September 25–27, 2012

Microfinance: Assessing the Economic and Cultural Implications of Microfinance on Poverty from Cross-Cultural Perspectives

This research team seminar gathered together nine interdisciplinary scholars to examine the popular narrative that microfinance has achieved success in many countries. The goal was to assess the impact of microfinance on the community, rather than just upon a set of poor individuals or women. The notion of the individual entrepreneur itself is a novel concept in many parts of the world where social identity is relational and the deployment of collective capabilities is a key aspect of community survival, development and growth. The seminar contributed toward developing alternative ways of explaining not just the economies of the microfinance model, but also the ideological, political and social aspects that shape, sustain and extend it.

“Overall, the seminar explored how microfinance and entrepreneurial models created new meanings for people, and how these meanings are understood, transformed, and resisted in different contexts,” wrote Milford Bateman and Lamia Karim in their report to SAR in January of 2013. They concluded, “To further this research, it will be necessary to devise rigorous survey techniques and methodologies that avoid bias in any future evaluation of microfinance, which in turn will provide the basis for new research designs to be implemented by the team.”

Publications that resulted from the group’s collaboration are as follows (as of December 2015):

In preparation. Bateman, Milford and Kate Maclean (Eds.). Seduced and Betrayed: Exposing the Contemporary Microfinance Phenomenon. Accepted by SAR Press (Santa Fe, NM).

2014. Bateman, Milford. “South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Microcredit-Driven Calamity.” Law, Democracy and Development, 18:92-135.

2013. Bateman, Milford. “La Era de las Microfinanzas: Destruyendo las Economías Desde Abajo.” Ola Financiera, 15.

Milford Bateman, Chair
Visiting Professor of Economics, University of Juraj Dobrila Pula, Croatia and Freelance Consultant

Lamia Karim, Chair
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon

Maren Duvendack
Research Fellow, Research and Policy in Development, Overseas Development Institute

Carla Freeman
Winship Distinguished Research Professor, Departments of Anthropology and Women’s Studies, Emory University

Meena Khandelwal
Associate Professor, Departments of Anthropology and GWSS, University of Iowa

Kate Maclean
Lecturer in Human Geography, Department of Geography, King’s College London

Phil Mader
Doctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, University of Cologne

Muhammad Anisur Rahman
Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Jahangirnagar University

Dean Sinkovic
Assistant Professor of Economics and Marketing, Department of Economics and Tourism, University of Juraj Dobrila at Pula, Croatia