Dr. Deborah James

I am a specialist in the anthropology of South and Southern Africa, and have recently begun research at some sites in the UK. My work is broadly political and economic in focus.

My new book Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa (Stanford University Press, 2014) explores the dynamics surrounding South Africa's national project of financial inclusion—dubbed "banking the unbanked"—which aimed to extend credit to black South Africans. It shows the varied ways in which access to credit by people in these newly-included sectors of society is bound up with identity and status-making, and draws out the precarious nature of both the aspirations of upward mobility and the economic relations of debt which sustain the newly indebted, revealing the shadowy side of indebtedness and its potential both to produce new forms of oppression and disenfranchisement in place of older ones, while also helping realize projects of upliftment. It was one of the publications emerging from an ESRC-funded project entitled "Investing, engaging in enterprise, gambling and getting into debt: popular economies and citizen expectations in South Africa".

A previous monograph, based on ESRC-funded research in 2002-3, shows how mutually constitutive discourses about the ownership, use, and governance of land reveal contradictory understandings of custom, community and citizenship:2007. Gaining ground? "Rights" and "property" in South African land reform. London: Routledge.

http://www.routledge.com/books/Gaining-Ground-isbn9780415420310

A related book, with a comparative remit, is Fay, Derrick and James, Deborah (2008) The anthropology of land restitution: an introduction. In: Fay, Derrick and James, Deborah , (eds.) The rights and wrongs of land restitution: 'restoring what was ours'. Routledge, London, UK, pp. 1-24. ISBN 9780415461085

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/21398/

Exploring the relationship between anthropologists' ethnographic investigations and the lived social worlds in which these originate, I was co-editor with Christina Toren and Evie Plaice of 2010 Culture Wars: Context, Models and Anthropologists' Accounts. Berghahn Books.

http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=JamesCulture

My earlier research focused on ethnicity, migration, and musical performance: it showed how women migrants from the Northern Province defined themselves as ethnic subjects through song and musical performance.1999. Songs of the women migrants: Performance and identity in South Africa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

http://www.internationalafricaninstitute.org/publishing/library.html or http://www.eupjournals.com/book/9780748613045

I am also interested in comparative insights into the state, law, civil society, and religion in postcolonial settings, and was co-editor of a volume exploring these topics in Indonesia and South Africa.2003. (with Albert Schrauwers) An Apartheid of souls: Dutch and Afrikaner colonialism and its aftermath in Indonesia and South Africa: an Introduction. In An Apartheid of souls: Dutch colonialism and its aftermath in Indonesia and South Africa, D. James and A. Schrauwers (eds). [Special issue, Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History27(3/4).]

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/3001/1/An_apartheid_of_souls_(LSERO).pdf