Jim Devine wrote:
awhile back, one of my former colleagues presented a paper on microcredit. (He actually did it twice, once when he started and once to get tenure. Our standards were lower then.) One thing I noticed (both times!) was that microcredit replaces the usual collateral requirement with social pressure: if you don't pay your debts, your community gets on your case. This seems apt to tear communities apart, (in?)advertently helping the atomization of social life that neoliberalism prefers.
(Sorry for delayed reply; in transit too much.) According to the late Daniel Pearl in his front-page WSJ expose of Grameen in late 2001, Yunus sent his barefoot bankers around to the defaulting women's houses to rip the tin roofs off, because the social pressure wasn't in fact working.
