Governing development: neoliberalism,microcredit, and rational economic woman

This paper addresses the emergence of microcredit programmes as a preferred strategy for poverty alleviation world-wide. Taking the paradigmatic case of Nepal, it engages a genealogical approach to trace how Nepalese planners' enduring concerns about rural development intersect in surprising (and gendered) ways with donors' present focus on deepening financial markets. In the resulting microcredit model, the onus for rural lending is devolved from commercial banks to subsidized 'rural development banks' and women borrowers become the target of an aggressive 'selfhelp' approach to development. As a governmental strategy, microcredit thus constitutes social citizenship and women's needs in a manner consistent with neoliberalism. Drawing on ethnographic research, the paper also considers the progressive and regressive possibilities in the articulation of such constructed subjectivities with local cultural ideologies and social processes. Such an investigation can in turn provide a foundation for articulating a more normative agenda for development studies – grounded in the perspectives of those in subordinate social locations.     

Assessing the Impact of Microcredit: A Zambian Case Study

Expectations are high, but evidence of the impact of microcredit remains in short supply. This article estimates the impact of an urban credit programme in Zambia on business performance and on a range of indicators of wellbeing. Borrowers who obtained a second loan experienced significantly higher average growth in business profits and household income. Inflexible group enforcement of loan obligations resulted in some borrowers, especially amongst those who had taken only one loan, being made worse off. Our methodological investigations suggest that the supply of rigorous impact studies can be increased by basing them on data collection that serves a wider range of purposes, including market research.