Contested credit landscapes: Microcredit, self-help and self-determination in rural Bangladesh

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 637-654

  Cons, Jason ^a   Paprocki, Kasia ^a  

^a Goldin Institute   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CREDIT PROVISION; METHODOLOGY; MICROFINANCE; POLITICAL DISCOURSE; RESEARCH WORK; RURAL ECONOMY; SELF DETERMINATION; SELF HELP;

ARAMPUR; BANGLADESH; RAJSHAHI;

EID: 77954183597     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436591003701141     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/press.html.
2. World Bank, 'Microfinance comes of age', 2006, at http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21153828~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html.
3. M Yunus, 'Nobel Lecture', 2006, at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus- lecture-en.html.
4. Our claim is not that economic interventions are not cultural, but that institutions such as the UN and Nobel Prize Committee continue to imagine them as discrete. See the introduction by D Da Costa in this issue.
5. Yunus, 'Nobel Lecture'.
6. For Bangladesh, see QK Ahmad (ed), Socio-economic and Indebtedness-related Impact of Micro-credit in Bangladesh, Dhaka: University Press Limited, 2007.
7. J Fernando, 'Nongovernmental organizations, micro-credit, and the empowerment of women', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 554, 1997, pp 150-177.
8. L Karim, 'Demystifying micro-credit: the Grameen Bank, NGOs, and neoliberalism in Bangladesh', Cultural Dynamics, 20(1), 2008, pp 5-29.
9. A Muhammad, 'Grameen and microcredit: a tale of corporate success', Economic and Political Weekly, XLIV(35), 2009, pp 35-42.
10. For other places, see D Karlan & J Zinman, Expanding Microenterprise Credit Access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts in Manila, Working Paper, 2009, at http://www. dartmouth.edu/~jzinman/.
11. C Duggan, Doing Bad by Doing Good? Theft and Abuse by Lenders in Inadequately Regulated Microfinance Markets, Harvard Business School Working Paper Series, No 10-014, 2009.
12. For scholarship on microcredit as formative of neoliberal development, see K Rankin, 'Governing development: neoliberalism, microcredit, and rational economic woman', Economy and Society, 30(1), 2001, pp 18-37.
13. For essays on gaps between policy and practice, see G Wood & I Sharid (eds), Who Needs Credit? Poverty and Finance in Bangladesh, Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1997.
14. L Mayoux, 'Tackling the downside: social capital, women's empowerment and micro-finance in Camaroon', Development and Change, 32, 2001, pp 435-464.
15. See Sengupta in this issue on ongoing erasures of voice and agency of the poor in popular representations where slums are reproduced as spaces of inhumanity and hopelessness in need of external assistance.
16. D Moore, Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
17. D Moore, 'The crucible of cultural politics: reworking 'development' in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands', American Ethnologist, 26(3), 2000, p 655.
18. Compare with J Elyachar, Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development, and the Statein Cairo, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
19. T Li, The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007; essays in J Fernando (ed), Microfinance: Perils and Prospects, New York: Routledge, 2005.
20. A Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
21. The literature on self-help development is vast, but see CK Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, Philadelphia, PA: Warton School Publishing, 2006.
22. Compare with B Rogaly, 'Micro-finance evangelism, ''destitute women'', and the hard selling of a new anti-poverty formula', Development in Practice, 6(2), 1996, pp 100-112.
23. For continuities between colonialism, modernisation theory and neoliberalism, see Da Costa, 'Introduction', in this issue.
24. Proponents of self-help development recognise that a lack of basic needs characterises poverty, but argue that, through market participation, the poor will be able to purchase better services than could be provided via 'charity'.
25. J Elyachar, 'Empowerment money: the World Bank, non-governmental organizations, and the value of culture in Egypt', Public Culture, 14(3), 2002, pp 493-513.
26. D Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005; and Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception.
27. Karim, 'Demystifying micro-credit'.
28. J Elyachar, 'Empowerment money', p 511.
29. See Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception.
30. Li, The Will to Improve. On neoliberal governmentality and microcredit, see Rankin, 'Governing development'; Fernando, 'Nongovernmental organizations.
31. B Morgan, 'Empowering NGOs: the microcredit movement through Foucault's dispositif', Alternatives, 26(3),2001, pp 233-259.
32. J Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
33. M Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle against World Poverty, New York: Public Affairs, 2003, p 95.
34. Several industry leaders are developing social impact assessment strategies that look beyond financial indicators. None of them, to our knowledge, incorporate community-based or context-sensitive assessment strategies. On Grameen's payback rates as measures of success, see A Dowla & D Barua, The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story, Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2006.
35. Yunus, Banker to the Poor, p 111.
36. Compare with Sioh's analysis in this issue of the use of 'Asian values' in challenging and disputing place in the international hierarchy.
37. On the politics of borrowing groups, see D Anthony, 'Cooperation in microcredit borrowing groups: identity, sanctions, and reciprocity in the production of collective goods', American Sociological Review, 70, 2005, pp 496-515.
38. Yunus, Banker to the Poor.
39. The complete list of Decisions can be found at: http://www.grameen-info.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=109.
40. Elyachar, 'Empowerment money'. Compare with notions of culture as creativity, co-optation and resource addressed by Da Costa in this issue.
41. This principle has been adopted as a 'bare-minimum' guideline by, among others, the Consultative Group for the Poor (CGAP), Good Practice Guidelines for Funders of Microfinance, Washington, DC: CGAP, 2006.
42. Particularly: group lending models, claims to empowerment of women, weekly repayment schedules, and the use of repayment as a proxy measure of poverty alleviation.
43. Numbers in this paragraph are derived from Credit Development Forum, Microfinance Statistics, 19, December 2006, Dhaka: Credit and Development Forum, 2007.
44. Ahmad, Socio-economic and Indebtedness-related Impact of Micro-credit in Bangladesh.
45. Personal communication with staff at CARE Bangladesh, Action Aid Bangladesh and Nijera Kori.
46. These organisations are: BRAC, Grameen Bank, ASA, Islamic Relief, Asset, Thengamara, Krishi Bank and Proshika.
47. These findings are paralleled by Karim, 'Demystifying micro-credit'.
48. Although there are programmes in Arampur that target different segments of the population, the distinction between these programmes is lost in the face of the larger debt market of the village.
49. For the origins of the debate over 'financial systems' lending models, see P Mosley & D Hulme 'Microenterprise finance: is there a conflict between growth and poverty alleviation?', World Development, 26(5), 1998, pp 783-790.
50. By comparison MFIs charge 25%-50% on average. B Helms, Interest Rate Ceilings and Microfinance: The Story So Far, CGAP Occasional Paper #9, 2004.
51. Karim, 'Demystifying micro-credit' finds that microcredit loan recipients occasionally become moneylenders to people who are unable to get loans themselves.
52. Yunus, Banker to the Poor.
53. Many even suggested that VGF staples (bags of rice and wheat flour) were often confiscated by microcredit field officers when borrowers failed to make payments.
54. Karim, 'Demystifying micro-credit' also documents this practice, known as 'house breaking' or ghar bhanga.
55. Fernando, 'Nongovernmental organizations', p 171.
56. See also AM Goetz & R Sen Gupta, 'Who takes the credit? Gender, power, and control over loan use in rural credit programs in Bangladesh', World Development, 24(1), 1996, pp 45-63.
57. Compare with A Da Costa in this issue on ancestrality as a contemporary project of constructing history, sociality and justice informed by evolving histories of struggle.
58. K Rankin, 'Social capital, microfinance, and the politics of development', in J Fernando (ed), Microfinance Perils and Prospects, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, pp 89-111.
59. Compare with S Johnson, 'Gender relations, empowerment and microcredit: moving on from a lost decade', European Journal of Development Research, 17(2), 2005, pp 224-248.
60. S Hashemi, SR Schuler & AP Riley et al, 'Rural credit programs and women's empowerment in Bangladesh', World Development, 24(4), 1996, pp 635-653
61. N Kabeer, 'Conflicts over credit: re-evaluating the empowerment potential of loans to women in rural Bangladesh', World Development, 29(1), 2001, pp 63-84.
62. N Rose quoted in Elyachar, Markets of Dispossession, p 193.
63. Key texts in this debate are Goetz & Sen Gupta, 'Who takes the credit?'; and Kabeer, 'Conflicts over credit'. See also the introduction to this issue on development as cure versus cause of crises andv poverty.
64. Similar dynamics have been observed in Nepal by Rankin, 'Social capital, microfinance, and the politics of development'.
65. In many cases women reported being denied microcredit loans because of this without a guarantee from a male relative.
66. Compare with M Pitt, S Khandker, O Chowdhury & D Millimet, 'Credit programs for the poor and the health status of children in rural Bangladesh', International Economic Review, 44(1), pp 87-118.
67. S Feldman, 'Exploring theories of patriarchy: a perspective from contemporary Bangladesh', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 26(4), 2001, p 1114.
68. FF Piven & R Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why they Succeed and How they Fail, New York: Vintage, 1978.
69. Such debates contrast, for example, with the no pago movement in Nicaragua which, through refusal to repay, denies the institutional legitimacy of MFIs to dictate terms of indebtedness.
70. Members of the research team are also members of Nijera Kori's network and the community-dialogue process in Arampur is in keeping with Nijera Kori's methods. For more on Nijera Kori, see A Barkat, et al, Development as Conscientization: The case of Nijera Kori in Bangladesh, Dhaka: Pathak Shamabesh, 2008.
71. N Kabeer, A Kabir & Y Huq, Quantifying the Impact of Social Mobilization in Rural Bangladesh: An Analysis of Nijera Kori, Working Paper, Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2007.
72. See, for example, Scott's discussion of metis in J Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
73. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine.
74. D Mosse, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice, London: Pluto Press, 2005, p 5.
75. Compare with B Dill, 'The paradoxes of community-based participation in Dar es Salaam', Development and Change, 40(4), pp 717-743.