Doctoral Dissertation Reseach: Creditable Lives: Microfinance, Development and Financial Risk in India

博士论文研究：可信的生活：印度的小额信贷、发展和金融风险

• 批准号: 1022746
• 负责人: Lina Fruzzetti
• 金额: $ 1.01万
• 依托单位: Brown University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1022746&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Reseach; Creditable; Lives

Brown University doctoral student Sohini Kar, supervised by Dr. Lina Fruzzetti, will undertake anthropological research on how microfinance institutions (MFIs) assess financial risk and its consequences for urban poor borrowers. Proponents of microfinance have argued that access to credit mitigates socio-economic disparities by incorporating the poor into more efficient markets. Paradoxically, the sustainability of MFIs requires the exclusion of those who fail to meet the risk criteria employed by bank staff. This project will investigate how borrowers and lenders of microfinance negotiate this tension between "financial inclusion" and social exclusions informed by global financial norms and locally constituted ideas of creditability. This research will be conducted in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, which was identified by the Indian government as having a significant financially excluded population, and has consequently had a rapid proliferation of MFIs. As many of the MFIs lend exclusively to women, this project will focus on women borrowers, and will pay close attention to how microfinance affects gender relations. The research objectives of this project are 1) to understand how MFIs determine their ideal borrowers, 2) how this risk assessment affects borrowers and those who are excluded, and 3) whether access to credit addresses social inequalities. The researcher will employ qualitative research methods, including participant-observation of borrower group meetings and MFI offices, interviews with key actors in the banking sector as well as women borrowers and their families, and media and policy analysis of microfinance in India. This research is important in understanding the effects of the rapidly growing microfinance sector globally. The findings will contribute to understanding the challenges of enfolding of the poor into financial networks and its development policy implications. This research also supports the education of a social scientist.

布朗大学博士生Sohini Kar将在Lina Fruzzetti博士的指导下，就小额信贷机构如何评估金融风险及其对城市贫困借款人的影响进行人类学研究。小额融资的支持者认为，获得信贷可将穷人纳入效率更高的市场，从而减少社会经济差距。具有讽刺意味的是，小额金融机构的可持续性要求将那些不符合银行工作人员所采用的风险标准的人排除在外。本项目将调查小额金融的借款人和贷款人如何在全球金融规范和当地形成的信用观念的指导下，解决“金融包容”和社会排斥之间的紧张关系。这项研究将在印度加尔各答（Kolkata）进行，印度政府认为那里有大量被金融排斥的人口，因此小额信贷机构迅速扩散。由于许多小额供资机构专门向妇女贷款，本项目将侧重于妇女借款人，并将密切注意小额供资如何影响两性关系。该项目的研究目标是：1）了解小额金融机构如何确定其理想的借款人，2）这种风险评估如何影响借款人和被排除在外的人，以及3）获得信贷是否解决了社会不平等问题。研究人员将采用定性研究方法，包括参与者观察借款人小组会议和小额供资机构办事处，采访银行部门的主要行为者以及妇女借款人及其家庭，以及对印度小额供资的媒体和政策分析。这项研究对于了解全球快速增长的小额信贷部门的影响非常重要。研究结果将有助于理解将穷人纳入金融网络的挑战及其对发展政策的影响。这项研究也支持社会科学家的教育。