Africana Library

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Author: search.filters.author.James, Deborah

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    The question of ethnicity: Pedi and Ndebele in a Lebowa village
    (1988-09) James, Deborah
    In the South African context, the question of ethnicity is a morally charged and difficult one. This is mainly so, of course, because the enforcement of ethnic separation by the S A Government has been seen to lie at the heart of some of Apartheid’s worst atrocities. The study of ethnic identities, by volkekundiges, for example (see Sharp 1980), has appeared as an unquestioning acceptance - or even an ideological justifying - by academics of this official policy. Because of this, scholars critical of state policy have tended to under emphasise these identities, and to stress instead uniting factors such as a common working-class identity. In recent years, however, a number of studies have singled out for analysis precisely this kind of strong group identification (see for example Clegg 1981; Marks 1986; Erlmann 1987). While these works do acknowledge that the outer parameters within which strong ethnicity emerges have been set by state policy, they are equally concerned to examine the local-level processes through which it develops and is maintained. They also have in common an insistence that these group identities must be understood not in terms of primordial loyalties, but as affiliations established by specific, and recent, historical developments. Pursuing a similar line of argument, I look in this paper at deep-seated ethnic divisions between Pedi and Ndebele in a Lebowa village.
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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.
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    Mmino wa setso: women's songs in a Lebowa village
    (1990-02-06T13:28:54Z) James, Deborah
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    Land shortage and inheritance in a Lebowa village
    (1987-02-09T13:28:50Z) James, Deborah