Data Entry: Please note that the research database will be replaced by UNIverse by the end of October 2023. Please enter your data into the system https://universe-intern.unibas.ch. Thanks
The Political Economy of Microfinance. Financializing Poverty
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Place of Publication
Basingstoke
ISSN/ISBN
978-1-137-36420-3
Series title
Studies in the political economy of public policy
Abstract
This book helps to understand the enigmatic microfinance sector by tracing its evolution and asking how it works as a financial system. Our present capitalism is a financialized capitalism, and microfinance is its response to poverty. Microfinance has broad-ranging effects, reaching hundreds of millions of people and generating substantial revenues. Although systemic flaws have become obvious, most strikingly with the 2010 Indian crisis that was marked by overindebtedness, suicides and violence, the industry's expansion continues unabated. As Philip Mader argues, microfinance heralds less the end of poverty than new, more financialized forms of poverty. While microfinance promises to empower, it generates discipline and extracts substantial resources from the poor, producing new crises and new forms of dispossession.
