Finance in Context: Exploring Diverse Exchange Conditions
Questions assumptions implicit in rural financial literature and the application of market models and policy prescriptions. Critiques three conceptual aspects:
- Separability: meaning that financial relations can be analysed independently of other production and exchange relations;
- Duality: that informal and formal financial "markets" are separate systems with independent dynamics;
- Timelessness: that financial landscapes are detached from social and historical change.
Aspects are considered in the context of social and economic change in Bengal and the case that financial markets cannot be understood separate from their social and political context is argued. The character of financial relations can be influenced by:
- Forms of production;
- Class formation, including the rise and fall of different types of lenders;
- Forms of government intervention;
- Market regulation that may reflect local power structures.
Concludes with a list of questions that need to be asked about diverse features of the financial landscape, including, "How are market institutions and regulatory arrangements influenced by social power?". States that more empirically robust representations of financial landscapes in the developing world are needed for effective analysis and policy formulation.
