The paper discusses the ways in which social, cultural and economic issues are articulated and framed in people’s everyday financial practices, particularly within low income population sectors. I use studies from Mexico, where micro-lending organizations have mushroomed, to discuss the relevance of non commoditized transactions and the differential value attributed to goods, property, and money, and to sustain the argument that social, cultural, domestic, ethnic and power relations are part of the economy’s constituent elements. These relations, although they might not, strictly speaking, be defined as capitalist, may act to mediate and structure monetary elements.

This article is a study of the multiple temporal dimensions of social and power connections linked to and by debt, but also the stakes, negotiations, and resistance that they engender between maistris and debt-bonded laborers. The objective is, on the one hand, to examine how time, an essential dimension of bondage, is controlled and negotiated at different levels, as much by the maistri as by the workers, and on the other hand, how tactics to shorten the time of domination – and thus personalized protection, trust, and loyalty – are susceptible to lead to over-indebtedness, considered as a gap between the two inherent terms in the relationship of debt, exploitation and protection. The search for less personalized multiple and temporary protection(s) is just as much a quest for dignity and markers of insecurity that oblige reimbursement. Firstly, I will discuss how the power of debt plays out in the time control of workers at different levels, from the village to the workplace and labor camps, in general to the production of power in merest acts of daily life. Secondly, the study of the heterogeneity of the bonded laborers will allow for the analysis of the variable relations to the times of domination and debt.

There is growing consensus that microfinance supply is too standardised, inflexible and inadequate given the diversity of financial needs). As a result, microfinance is a very partial substitute for informal financial services and their comparative advantages. This paper aims to deepen understanding of financial service demand by learning from informal finance. Based on economic anthropology, our analysis shows that microfinance does not substitute informal finance for many reasons: because money and informal finance are multidimensional and context specific, because the boundary between saving and borrowing is blurred, because money circulates in small quantities and quickly in village economies, because informal finance is more flexible, and, last but not least, because informal finance is a vector of social inclusion.

Drawing on data collected in rural South India, and using mainly a comprehensive approach, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of microfinance on the financial vulnerability of its clients. First, we observe that microfinance is a double-edged sword: it can either reduce the financial vulnerability of households or push them further into debt. Second, we argue that an understanding of the uses and processes of microfinance is inseparable from one of the broader local dynamics pertaining to employment, financing and consumption. We also argue that the effects of microfinance depend upon how clients articulate and coordinate microfinance with the other financial tools to which they have access and the whole range of strategies deployed to cope with vulnerability and to build assets, both tangible and intangible.

This article aims at studying the interactions that are taking place between microfinance and households’ indebtednesses strategies. The strict opposition between two financial sectors is neither pertinent nor operational. Boundaries between the various forms of indebtedness are hazy. An anthropological approach reveals a complex cash management, not only at the household level but, more globally, at the level of the social network. Thus microfinance borrowers continue to mix the various modalities of obtaining liquidity and thus participate in maintaining the “debt chain” system, with any actual substitution therefore being very limited in scope. These results are confirmed by a statistical and econometrical analysis proving that access to microcredit is neither at odds with indebtedness within the social network, nor brings about any reduction in liquidity supply to the social network.

The Malagasy rural finance network CECAM has been offering an innovative individual rice inventory credit to its members since 1993. Starting from the acknowledgement that the inventory credit is a hybrid product, which involves a mix of in kind and in cash flows and stocks, a mix of credit and savings features, and linkages with the local rice market, the papers sets out to inquire how it is accessed, used, and inserted in the strategies of different wealth categories of Cecam members. The paper is based on an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data that were collected in several phases during a 4 year impact study conducted by the authors from 2003 to 2007. Evidence suggests that the Cecam inventory credit is globally well suited to the differentiated needs of poor as well as nonpoor households, because it lowers the access thresholds, it enhances the value of their rice production (be it for consumption or sale) and it allows them to pursue different kinds of strategies (more food security oriented for the poor, more entrepreneurial and diversification oriented for the non poor).

With controversial results, both supporting and not the assumption that microfinance can promote income generating activities, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the livelihood framework can be useful in such assessment. The paper proposes this framework given its scope for exploring and drawing attention to women’s strategies, their motivations, skill, knowledge and capabilities. Using qualitative data (life experiences of six women) from two villages in Tamil Nadu, South India, the paper demonstrates the significance of paying attention to socio-economic dynamics through this approach.

This paper analyzes gender-differences with respect to microfinance repayment-rates using a large global dataset covering 350 Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) in 70 countries. The results indicate that more women clients is associated with lower portfolio-at-risk, lower write-offs, and lower credit-loss provisions, ceteris paribus. These findings confirm common believes that women in general are a better credit-risk for MFIs. Interaction effects reveal that the effect is stronger for NGOs, individual-based lenders, ‘finance plus’-providers and regulated MFIs. This indicates that two types of MFIs benefit more than others from focussing on women: First, those MFIs that develop hands-on, women-friendly procedures tailored to individual women’s need, and Second, those MFIs that apply coercive enforcement methods to which women are more responsive.

While most gender studies on microfinance have concentrated on possible women empowerment, few have asked why some microfinance institutions (MFIs) target women while others do not. This paper provides empirical evidence on the existence and consequences for an MFI of having a conscious gender bias towards women in microfinance. Specifically, using a global dataset of 379 MFIs in seventy-three countries, we investigate what characterizes MFIs that have a gender bias and how this bias affects various aspects of financial performance. The results indicate that a conscious gender bias is associated with group lending methodologies, international orientation, female leadership, smaller loans, and a non commercial legal status. With respect to performance we find that having a conscious gender bias significantly improves repayment but does not enhance overall profitability. We find that the positive repayment effect associated with a focus on women is offset by higher costs related to smaller loans, leading to similar overall profitability measures.

This article examines the complexity and diversity of women’s informal financial practices and circuits using data from surveys conducted in Senegal and South India. A micro level analysis reveals the subtlety and complexity of these practices and circuits: apart from economical constraints, these practices express, reproduce, update and sometimes modify the range of personal and social relations in which these women are embedded. Our analysis also reflects the burden of the current norms and institutions for women of the two social groups studied, particularly with respect to matrimonial alliances, property rights and access to the labour market. Moreover, our analysis highlights the ongoing process of interpretation, adjustment and, sometimes, circumvention of these norms, and it is precisely this incessant work of adaptation that explains the heterogeneity of the arrangements and trajectories that we observed.

Risk management (especially the risk of borrowers’ default) and loyalty are one of the main challenges of microfinance organizations. While these two components have been mainly analyzed in a technical and economical perspective, our observations in South-India suggest that daily and ordinary practices of risk and loyalty management are embedded into local social and political relationships. Far from being market relations, reduced to financial transactions and isolated from personal issues, the relationships between borrowers and microfinance NGOs are based on patronage and brokerage, socially built thanks to the active role of credit officers and group leaders who play simultaneously a role of intermediary, mediator, interface, adjustment. As with any patron-client relationship, these relations are characterised by the diversity of goods and services exchanged, be it of an economic, social, moral or political nature: support, protection, loyalty are at the heart of the relationship. They are also characterised by reciprocity of a hierarchical type, but this asymmetry doesn’t prevent resistance, protests and power struggles from the client’s side.

En nous appuyant sur notre travail de terrain et sur la situation microfinancière en Andhra Pradesh, nous tenterons de comprendre les relations conflictuelles entrainées par l’introduction de la microfinance. Nous reviendrons tour à tour sur le point de vue des différents acteurs impliqués dans cette configuration et tenterons d’en dessiner les contours et les enjeux.