Nationalism, modernity and postmodernity: comparing the South African and Australian experiences

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Periodical article

Title:	Nationalism, modernity and postmodernity: comparing the South African and Australian experiences
Author:	Louw, Eric
Year:	1997
Periodical:	Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies
Volume:	24
Issue:	1
Pages:	76-105
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	South Africa Australia
Subjects:	modernization nation
External link:	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589349708705042
Abstract:	South Africa and Australia emerged into the 20th century sharing similar racist modernist nationalist projects. However, these two societies leave the 20th century with what seems like fundamentally different futures. Since 1983 Australians have systematically destroyed their old modernist and nationalist social order. In its stead, they have dived headlong into the uncertainties of engaging with globalization and post-Fordist economic restructuring and have immersed themselves in a world awash with postmodern (and 'postnational') significations. South Africans, on the other hand, appear to be content to leave the old modernist and nationalist frameworks unchallenged: their post-1994 project appears to have become the construction of a modernizing (black) nationalist State built ironically upon the foundations of the (white) racist-modernist State. It seems as if South Africa may yet be steered into a modernist cul de sac, substantially isolated from global post-Fordism and its related postmodernization trends. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum.