Seduced and Betrayed: Exposing the Contemporary Microfinance Phenomenon (School for Advanced Research Advanced Seminar Series) - Softcover

"Seduced and Betrayed exhibits the brilliance of thought that heterodox economic analysis can bring to bear on important issues. The book is built on an analytical framework that encompasses the roles of context and unequal power, illuminating the sociological and psychological forces at play. For this reason alone, this book is a must-read for economists and policymakers. Its importance also lies in its success at challenging the seductive notion that microfinance promotes women's empowerment and in identifying the link between microfinance and the broader global problem of financialization of our economies."--Stephanie Seguino, coeditor of Critical and Feminist Perspectives on Financial and Economic Crises

Microfinance began as the disbursement of tiny loans to the poor, which they could use to undertake informal income-generating activities. It went on to become one of the most popular international development policies of all time and a mainstay of local development and antipoverty programs across the Global South. The contributors to this multidisciplinary volume consider the origins, evolution, and outcomes of microfinance from a variety of perspectives and contend that it has been an unsuccessful approach to development. The contributors contend that over the last twenty years, microfinance policies have exacerbated poverty and exclusion, undermined gender empowerment, underpinned a massive growth in inequality, destroyed solidarity and trust in the community, and, overall, manifestly weakened those local economies of the Global South where it reached critical mass. They use qualitative anthropological, economic, and political-economic research to unpack the ideas and values that have allowed microfinance to "seduce" the world and blind so many to its corrosive effects.