When Grameen Bank was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, microfinance was lauded as an important contributor to the economic development of the Global South. However, political scandals, mission-drift, and excessive commercialization have tarnished this example of responsible or inclusive financial development. Politicized Microfinance insightfully discusses exclusion while providing a path towards redemption.

In this work, Caroline Shenaz Hossein explores the politics, histories and social prejudices that have shaped the legacy of microbanking in Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad. Writing from a feminist perspective, Hossein’s analysis is rooted in original qualitative data and offers multiple solutions that prioritize the needs of marginalized and historically oppressed people of African descent.

A must read for scholars of political economy, diaspora studies, social economy, women’s studies, as well as development practitioners, Politicized Microfinance convincingly deftly argues for microfinance to return to its origins as a political tool, fighting for those living in the margins.

Caroline Shenaz Hossein is an associate professor of the Global Development and Political Economy at the University of Toronto Scarborough; Canada Research Chair, Tier 2 of Africana Development and Feminist Political Economy; and Founder of the Diverse Solidarity Economies (DISE) Collective.

Caroline Shenaz Hossein's profile page

• Winner, The Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Agarwal Book Prize awarded by the IAFFE
• Joint winner, W.E.B DuBois Distinguished Book Award, National Conference of Black Political Scientists
• Commended, WGSRF Outstanding Scholarship Prize Competition

‘This work is a valuable contribution toward painting a more realistic picture of how bias affects lending.’

Choice Magazine vol 54:06:2017

‘Politicized Microfinance is a timely and empirically rich book. It will be of interest to readers interested in microfinance and alternative finance and in social economy and alternative economies more broadly.’

Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography September 2016

"Politicized Microfinance’s key attraction is that it is informed by Black feminist thought and intersectional feminism and thus makes a much-needed intervention… Hossein’s call for an intersectional lens in the social economy may be one of the final ingredients which we need to attain social transformations."

International Society for Third-Sector Research Vol 29: 2018