The Anglosphere is a term that has gained increasing currency in the years since 9/11. According to The Anglosphere Institute, the Anglosphere is an "emerging branch of civilization at the core of which are the nations of the English-speaking world (Anglosphere Institute, 2004)." However, anglospherists contend that there is much more to their concept than simply a racial, ethnic, or language affiliation of nations. Rather, according to James Bennet, the Anglosphere represents a distinct branch of civilization separate from broader Western Civilization and is comprised of nations both English and non-English speaking (Bennet, 2001).
Bennett (2003) and his followers see the Anglosphere as a "network civilization" in which national geographical boundaries are defined not by physical contiguity, but rather extended by network ties of culture, travel, commerce, and communication. Thus, the Anglosphere consists of very dense connections among the core nations of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but also strong ties and connections among nations including Ireland, South Africa, and India. Finally, non-English speaking nations that have adopted Anglospheric traditions such as representative democracy, civil rights, rule of law, and individualism (Bennet, 2001) can be seen as frontier members of the Anglosphere - nations such as Israel, Japan, or Singapore. The defining point, however, is that the Anglosphere represents a new structure, a networked system of organization that knits the disparate parts together.
The purpose of this thesis will be examine the reality of the Anglosphere as a new type of networked structure. A large part of the analysis will consist of examining the national literatures of the individual components of the Anglosphere, especially of the fringe members, to determine how much correlation there is on the key cultural points the Anglospherists hold dear. However, ...