Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry

WINNER of the BISA IPEG Book Prize 2015 http://www.bisa-ipeg.org/ipeg-book-prize-2015-winner-announced/  Under the rubric of ‘financial inclusion’, lending to the poor –in both the global North and global South –has become a highly lucrative and rapidly expanding industry since the 1990s. A key inquiry of this book is what is ‘the financial’ in which the poor are asked to join. Instead of embracing the mainstream position that financial inclusion is a natural, inevitable and mutually benefi