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Poverty finance and the durable contradictions of colonial capitalism : placing ‘financial inclusion’ in the long run in Ghana
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Bernards, Nick (2021) Poverty finance and the durable contradictions of colonial capitalism : placing ‘financial inclusion’ in the long run in Ghana. Geoforum, 123 . pp. 89-98. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.029 ISSN 0016-7185.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.029
Abstract
This article situates contemporary debates about financial inclusion in the context of poverty finance interventions over the long term. Contemporary efforts to promote access to credit and other financial services for the poorest echo longstanding efforts, dating to the colonial period, to resolve recurrent development crises by expanding access to formal credit or creating alternative credit systems. The article argues that these efforts need to be understood as responses to deeply embedded social and ecological contradictions rooted in the political economy/ecology of colonialism. Theoretically, the article develops this argument by drawing together Marxian discussions of ‘secondary exploitation’ with discussions of the political ecology of indebtedness, showing how debts function both as important means of organizing labour and sites of contradiction. Empirically, the article maps out a series of conflicts in Ghana over the provision of credit to cocoa farmers, from roughly 1930–60, drawing on original archival research. These struggles are placed against the backdrop of longer-run social and ecological contradictions engendered by the early twentieth century cocoa boom. It concludes by showing how these contradictions are echoed in contemporary financial inclusion initiatives in general and responses to climate vulnerability in Ghana.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HG Finance | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School for Cross-faculty Studies > Global Sustainable Development | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Finance -- Government policy, Financial institutions -- State supervision, Credit, Cocoa trade -- Ghana -- Econometric models, Capitalism -- Ghana | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Geoforum | ||||||||
Publisher: | Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd. | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0016-7185 | ||||||||
Official Date: | July 2021 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 123 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 89-98 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.029 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 4 May 2021 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 13 May 2023 | ||||||||
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