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

布朗大学博士生Sohini Kar将在Lina Fruzzetti博士的指导下，对小额信贷机构（mfi）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。小额信贷的支持者认为，通过将穷人纳入更有效的市场，获得信贷可以缓解社会经济差距。矛盾的是，小额信贷机构的可持续性要求排除那些不符合银行工作人员所采用的风险标准的人。该项目将研究小额信贷的借款人和贷款人如何在“金融包容性”和社会排斥之间的紧张关系中进行协商，这种紧张关系受到全球金融规范和当地构成的信用观念的影响。这项研究将在印度加尔各答（以前的加尔各答）进行，印度政府认为这里有大量被金融排斥的人口，因此小额信贷机构迅速扩散。由于许多小额信贷机构只向妇女提供贷款，本项目将重点关注妇女借贷者，并将密切关注小额信贷如何影响两性关系。该项目的研究目标是1)了解小额信贷机构如何确定其理想借款人，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，包括对借款人小组会议和小额信贷机构办事处的参与者观察，对银行业主要行为者以及女性借款人及其家庭的采访，以及对印度小额信贷的媒体和政策分析。这项研究对于理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。这项研究也支持了社会科学家的教育。

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.