Grassroots neoliberalism and the reconstitution of development in the 1990s
Subtitle: the case of the mainstreaming of the microfinance sector in Nepal and Vietnam
By: by Yogendra Bahadur Shakya.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 237
ISBN-13: 9780494158128
Description: Paper I engages in a historical investigation of the global microfinance movement in order to (1) highlight how the foundational policies of microfinance were borne out of a strongly anti-welfarist stream of grassroots politics; and (2) show how the mainstreaming of microfinance serves to entrench this anti-welfarist grassroots politics, in line with neoliberalization processes. Paper II discusses the political implications of the subtle everyday tactics that microfinance clients engage in to subvert the key processes of microfinance projects. By bringing these subversive tactics to the fore, I highlight how the dominant policies in microfinance are out of sync with the complex borrowing patterns and the real needs of marginalized communities. Paper III investigates why some leading microfinance implementers of Nepal and Vietnam are facing major institutional crisis from 2000 onwards, and are scaling back their involvement in microfinance.This three-paper dissertation explores the ways in which neoliberalism and grassroots politics intersect with each other and how the rise of these two politics during the 1990s is reshaping development practices. It does so by drawing on the case of the mainstreaming of a market-centred grassroots banking program called microfinance. Based on a bi-national comparative research on the mainstreaming of the microfinance sector in Nepal and Vietnam, the three papers investigate the broader political-economic restructurings of the 1990s that frame the widespread expansion of microfinance. Additionally, informed by case studies of four microfinance projects (two in each country), the papers examine the social and planning implications of the ascendance of grassroots programs like microfinance.The key argument of this dissertation is that the widespread proliferation of market-centered grassroots programs like microfinance does not reflect the potential of such programs to promote social welfare; rather, this trend is indicative and constitutive of the emergence of a new strain of neoliberalism---which I term "grassroots neoliberalism". Drawing on the microfinance case, the three papers attempt to understand the hegemonic expressions of grassroots neoliberalism. At the same time, the papers reveal the contradictions and limitations of grassroots neoliberalism and document cases that foreground its imminent decline from 2000 onwards.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2276.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

Includes bibliographic references.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.