Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction of State Legitimacy in South Africa and Japan

Abstract

Recently on AM Radio 702 from Cape Town, the host of the show Cape Talk noted how little South Africans really know about Africa, and for that matter, about each other within the country. Despite the unprecedented level of globalization realized in the twentieth century, the depiction of the world as increasingly unified and integrated fails to account for the increased degree of emerging xenophobia and insularity. Nationalism requires the psychological labeling of other societies and cultures as “foreign” in order to define its own collective identity. Contrary to the perceptions and cognizance of average national citizens, national identity and nationalism emerge from purposive state action rather than from the seemingly unrelated actions of individuals. Created identities and constructed nationalism provide the state with a mechanism for maintaining legitimacy through the control and channeling of citizens’ thought processes about their society and government. In the process of constructing national identity, contradictions and the falsification of history become integral components of the creation and maintenance of nationalism. This chapter explores the creation, maintenance, decay, and the attempts to recreate nationalism in South Africa and Japan. Nationalism in both South Africa and Japan underwent significant transformation in the past century due to internal political and economic developments and the external forces of globalization.