Navigating terrains of violence: how South African male youngsters negotiate social change

Two concepts of separatism, embodied in the doctrines of Black Nationalism and Apartheid, have been advocated by sections of the Black minority in the United States and the White minority in South Africa. Although these ideologies have developed on diametrically opposed political foundations, situations of subordination in contrast to situations of dominance, they contain certain common themes. This paper explores a number of basic problems in the sociology of separatism: (i) what is distinctive about separatism as an ideology? (ii) what causes the emergence of specific separatist ideologies? (iii) what structural factors are common to both ‘dominant’ and ‘subordinate’ separatism? (iv) what are the manifest and latent functions of separatist ideologies? (v) what general sociological hypotheses can be drawn from these two case studies concerning the origin and persistence of separatist ideologies?