Poverty Capital Microfinance and the Making of Development [Paperback]

Winner of the 2011 Paul Davidoff award!

This is a book about poverty but it does not study the poor and the powerless; instead it studies those who manage poverty. It sheds light on how powerful institutions control capital, or circuits of profit and investment, as well as truth, or authoritative knowledge about poverty. Such dominant practices are challenged by alternative paradigms of development, and the book details these as well. Using the case of microfinance, the book participates in a set of fierce debates about development  from the role of markets to the secrets of successful pro-poor institutions. Based on many years of research in Washington D.C., Bangladesh, and the Middle East, Poverty Capitalalso grows out of the author's undergraduate teaching to thousands of students on the subject of global poverty and inequality.

1. Small Worlds: The Democratization of Capital and Development  2. Global Order: Circuits of Capital Truth  3. Dissent at the Margins: Development and the Bangladesh Paradox  4. The Pollution of Free Money: Debt, Discipline, and Dependence in the Middle East  5. Subprime Markets: Poverty Capital 

Poverty Capitalis a must read for those interested in issues of poverty and inequality around the world. In taking an unflinching look at bottom billion capitalism, it shows how development actually works and how global markets are actually constructed.  Although concerned with practices of microfinance in the global South, the book provides an analysis that is strikingly relevant for discussions of subprime markets, the financial crisis, and social justice here in America.
-Robert Reich, Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Examining development as poverty managl“'