Giving credence to Muhammad Yunus, microcredits can be the panacea to “‘put poverty to the museum‘“. (Haryanti 2010: 2) The native Bangladeshi and founder of Grameen bank, the biggest microfinance institute (MFI) in the world, is regarded by the advocates of microcredits as the symbol for their success. In 2006 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for “[…] pioneering efforts to provide financial services to the poorest of the poor.“ (Kota, June 2006)
Honouring the father of microfinance has even increased the promising reporting by the media on mostly individual success stories. The apparently positive and widely cited effects of microcredits are job creation and raising incomes in the poorest communities, helping to empower especially women, and generally setting off a “bottom up” social and economic development process. However, critical voices fault that the adoption of the microfinance approach by many NGOs led to a shift away from their original social mission, sacrificing it to commercialization.
By the example of Bangladesh, the “centre of microfinance”, this paper aims to provide a Neo-Gramscian critique of microcredits as an instrument of development aid. Being a Marxist-oriented theory, Neo-Gramscianism would highly oppose the popular statement that microcredits can be an appropriate means to sustainably empowering the poor. The central argument of this critique will therefore be that providing the poor with microcredits and making them bankable nurtures asymmetrical power relations and neoliberalism which finally empowers the Western-dominated capitalist system, not the poor.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Microcredits - A Definition
3. Bangladesh, the Centre of Microcredits
3.1 Bangladesh’s Economic Environment
3.2 The Role of NGOs and Microfinance in Bangladesh
4. The Fundamentals of Neo-Gramscianism by Robert W. Cox
4.1 The Basic Ideas of Antonio Gramsci
4.2 Further Development by Robert W. Cox
4.3 The Process of Trasformiso
4.4 NGOs as Transnational Communities
4.5 Assimilation of Third World Protagonists
5. Microcredits’ Goal of Women Empowerment
5.1 Empowering Women Through Entrepreneurship
5.2 Household Control
5.3 Focus on Income-Generating Activities
5.3.1 Microcredits’ High Interest Rates
5.3.2 Subsidization of Microcredits as Possible Solution
5.4 The Group Lending Factor
6. Microcredits - Suitable to Reach the Poorest?
6.1 Replication of Findings
6.2 Waterfall Strategies to Overcome Micro Debt
7. Microcredits’ Neoliberal Environment
7.1 In Pursuit of the Hegemonic Policy
7.1.1 Multinationals’ Advantage of Investing in Microcredit Programmes ...
7.1.2 NGOs' Dependence on the International Capital Market
7.1.3 Third World Countries’ Lack of Participation
7.2 Microcredits’ Failure to Engage in Social Mobilization
7.2.1 NGOs’ Counter-Hegemonic Potential
7.2.2 Better Performance of Social Mobilization NGOs
7.2.3 The Gender and Food Caravan
8. Conclusion
8.1 The Neo-Gramscian Verdict
8.2 Strengths and Weaknesses of Neo-Gramscianism
Bibliography
- Quote paper
- Theresa Hübscher (Author), 2016, Microcredits. A Neo-Gramscian Critique by the Example of Microcredits in Bangladesh, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/344414
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