Alternative Financial Institutions

Firstly, both discourses are predominantly political and concern themselves with the struggle against oppression and injustice.

Moreover, both reject the established hierarchical, patriarchal system, which is dominated by the hegemonic white male, and vehemently deny the supposed supremacy of masculine power and authority. Imperialism, like patriarchy, is after all a phallocentric, supremacist ideology that subjugates and dominates its subjects. The oppressed woman is in this sense akin to the colonized subject. Essentially, exponents of post-colonialism are reacting against colonialism in the political and economic sense while feminist theorists are rejecting colonialism of a sexual nature.

Both women and ‘natives' are minority groups who are unfairly defined by the intrusive ‘male gaze' , which is a characteristic of both patriarchy and colonialism.

aims to improve our understanding of the social mechanisms that link financial legitimacy and institutional change. As Max Weber and Karl Polanyi have argued, economic activity is rooted in social relations and collective understandings.

a.j.broome@bham.ac.uk

The paper addresses various aspects of the globalization of Islamic finance, among others, the issue of the rise of Islamic banking in the West, Islamic jurisprudence and finance, global standards and integration of Islamic finance, and obstacles facing Islamic finance’s integration and growth into the global financial system. One central question asked in this paper is whether the globalization of Islamic finance as a system is even possible

a basic form of banking called a village savings and loans association. This is based on savings rather than debt and managed by members of the community rather than professionals.

savings groups now have 4.6m members in 54 countries.

returns on savings are extremely high—generally 20-30% a year. Borrowers typically pay interest rates of 5-10% a month on loans that usually have to be repaid within three months. The rates may seem usurious but they are set by people who are in effect lending to themselves and saving the interest that they charge. A village savings scheme typically involves a small group (perhaps 15-30 people) who pool their savings. Each buys a share in a fund from which they can all borrow. All must also contribute a small sum to a social fund, which acts as micro-insurance. If a member suffers a sudden misfortune, she will receive a payout. Members select leaders and draft a constitution. The rules spell out how often the group will meet, what interest rates it will charge and what loans may be used for. At the end of a cycle (usually about one year), all the money accumulated through savings and interest is shared out according to members' contributions, and a new cycle starts. Once members have mastered the system, the groups they have formed can take on additional tasks such as providing training in agriculture, health, leadership and business.

The idea of such poverty traps has a long and distinguished intellectual heritage, but Ms Duflo's provocative argument was that her research and that of others showed that a profound lack of hope—and not just capital, credit, skills, or food—could create and sustain a poverty trap.

Bandhan, an Indian microfinance institution, worked with people who lived in extreme penury. They were reckoned to be unable to handle the demands of repaying a loan. Instead, Bandhan gave each of them a small productive asset—a cow, a couple of goats or some chickens. It also provided a small stipend to reduce the temptation to eat or sell the asset immediately, as well as weekly training sessions to teach them how to tend to animals and manage their households. Bandhan hoped that there would be a small increase in income from selling the products of the farm animals provided, and that people would become more adept at managing their own finances.The results were far more dramatic. Well after the financial help and hand-holding had stopped, the families of those who had been randomly chosen for the Bandhan programme were eating 15% more, earning 20% more each month and skipping fewer meals than people in a comparison group. They were also saving a lot. The effects were so large and persistent that they could not be attributed to the direct effects of the grants: people could not have sold enough milk, eggs or meat to explain the income gains. Nor were they simply selling the assets (although some did).

the industry is starting to revive, with regulators in a far more central role. Microlenders are attracting capital again. Grameen Capital India, a social-investment bank, says $144m of equity has been injected into microfinance groups in the past 12 months, more than double the amount in the preceding year. The International Finance Corporation, a multilateral lender, invested $18m in Equitas, a mid-sized group in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. SKS, whose loan book is now worth just $325m, raised $47.5m by issuing shares last year.

Microlenders’ annual interest rates are now capped at 10-12 percentage points above their own borrowing costs, leaving most charging 23-27%.

microfinance firms are looking beyond small, unsecured loans, which the central bank caps at 50,000 rupees ($910) a pop. Equitas last year set up a subsidiary that sells mortgages to poorer customers. Bandhan has similar plans. P.N. Vasudevan, the managing director of Equitas, says his housing loans, starting at 100,000 rupees, involve lower operating costs, in part because mortgage payments often get transferred via banks and do not require collection.

THE global market for Islamic finance at the end of last year was worth around $1.3 trillion,