The Political Economy of Microfinance: Financializing Poverty

by Philip Mader

Overview

According to the author, rather than alleviating poverty, microfinance financialises poverty. By indebting poor people in the Global South, it drives financial expansion and opens new lands of opportunity for the crisis-ridden global capital markets. This book raises fundamental concerns about this widely-celebrated tool for social development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137364203
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	07/14/2015
Series:	Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy
Edition description:	1st ed. 2015
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Philip Mader is a research fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, UK. He taught in Basel and studied in Sussex, Cambridge, Cologne, and Harvard. His doctoral thesis, which was written at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, won the German Thesis Award and the Max Planck Society's Otto Hahn Medal.

Table of Contents

1. A Framework for Engaging Microfinance

2. A Genealogy of Microfinance

3. The Financialisation of Poverty

4. Financialising Public Goods

5. Mechanisms of a Microfinance Crisis

6. At the Crossroads of Development and Finance

7. Appendix

7.1 Calculating the Surplus Extraction

7.2 Projects Using Microfinance for Water and Sanitation

Editorial Reviews

'Microfinance is financialization dressed up as charity: a pathway for global finance to penetrate the capitalist periphery. In this richly documented book, Mader dispels the myth that debt can move the poor out of poverty. Far from an economics of liberation, microfinance is part of a politics of repression: it extracts more wealth than it creates, and reinforces economic dependence.' - Wolfgang Streeck, Emeritus Professor, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Germany

From the Publisher