Ethno-National Colonialism in South Africa
Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the question: why do ostensibly similar ethno-national conflicts within a system of settler-colonial domination see such wide variation in their outcomes? How they emerge from conflict through power sharing and social integration versus the endurance of separation and systems of domination and control? The study identifies causal paths that resulted in the decline of domination systems of this type. Ethno-national conflicts that feature certain similarities develop in different trajectories due to certain conditions that culminate in transforming the structures of these conflicts towards integration (the establishment of a single political entity) or separation (independence in separate entities). The goal of the dissertation is to examine the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through a comparative lens in order to specify the conditions that led to the persistence of the two-state solution and to examine the prevalence or lack of necessary and sufficient conditions for the emergence of a one civic-democratic state. Building on the comparative approach I argue that ethno-national territorial underpinnings of the conflict and the “regimes of territorial legitimation” of the dominant group are the most crucial explanatory factor in determining the trajectory and outcome of the conflict. “Regimes of territorial legitimation” are the practices, procedures, systems of meaning, and institutional designs that found the relationship between a nation, people or ethno-national group and geography/territory. The dissertation features a qualitative structured and focused comparison of the conflicts in South Africa, and Palestine. Method of difference is applied for a case-oriented interpretive inquiry that focuses on the complexity of each of the two cases and aims at capturing the historical diversity of these similar cases.
References
Adam, Heribert and Hermann Giliomee (1979). Ethnic Power Mobilized: Can South Africa Change? New Haven and London, Yale University Press.
Christopher, A.J. (1989). ‘Apartheid and Urban Segregation Levels in South Africa’, Urban Studies, Vol. 27 No. 3.
Darby, John and Roger Mac Ginty (2003). Cotemporary Peacemaking: Conflict, Violence, and Peace Processes, Palgrave Macmillan, NY.
De Klerk, F.W. (1998). The last Trek: A New Beginning, London and Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Donald L. (1991). A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California.
Du Toit, Andre (1983). ‘No Chosen People: The Myth of the Calvinist Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism and Racial Ideology’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 88 No. 4.
-Giliomee, Herman (1995). ‘Democratization in South Africa’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 110 No.1
Giliomee, Herman (2003). The Afrikaners: Biography of a People, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, and Tafelberg Publishers Limited, Cape Town.
Gordon, Neve (2008). Israel’s Occupation, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London.
Guelke, Adrian (2005). Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid, Palgrave: Macmillan, New York.
Gurr, Ted Robert (1993). Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts, United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington, D.C.
Hannum, Hurst (2006). ‘Self-Determination in the Twenty-First Century’, in: Hannum and Babbitt (eds.). Negotiating Self-Determination, Lexington Books.
Hannum, Hurst and Eileen F. Babbit (eds) (2006). Negotiating Self-Determination, Lexington Books.
Hartzell, Caroline and Hoddie, Matthew (2007). Crafting peace: Power Sharing Institutions and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars, The Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania.
Hobson, John Atkinson (1900). The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Effects, London: Macmillan, New York.
Johnson, R.W. (1977). How Long Will South Africa Survive? London and Baisngestok: Macmillan.
Legassick, Martin (1974). ‘Legislation, Ideology, and Economy in Post-1948 South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 1 No. 1.
O’Meara, Dan. (1996). Froty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948-1994, Randburg, South Africa: Ravan Press, Athens: Ohio University Press.
Rich, Paul. (1990). ‘Peace, Science, and the Legitimation of White Supremacy in South Africa, 1902-1940’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 23 No. 4.
Rich, Paul. (1996). State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 1912-51, Basingstoke, Macmillan, New York.
Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
