Deborah James

Bio: Deborah James is an academic researcher from London School of Economics and Political Science. The author has contributed to research in topics: Land reform & Land law. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 89 publications receiving 1458 citations. Previous affiliations of Deborah James include University of the Witwatersrand.

The return of the broker: consensus, hierarchy, and choice in South African land reform

Abstract: The broker, a key concept in 1960s and 1970s political anthropology, merits revival in settings of rapid social transition. In South Africa, where state planning directs the course of change while attempting to privilege the market, brokers do not merely negotiate between fixed positionalities of ‘state/market’ and ‘people’. Instead, they embody and bring into being socio-economic positions and identities. They blend together the egalitarianism and rights-based character of post-liberation society with the hierarchy of re-emerging traditional authority. Drawing on notions of consensus, they embody ‘the people’; drawing on ideas of free choice and enterprise, they embody ‘the market’. Simultaneously they bear the bureaucratic characteristics of ‘the state’. Resume Concept central de l'anthropologie politique, le courtier (broker) merite un regain d'interet dans les contextes de transition sociale rapide. En Afrique du Sud, ou la planification par l'Etat oriente les changements tout en essayant de privilegier le marche, les courtiers ne font pas que negocier entre les positions fixes de « l'Etat/le marche» et « les gens ». Ils incarnent, bien plus, des positions et des identites socioeconomiques auxquelles ils donnent vie. Ils melangent l'egalitarisme et le souci des droits de la societe post-apartheid avec la hierarchie d'une autorite traditionnelle en voie de reemergence. S'ils jouent sur les notions de consensus, ils incarnent « les gens » ; sur les idees de libre choix et de libre entreprise, ils incarnent « le marche». En meme temps, ils arborent les caracteristiques bureaucratiques de « l'Etat ».

Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa

Abstract: Money from Nothing 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 as a critical aspect of broad-based economic enfranchisement. Through rich and captivating accounts, Deborah James reveals the varied ways in which middle- and working-class South Africans' access to credit is intimately bound up with identity, status-making, and aspirations of upward mobility. She draws out the deeply precarious nature of both the aspirations and the economic relations of debt which sustain her subjects, revealing the shadowy side of indebtedness and its potential to produce new forms of oppression and disenfranchisement in place of older ones. Money from Nothing uniquely captures the lived experience of indebtedness for those many millions who attempt to improve their positions (or merely sustain existing livelihoods) in emerging economies.

Money-go-round: personal economies of wealth, aspiration and indebtedness

Abstract: Considerable attempts to create a single economy of credit, in part through regularizing microlenders (especially the much-demonized loansharks or mashonisas), have been made by the South African government, notably through the National Credit Act. This article explores how borrowing and indebtedness are seen from the point of view of consumers and of those who aim to protect them. It suggests that we should speak of moneylending rather than moneylenders; that lending is often done by groups rather than by individuals (in a variant of the well-known stokvel); and that it may represent a response to so-called ‘formalization’ (Guyer 2004) of financial arrangements by those who have considerable experience of this, rather than being a bulwark against it. Based on research in Gauteng and Mpumalanga, the article critically explores prevalent stereotypes of the ‘overindebted consumer’ and the ‘black diamond’, seeking evidence both in support and in refutation of them. It discusses those factors which are conducive to and those which obstruct the achieving of the status of upwardly mobile – and simultaneously overindebted – person; demonstrates that aspiration and upward mobility, and the problems of credit or debt that accompany these, have much longer histories; and that these matters can give us insights into the contradictory character of the South African state. Its ‘neo-liberal’ dimension allows and encourages free engagement with the market and advocates the freedom to spend, even to become excessively acquisitive of material wealth. But it simultaneously attempts to regulate this in the interests of those unable to participate in this dream of conspicuous consumption. Informalization intensifies as all manner of means are devised to tap into state resources. Neo-liberal means are used to ensure the wide spread of redistribution.

Songs of the Women Migrants: Performance and Identity in South Africa

Abstract: This book gives an account of how migrant women, whose lives and experiences have heretofore been neglected in the pages of academic scholarship, dance and sing the vibrant and expressive musical style of kiba. In so doing, they build an identity as autonomous breadwinners whose aspirations and values are nonetheless rooted in 'tradition'.

Gaining Ground? Rights and Property in South African Land Reform

Abstract: 'Rights' or 'Property'?: State, Society, the Law and the Landless in South Africa. 'A Sentimental Attachment to the Neighbourhood'. Expanding Restitution: The Question of Informal Rights. Challenging Restitution: African Owners, African Tenants and the Politics of Land Reform. 'To Take Back the Land': Labour Tenancy and the Landless Peoples' Movement. Between Public and Private: New Property Models. Rights, Welfare or the Market?: The New Redistribution. Land, Power and People: Chiefs, Brokers and Intermediaries. White Power, Black Redress: The Racial Politics of Land Reform. Conclusion