovereign) but few people accept the argument itself. The main criticisms of Anderson are his emphasis on modernity (that nationalism is a modern phenomenon); his  spontaneity, since for Anderson, nationalism seems to simply 'emerge' as a result of print capitalism; And, perhaps most scathingly, is the 'inclusivity' of his definition. According to Anthony Marx, Anderson completely neglects the exclusionary elements of nationalism. For Anderson, everybody is part of the community. But, according to Marx, citizenship / nationality has never been fully extended to people and that certain groups of people (for the purposes of nation-building) have been excluded. Consider blacks in America, for example. 

More generally, Anderson is part of the structuralism / functionalism approach to nationalism which has, more or less, fallen out of favour (Ernst Gellner is also part of this camp). The main (constructivist) critiques of Anderson's nationalism come from Anthony Marx, Rogers Brubaker, and Ashutosh Varshney.