The financial inclusion assemblage: Subjects, technics, rationalities

• Published in: Critique of anthropology Vol. 31; no. 4; pp. 381 - 401
• Main Author: Schwittay, Anke F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2011; Sage Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: California; Cultural anthropology; Economics; Ethnographic research; Ethnography; Ethnology; Exchange circuits, markets, money; Financial inclusion; Financial management; Financial services; Loans; Low Income Groups; Microfinance; Morphological source materials; Motivation; Poor; Quantitative analysis; Rationality; Savings; Technology; Universities; Irvine California; microfinance; financial inclusion; monetary practices; ethnographic research; mobile money; poor-appropriate financial services; Ethnography; Appropriation; Rationality; Finance; Practice; Research; Embeddedness; Money; Services; Microfinance; Technique
• ISSN: 0308-275X; 1460-3721
• DOI: 10.1177/0308275X11420117

This article introduces financial inclusion as a global assemblage of subjects, technics, and rationalities that aim to develop poor-appropriate financial products and services. Microfinance forms the foundation, but also the boundary of the assemblage, which is premised on the assumption that the 2.7 billion poor people in the world who do not currently have access to formal loan, savings, and insurance products are in need of such offerings. The work of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California, Irvine, with its emphasis on ethnographic research into culturally grounded monetary practices and logics, is presented as an alternative to the quantitative, economic, and financial logics that drive the assemblage.