Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Deborah James
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.522kg
ISBN: 9780804791113
ISBN 10: 0804791112
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 19 November 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Credit, and its flip side, debt, emerges as a fundamental lens to understand the workings of both social mobility and economic disenfranchisement, precariously inter-twined in the New South Africa. James makes complex theory accessible, combining it with page-turning ethnography - utterly captivating! - Dinah Rajak, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Sussex and author of In Good Company: An Anatomy of Corporate Social Responsibility (Stanford University Press 2011) South Africa, the most unequal society in the world, has recently launched a consumer credit boom. Property rights have been strengthened, but debtors lack the legal protection that is normal elsewhere. Deborah James's much needed ethnography reveals what it feels like to be on the receiving end of this boom for the banks. - Keith Hart, London School of Economics
South Africa, the most unequal society in the world, has recently launched a consumer credit boom. Property rights have been strengthened, but debtors lack the legal protection that is normal elsewhere. Deborah James's much needed ethnography reveals what it feels like to be on the receiving end of this boom for the banks. --Keith Hart, London School of Economics
Author Information
Deborah James is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Her previous books include Gaining Ground? ""Rights"" and ""Property"" in South African Land Reform (2007) and Songs of the Women Migrants (1999). She has written for the Mail and Guardian and has appeared in Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed, on the BBC.
