This project seeks to analyze the new global order of poverty management and to answer the following research questions: 1) What and why are the dominant ideas of poverty alleviation? How do these forms of expertise reproduce or alter global geographies of power? 2) Does the new paradigm of development constitute a break with previous models of development? How does the framework of poverty alleviation deal with markets, capitalism, and wealth accumulation? 3) How does the new global order of poverty management maintain or reconfigure geopolitics, notably the relationship between development institutions, which are mainly based in America, and developing countries? Has the new global order of poverty management been recalibrated after 9-11, in the context of the war on terror, and if so, how?

In pursuing these research objectives, the project is focused on a primary case-study: microcredit, the policy of giving tiny collateral-free loans to very poor people, mainly women. The choice of microcredit as the main case-study is dictated by the following issues. Microcredit is a policy that enjoys worldwide popularity. It is seen to empower women, to allow the poor to be entrepreneurs, and to function through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with little aid or subsidies. Microcredit also has the unusual distinction of being a poverty-alleviation idea that originated in the global South, specifically in the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. The mainstreaming of microcredit in the policies of powerful "First World" institutions thus provides important insights into the geopolitics of development.

Principal Investigator:
Ananya Roy

Contact Information:
Tel: 510.642.4938
Fax:  510.642.1641
Email:  ananya@berkeley.edu

Funding Information:
National Science Foundation

Start Date: 03/1/06