Professor Deborah James

I am a specialist in the anthropology of South and Southern Africa, where much of my fieldwork has been conducted in Mpumalanga and Northern Provinces and their urban hinterland, the Witwatersrand. My most recent book, Gaining Ground? "Rights" and "Property" in South African land reform, (Routledge, 2007) shows how mutually constitutive discourses about the ownership, use, and governance of land reveal contradictory understandings of custom, community and citizenship. My interest in the contestations between state- and market-driven ideologies also encompasses issues relating to reproductive health and HIV-AIDS. My earlier research focused on ethnicity, migration, and musical performance: in Songs of the Women Migrants (Edinburgh, 1999) I looked at how women migrants from the Northern Province defined themselves as ethnic subjects through song and musical performance. 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 called "Apartheid of Souls" which brought together scholars on Indonesia and South Africa. In 2002-3 I conducted ESRC-funded research on "Property, Community, and Citizenship in South Africa's Land Reform Programme."

Selected publications:

2008 (ed. with Derick Fay) The Rights And Wrongs Of Land Restitution: ‘Restoring What Was Ours’ London, Routledge. (download flyer/order form)

2008 “Posfácio: David Webster” in David J Webster A Sociedade Chope: Indívíduo e Aliança no sul de Moçambique (1969-1976) Ed. João de Pina Cabral, Transl. Catarina Mira. Lisbon, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais.

2007 (ed. with Jean and John L Comaroff) Picturing the Colonial Past: the African photographs of Isaac Schapera, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

2007 “Property and Citizenship In South Africa's Land Reform Programme” in Dorman S and P Nugent (eds) States, Borders and Nations: Negotiating Citizenship in Africa, Leiden, Brill.

2007. Gaining ground? "Rights" and "property" in South African land reform . London: Routledge.

2006. The tragedy of the private: Owners, communities, and the state in South Africa. In Changing properties of property, F. von Benda Beckmann, B. von Benda Beckmann, and M. Wiber (eds). Oxford: Berghahn Books.

2005 “Black Background: life history and migrant women’s music in South Africa” in
The Musical Human: Rethinking John Blacking's ethnomusicology in the 21st century, Aldershot, Ashgate, pp71-86

2005. Civil society in South Africa. In Exploring civil society: Political and cultural contexts, M. Glasius, D. Lewis, and H. Seckinelgin (eds). London: Routledge. 

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 History 27(3/4).]

2000. "Hill of thorns": Custom, knowledge and the reclaiming of a lost land in the new South Africa. Development and Change 31(3): 629-49.

2000. (with Preben Kaarsholm) Popular culture and democracy in some southern contexts. Journal of Southern African Studies 26(2): 189-208

1999. Songs of the women migrants: Performance and identity in South Africa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Some of these publications, and others as well, are available on-line via LSE Research.

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