Deborah James – författare

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.

The Rights and Wrongs of Land Restitution: ‘Restoring What Was Ours’

The Rights and Wrongs of Land Restitution: ‘Restoring What Was Ours’

Gaining Ground? Rights and Property in South African Land Reform examines how land reform policy and practice in post-apartheid South Africa have been produced and contested.

Set in the province of Mpumalanga, the book gives an ethnographic account of local initiatives and conflicts, showing how the poorest sectors of the landless have defied the South African state''s attempts to privatize land holdings and create a new class of African farmers. They insist that the ''rights-based'' rather than the ''market-driven'' version of land reform should prevail and that land restitution was intended to benefit all Africans. However their attempts to gain land access often backfire. Despite state assurances that land reform would benefit all, illegal land selling and ''brokering'' are pervasive, representing one of the only feasible routes to land access by the poor.

This book shows how human rights lawyers, NGOs and the state, in interaction with local communities, have tried to square these symbolic and economic claims on land.

Winner of the inaugural Elliott P. Skinner Book Award of the Association of Africanist Anthropology, 2008

Gaining Ground? Rights and Property in South African Land Reform examines how land reform policy and practice in post-apartheid South Africa have been produced and contested.

Set in the province of Mpumalanga, the book gives an ethnographic account of local initiatives and conflicts, showing how the poorest sectors of the landless have defied the South African state''s attempts to privatize land holdings and create a new class of African farmers. They insist that the ''rights-based'' rather than the ''market-driven'' version of land reform should prevail and that land restitution was intended to benefit all Africans. However their attempts to gain land access often backfire. Despite state assurances that land reform would benefit all, illegal land selling and ''brokering'' are pervasive, representing one of the only feasible routes to land access by the poor.

This book shows how human rights lawyers, NGOs and the state, in interaction with local communities, have tried to square these symbolic and economic claims on land.

Winner of the inaugural Elliott P. Skinner Book Award of the Association of Africanist Anthropology, 2008

Random House presents the audiobook edition of F*** You Cancer, written and read by Deborah James.**As seen on BBC Breakfast**You are stronger than you know, more positive than you ever thought and you can still LIVE with cancer.Drink more green juices, eat turmeric, walk for three hours a day... Arghh, I wanted to scream, run away and tell every well-meaning person to go and do one!! The barrage of cure cancer advice that came my way when I was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer was enough to make anyone feel overloaded, let alone at a time when you are trying to get your head around having the Big C at the age of 35! I wanted hope and I wanted to feel normal, to drink wine, buy nice shoes and go to the pub – but all the advice I came across told me to cut out pretty much everything and retreat into my cancer cave.Whilst this book doesn’t advocate throwing everything down the kitchen sink, it will help you to navigate your feelings through the big C roller coaster, remind you that it’s ok to feel one hundred different things in the space of a minute and most importantly show you that you can still live your life and be yourself with cancer. From diagnosis (welcome to the club you never wanted to join) and surviving chemo through to how to cope with family and friends (can everyone just fuck off sometimes), managing the huge mental roller coaster, looking good (lipstick is your best friend) and feeling better (drink the wine), and celebrating milestones (drink more wine), F*** You Cancer is your up-lifting cancer coach in a book. Packed with top tips, laugh out loud stories, insider advice and heart-warming case studies it will transform your mood and encourage you to shout #fuckoffcancer as loudly as you can!

The impulse to redistribute wealth is said to be a tool to counter inequalities, applied by the state or society to curb the worst excesses of capitalist exploitation and free trade. In settings where previous political regimes are reformed, or toppled and replaced by new ones, redistribution can also be a policy specifically oriented at redress, one exercised at the formal level of policy. Drawing on a comparative ethnography in South Africa and the United Kingdom, Clawing Back explores how notions of reallocation and payout are intimately connected with those of compensation for a loss. Where financialization is accompanied by increased informalization, redistribution can equally involve the market as well as kinship and social networks. Drawing on a rich ethnography of the human relationships at the center of redistribution, Deborah James shows how borrowing can provide negotiation opportunities to wage earners and welfare beneficiaries alike: they make use of debt to constitute relations and futures, to engage with the state, to convert between commodified and non-commodified relationships. Rather than suggesting that financialization is serving either a totally negative or wholly beneficial purpose, James posits a different way of visualizing the relationship between the finance industry and the world of everyday needs.

Brought to you by Penguin.I''m alive when I should be dead. In another movie, I missed the sliding door and departed this wondrous life long ago. Like so many others, I''ve had to learn to live not knowing if I have a tomorrow, because, statistically, I shouldn''t have. At the age of 35, I was blindsided by incurable bowel cancer - I was given a less than 8% chance of surviving five years. More than five years later, my only option is to live in the now and to value one day at a time.So how do you flip your mind from a negative spiral into realistic and rebellious hope? How do you stop focusing on the why and realise that ''why not me'' is just as valid a question? How we learn to respond to any given situation empowers us or destroys us. We have the ability in our minds to dictate our own outcomes - bad or good - and with the right skills and approach, we can be the master of our lives.How to Live When You Could Be Dead will show you how. It will awaken you to question your life as if you didn''t have a tomorrow and live it in the way you want to today. It will show you how to build a positive mindset and, through this, invite you to think about what you could do if you believed you could do anything you want.Ebury, a division of Penguin Random House, will pay £3 from the sale of each copy of How To Live When You Could Be Dead by Deborah James sold in the UK to Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK.Cancer Research UK is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247).''Deborah James has captured the heart of the nation'' - The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge @KensingtonRoyal''Brave, bright, beautiful'' - Lorraine Kelly''Deborah''s ability to find positivity in the darkest of places is an inspiration to us all'' - Davina McCall© Deborah James 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

The relationship between anthropologists’ ethnographic investigations and the lived social worlds in which these originate is a fundamental issue for anthropology. Where some claim that only native voices may offer authentic accounts of culture and hence that ethnographers are only ever interpreters of it, others point out that anthropologists are, themselves, implanted within specific cultural contexts which generate particular kinds of theoretical discussions. The contributors to this volume reject the premise that ethnographer and informant occupy different and incommensurable “cultural worlds.” Instead they investigate the relationship between culture, context, and anthropologists’ models and accounts in new ways. In doing so, they offer fresh insights into this key area of anthropological research.