African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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Author: search.filters.author.James, DeborahStart date: 1990

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    "I dress in this fashion": women, the life-cycle, and the idea of SeSotho
    (1992-09-21) James, Deborah
    Anthropologists have become interested in "the colonisation of consciousness", and in the processes by which this colonization has been withstood. While some scholars have examined acts of resistance whose social and political effects were more easily measured, a longstanding concern of anthropologists has been the subtler means of defying domination, often through the reassertion of apparently traditional cultural forms, with effects sometimes perceptible no more widely than within local communities themselves.
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    Bagagesu/those of my home: migrancy, gender and ethnicity
    (1995-03-13) James, Deborah
    Ethnicity has been an area in which scholars of southern Africa have shown a gradually increasing interest over the last couple of decades. This interest has sharpened over the last five or six years to become a major concern, with Vail's 1989 collection, and his comprehensive introduction, as something of a watershed. More recently still, the holding of two major South African-based conferences on the topic within the last two years suggests that it has become a virtual obsession in the region.
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    After years in the wilderness: development and the discourse of land claims in the new South Africa
    (1997-08-13) James, Deborah
    Anthropologists, it is currently claimed, can and should play a significant role in those processes of managed and haphazard social change subsumed under the heading of development (Pottier 1993). In South Africa, many anthropologists have acted - indirectly or directly - to defend the rights of communities subjected to the vagaries of the capitalist economy and to various forms of government planning. In relation to the former, they have documented the effects of labour migration and of the gradual decline in subsistence agriculture; while in relation to the latter they have looked at the social upheavals caused by population resettlement, whether these were the clear outcomes of state plans or rather more unforeseen. But a more novel and certainly more ambitious approach would be for the anthropologist's gaze to broaden, thus encompassing not only these local communities but also those who have represented, or worked to alleviate, their plight. My own analysis here is based on the discourse and rhetoric used not only by resettled people claiming restitution but also by parties - people in the "land" NGOs, in local and regional government, and in any of a number of newly-emerging consultant consortiums - who concern themselves with restoring territories to their claimants and with developing and improving these.