Full disclosure:

I wrote the last post after reading a couple of chapters of Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" while in the Kashmir Valley. I still haven't finished the book - which is rather dense - but I do plan to do so...

I recently came across the German word 'heimat', which is about the relationship of a human being with a certain 'spatial social unit' that is related to the home(land). It connects to a trinity: birth, community and tradition - including language, earliest experiences or acquired affinity. Naturally, this concept was appropriated by the Nazis, but it has been reclaimed in recent decades by the Green environmental movement. I think this concept is very similar to what I discussed in my last post, and it can range from mild patriotism to rabid Nazi-style hyper-nationalism, including ideas of Lebensraum and  Volk (Germanness).

 It is also clearly connected with the idea of 'in-group' and 'out-group', and can be benign as long as there is respect for - as opposed to targeting of - the 'Other'.

I looked up the index in Anderson's book and the word heimat wasn't there - but it may well be there somewhere in the thickets of the book, implicitly if not explicitly.