The Rise and Fall of Global Microcredit PDF Download

Author: Milford Bateman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135185688X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 325

View

Book Description
In the mid-1980s the international development community helped launch what was to quickly become one of the most popular poverty reduction and local economic development policies of all time. Microcredit, the system of disbursing tiny micro-loans to the poor to help them to establish their own income-generating activities, was initially highly praised and some were even led to believe that it would end poverty as we know it. But in recent years the microcredit model has been subject to growing scrutiny and often intense criticism. The Rise and Fall of Global Microcredit shines a light on many of the fundamental problems surrounding microcredit, in particular, the short- and long-term impacts of dramatically rising levels of microdebt. Developed in collaboration with UNCTAD, this book covers the general policy implications of adverse microcredit impacts, as well as gathering together country-specific case studies from around the world to illustrate the real dynamics, incentives and end results. Lively and provocative, The Rise and Fall of Global Microcredit is an accessible guide for students, academics, policymakers and development professionals alike.

Author: Jürgen Schraten
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789206383
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

View

Book Description
South Africa was one of the first countries in the Global South that established a financialized consumer credit market. This market consolidates rather than alleviates the extreme social inequality within a country. This book investigates the political reasons for adopting an allegedly self-regulating market despite its disastrous effects and identifies the colonialist ideas of property rights as a mainstay of the existing social order. The book addresses sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and legal scholars interested in the interaction of economy and law in contemporary market societies.

Author: Milford Bateman
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826357970
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 378

View

Book Description
Microfinance began as the disbursement of tiny loans to the poor, which they could use to undertake informal income-generating activities. It went on to become one of the most popular international development policies of all time and a mainstay of local development and antipoverty programs across the Global South. The contributors to this multidisciplinary volume consider the origins, evolution, and outcomes of microfinance from a variety of perspectives and contend that it has been an unsuccessful approach to development. The contributors contend that over the last twenty years, microfinance policies have exacerbated poverty and exclusion, undermined gender empowerment, underpinned a massive growth in inequality, destroyed solidarity and trust in the community, and, overall, manifestly weakened those local economies of the Global South where it reached critical mass. They use qualitative anthropological, economic, and political-economic research to unpack the ideas and values that have allowed microfinance to “seduce” the world and blind so many to its corrosive effects.

Author: Jörg Wiegratz
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040047262
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 568

View

Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive analysis of economic crimes and market ‘irregularities’, including matters of trickery, parallel economy, illicit trade, economies of violence and criminalisation of the poor in neoliberal Africa. It investigates economic crime as a phenomenon of neoliberal reform and transformation, and it unpacks crime as a societal – and particularly as a political-economic – phenomenon under capitalism. The book brings together a collection of research articles, briefings and updated blog posts that were published over a period of nearly 40 years (1986–2023), in the acclaimed journal Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and on its website roape.net. Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, including a foreword by Yusuf K. Serunkuma and an afterword by Laureen Snider, this volume explores what these crimes have to do with, and can tell us about, state-business relations, regulation, capitalist transformation, and the corporation on the continent, shedding light on the co-production of the crimes by a range of actors from the realms of business, politics, state and international development, including major reform advocates such as international financial institutions (IFIs) and other donors. It responds to the imperative to advance the analysis of the link between capitalism and crime in Africa and to locate capitalism more centrally in the analysis of economic crimes, as more African countries move from being societies with capitalism to capitalist societies. Illustrating the relevance of African countries to debates in criminology, corporate crime, state crime, crimes of the powerful and illegality, this volume engages with and mobilises a variety of literatures to analyse economic crimes as phenomena of global and local capitalism and provides readers from academia, government, business, media, civil society and education a striking source of information and analysis.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004329706
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

View

Book Description
In Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences, edited by Carl-Ulrik Schierup and Martin Bak Jørgensen, the contributing authors look into precarity. Precarity has become a buzzword in as well academia as among activist. The book depicts precarity as being both a condition and a mobilizing force for resistance. The volume asks questions that investigate conditions and resistance across diverse cases such as first generation urbanites in China, migrant pensioners and unemployed youth in Sweden and Spain, refugees in Germany, irregular and regular migrants in Southern Europe, Turkey, Russia the United States and South Africa. Contributors are: Susanne Bregnbæk, Ines Calzada, Maribel Casas-Cortés, Anna Gavanas, Gregoris Ioannou, Martin Bak Jørgensen, Irina Kuznetsova-Morenko, Ronaldo Munck, Dimitris Parsanoglou, John Round, Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Peter Schultz Jørgensen, Nazlı Şenses, Vassilis Tsianos, Nicos Trimikliniotis, and Mimi Zou.

Author: Devan Pillay
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1776140990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

View

Book Description
Wide-ranging essays demonstrate how the consequences of inequality extend throughout society and the political economy Despite the transition from apartheid to democracy, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. Its extremes of wealth and poverty undermine intensifying struggles for a better life for all. The wide-ranging essays in this sixth volume of the New South African Review demonstrate how the consequences of inequality extend throughout society and the political economy, crippling the quest for social justice, polarising the politics, skewing economic outcomes and bringing devastating environmental consequences in their wake. Contributors survey the extent and consequences of inequality across fields as diverse as education, disability, agrarian reform, nuclear geography and small towns, and tackle some of the most difficult social, political and economic issues. How has the quest for greater equality affected progressive political discourse? How has inequality reproduced itself, despite best intentions in social policy, to the detriment of the poor and the historically disadvantaged? How have shifts in mining and the financialisation of the economy reshaped the contours of inequality? How does inequality reach into the daily social life of South Africans, and shape the way in which they interact? How does the extent and shape of inequality in South Africa compare with that of other major countries of the global South which themselves are notorious for their extremes of wealth and poverty? South African extremes of inequality reflect increasing inequality globally, and The Crisis of Inequality will speak to all those general readers, policy makers, researchers and students who are demanding a more equal world.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004351612
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 423

View

Book Description
Chapters in this book contribute to our understanding of the theory, structure and practice of entrepreneurship in diverse African countries. Case studies examined include: African multinational banks and businesses, female entrepreneurs, culture and entrepreneurship, finance and entrepreneurship and SMEs.

Author: Kate Philip
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1847011764
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

View

Book Description
Examines more than a decade of enterprise development strategies in marginal economic contexts in South Africa's mining communities and shows how this might impact on development strategies.

Author: Christopher Cramer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198832338
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 334

View

Book Description
"This book challenges conventional wisdoms about economic performance and possible policies for economic development in African countries. Its starting point is the striking variation in African economic performance. Unevenness and inequalities form a central fact of African economic experiences. The authors highlight not only differences between countries, but also variations within countries, differences often organized around distinctions of gender, class, and ethnic identity. For example, neo-natal mortality and school dropout have been reduced, particularly for some classes of women in some areas of Africa. Horticultural and agribusiness exports have grown far more rapidly in some countries than in others. These variations (and many others) point to opportunities for changing performance, reducing inequalities, learning from other policy experiences, and escaping the ties of structure, and the legacies of a colonial past. The book rejects teleological illusions and Eurocentric prejudice, but it does pay close attention to the results of policy in more industrialized parts of the world. Seeing the contradictions of capitalism for what they are - fundamental and enduring - may help policy officials protect themselves against the misleading idea that development can be expected to be a smooth, linear process, or that it would be were certain impediments suddenly removed. The authors criticize a wide range of orthodox and heterodox economists, especially for their cavalier attitude to evidence. Drawing on their own decades of research and policy experience, they combine careful use of available evidence from a range of African countries with political economy insights (mainly derived from Kalecki, Kaldor and Hischman) to make the policy case for specific types of public sector investment"--

Author: Ugo Biggeri
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000935515
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

View

Book Description
The debate on connections between economic activity and socio-environmental impact has become increasingly relevant. As a result, ethical finance is emerging from its niche. However, the terms "ethical finance" and "sustainable finance" are often confused and overlapping, and the risk of greenwashing is high. Many authors suggest the need of a paradigm shift because the present economic system is no longer able to maintain a safe environment. Tim Jackson explicitly argues about the need of a future of "prosperity without growth". From the experiences of ethical finance, we can identify some interesting tools to achieve that goal. This book explains how ethical finance works and which innovations it has engendered in financial and economic systems; clarifies the links between finance and ethics, going beyond Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing, and offers an approach, which is vital for most financial sectors, from microcredit to impact investing; investigates the goals, constraints, and opportunities of environmental and social considerations in finance and explores the more innovative experiences in banking and investing. It helps readers understand the phenomena in depth, distinguishing the strategic, managerial, organizational, and risk practices of ethical finance. The authors adopt a holistic but critical approach, both with respect to the practices exercised by financial intermediaries, and with reference to new regulatory aspects. The book identifies the key issues and current challenges of ethical finance, both for financial operators and regulators. Several concrete international cases offer empirical comparisons of practices, and as such it will be an invaluable reference for academics and researchers who wish to deepen their knowledge of ethical finance.