Empowering NGOs: The Microcredit Movement Through Foucault's Notion of Dispositif

This paper develops a framework for a critical response to initiatives such as microcredit. The author claims to develop one aspect of post-development literature by drawing on Foucault's notion of "dispositif":

• To address the question of the rise of NGOs and associated notions of empowerment and autonomy specifically, the author uses Foucault's concept of governance;
• When viewed this way, NGOs are seen as not necessarily emancipatory;
• Examining the Grameen bank and microcredit movement, the author argues that it is through empowerment that the developmental subjective modality is promoted in an operation of developmental discipline.

The paper goes on to discuss:

• Emergence of NGOs as prominent players in development efforts;
• Need to move beyond approaches based in economic relations, because development is being increasingly dispersed beyond the economic sphere;
• Post development literature, which takes a radical stance by questioning the very category and project of development itself;
• Critique of development as a form of economic exploitation that is environmentally maladaptive and violent against local and indigenous cultures;
• Foucault's use of the term dispositif to refer to a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble of discursive and material elements;
• Notion of the dispositif as appropriate for considering the post war development project;
• Development as being heterogeneous, with both positive and negative outcomes.