We're back from Kolkata. Indulged ourselves in a decadent and hideously expensive manner. Seriously. Sion had his first facial, and I spent hours at the spa and in the swimming pool. We drank lots, and bought lots of things in the market. Presents! And now, all I can think about is going home. We leave Hyderabad Saturday, then it's a day in Delhi, a day in Agra, back to Delhi, then home. Home. Home.
It's time. The housemates are all back, including my favorites, the Swede and his wife.
I'm reading Mohammed Yunnis's book, Banker to the Poor, and learning about microcredit. I had heard about it before from a student I used to talk to all the time (though she was never in any of my classes). Now of course, confronted with the materiality of serious poverty all the time, and my own relative wealth, I'm really thinking that I have to think about poverty, wealth, and capitalism from another angle, just to wrap my brain around it. Yunnis argues that capitalism doesn't have to be greedy, that it can be just as easily be driven by social justice; the entire logic of the Grameen bank is that there could be such a thing as a social-consciousness driven free market. It's a fascinating idea. That, and his emphasis on and insistence on working with communities of women.
I know. Those two paragraphs are at war with each other. What else is new?
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4 comments:
it's really interesting you position women and capitalism/markets opposed to one another.
the organization i work for is making a big push for 'economic empowerment' programming for our working low-income. the mainstay of our new programming is a track that will encourage women who make just above abject poverty levels to participate more in our market economy: the goal is asset acquisition.
our pitch is blatant; we want them to begin to create savings, create and then move up a sustainable career ladder, acquire financial literacy, clear debt and, basically, become good capitalists.
it's like a blueprint for bourgeois living. (however, aren't we good middle class feminists, too?)
we believe that moving women out of serious poverty and into a more economically stable place is better for her and her family's long range plans: housing, childcare, transportation, employment, education and savings become a little bit more possible.
um, that was supposed to be 'working, low-income women clients.'
I wasn't putting them in opposition to each other; I think it came out that way because I was particularly pleased (and suprised)at his focus on women as being the key to eradicating poverty worldwide. It makes total sense--I just rarely expect that kind of clear eyed focus on the intersenctions of gender, sexuality and poverty from a man.
i think there was a united nations position paper that came out that pretty much posited that when you invest in women of a poorer country, you're putting that country on a much more direct path to 'development' and stabilization.
their argument was that men buy guns, women buy what's needed to sustain the family and their community, thus ensuring the further survival of the local economy.
i think that men from those regions have a much clearer idea of the function of women in their communities than we do!
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