Governing development: neoliberalism, microcredit, and rational economic woman

This paper addresses the emergence of microcredit programmes as a preferred strategy for poverty alleviation world-wide. Taking the paradigmatic case of Nepal, it engages a genealogical approach to trace how Nepalese planners ' enduring concerns about rural development intersect in surprising land ge ndered) ways with donors' present focus on deepening financial markets. In the resulting microcredit model, the onus for rural lending is devolved fro m commercial banks to subsidized 'rural development banks' and women borrow ers become the target of an aggressive 'self-help' approach to development. As a governmental strategy, microcredit thus constitutes social citizenshi p and women's needs in a manner consistent with neoliberalism. Drawing on e thnographic research, the paper also considers the progressive and regressi ve possibilities in the articulation of such constructed subjectivities wit h local cultural ideologies and social processes. Such an investigation can in turn provide a foundation for articulating a more normative agenda for development studies grounded in the perspectives of those in subordinate so cial locations.