Comments on: “All the interests are aligned against the poor” – Interview with H. Sinclair, Microfinance ‘Heretic’ http://governancexborders.com/2012/10/04/sinclai/ www.governancexborders.com Thu, 23 May 2013 11:13:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Ten Years to Realise that Usury Harms the Poor « Applied Philosophy http://governancexborders.com/2012/10/04/sinclai/#comment-1885 Sun, 14 Oct 2012 16:58:16 +0000 http://governancexborders.com/?p=3021#comment-1885 [...] —Interview with H. Sinclair, Microfinance ‘Heretic’, October 4, 2012 [...]

]]> By: Nik Barry-Shaw http://governancexborders.com/2012/10/04/sinclai/#comment-1865 Mon, 08 Oct 2012 06:13:59 +0000 http://governancexborders.com/?p=3021#comment-1865 There is one thing in these critiques of microfinance that often leaves me hungry for more substantial analyses. If providing the very poor with credit cards is NOT a solution to poverty, if their microbusinesses can’t possibly pull the entire country into a new income bracket, then what are we left with? Calling for regulation, so that microfinance bleeds the poor a little more gently?

I think the problem lies with the narrow (essentially neoliberal) frame of current development thought, which does not have a vocabulary for talking about the structural causes of poverty, and the global power imbalances (imperialism, to put it impolitely) that underlie them. Dependency theory, whatever its flaws, at least tried to grapple with these kinds of issues.

That said, great interview, really enjoyed it.

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