‘Selling Our Own Skin:’ Social dispossession through microcredit in rural Bangladesh

Paprocki, Kasia

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.05.008

Cited by 41 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…The threat of decline of rural communities in Khulna is at odds with the visions of rural futures propagated by peasant social movements that have mobilized in this region for decades (Adnan 1993;Paprocki and Cons 2014). 2 These movements locate the threats to their lives and livelihoods not in climate change but in agrarian dispossession resulting in particular from a transition to shrimp aquaculture and in deep structural inequalities in land and labor relations (Paprocki 2015;Paprocki and Huq 2017).…”

Section: Adapting Bangladeshmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As these NGOs increasingly took responsibility for social welfare activities, such as education, health care, and the delivery of drinking water, the provision of services that were formerly considered the purview of the state was increasingly privatized (Feldman 1997;White 1999). In the process, accountability for the provision of these services and the welfare entitlements of citizens were scaled back (Wood 1997), and the provision of market-based development mechanisms such as microcredit was scaled up (Paprocki 2016). The rise of Bangladesh's NGO sector was linked with the country's expansive capitalist market reforms through comprehensive structural adjustment.…”

Section: Development Regimes In Bangladeshmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Threatening Dystopias: Development and Adaptation Regimes in Bangladesh

Paprocki

2018

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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Development in Bangladesh is increasingly defined by and through an adaptation regime, a socially and historically specific configuration of power that governs the landscape of possible intervention in the face of climate change. It includes institutions of development, research, media, and science, as well as various state actors both nationally and internationally. The adaptation regime operates through three interrelated processes: imagination, experimentation, and dispossession. Each of these processes is produced and manifested both materially and epistemically. The adaptation regime is built on a vision of development in which urbanization and export-led growth are both desirable and inevitable. For the rural poor, this entails dispossession from agrarian livelihoods and outmigration. As this shift contributes to the expansion of production of export commodities such as garments and frozen shrimp, the threat of climate change and its associated migrations is reframed as an opportunity for development and growth.

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Section: Adapting Bangladeshmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Development Regimes In Bangladeshmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threatening Dystopias: Development and Adaptation Regimes in Bangladesh

Paprocki

2018

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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“…() found that the determinants of technical efficiency in rice farming in Bangladesh are farm size; farmer's level of education; experience in production; and access to microcredit, training, and extension. However, Islam () describes the diverse impacts of microcredit programs, while Paprocki () notes the limitations of microcredit for agricultural improvement: “The lack of support of microcredit programs for smallholder agriculture is apparent in the repayment structure, which requires borrowers to begin making payments on their loans the week immediately after borrowing. This structure is common to every major NGO microcredit program in Bangladesh.” This means that microcredit is not suitable for investments, such as buying land, where rewards will not be seen until the harvest.…”

Section: Rice Agriculture Systems In Bangladeshmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternate wetting and drying in Bangladesh: Water‐saving farming practice and the socioeconomic barriers to its adoption

Pearson

Millar

Norton

et al. 2018

Food and Energy Security

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Water saving in irrigated agriculture is a critical issue for global food security, and much research has suggested substantial benefits of management systems designed to achieve it. Yet there are likely to be socioeconomic barriers which must be understood if these systems are to be adopted. Here, we highlight one example, Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, almost half of the workforce is engaged in agriculture and many people are dependent on rice as their staple food, sometimes consuming it three times per day. Rice production, therefore, is central both to economic well‐being and to food security in Bangladesh. However, this sector also faces a number of troubling problems. These include an electricity supply over‐stressed by irrigation pumps during the dry season, the gradual depletion of groundwater as a result of unsustainable use, the consumption of rice grains with elevated arsenic content, and the significant emission of rice‐based methane into the atmosphere. Interestingly, for more than a decade, evidence has indicated that AWD—an innovative farming practice—holds the promise of mitigating each of these threats to some degree and has been promoted by the Bangladeshi government. However, evidence seems to indicate that it has not been widely adopted in Bangladesh. This paper reviews the existing literature on AWD, related policies in Bangladesh, and the barriers to its uptake among farmers. The complicated relationship between agricultural and socioeconomic systems represents a key barrier to the successful use of AWD among Bangladeshi farmers. Similar barriers to water‐saving strategies are likely to exist in other countries and regions, and overcoming these barriers will be essential for AWD to be adopted. The case of Bangladesh provides important indications of how this might be achieved.

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“…Microcredit has become an important part of the development and economic climate in Bangladesh. Developed in the 1980s, microcredit now engages nearly two thirds of people in Bangladesh (Paprocki, 2016), through a process whereby economic collateral is replaced with a system of social groups, with a particular focus on women. Kabeer et al (2011) argue that microcredit has facilitated a significant increase in women's informal employment and economic activity.…”

Section: Adaptation In Bangladeshmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the context of crises or natural disasters, borrowing can manifest as an unsustainable coping strategy, rather than an opportunity for sustained adaptation (Del Ninno, Dorosh, & Smith, 2003). More broadly, microcredit has been seen as a tool for the promotion of neoliberal economics, dispossession and exclusion (Paprocki, 2016;Weber, 2014). Microcredit also aligns with a poverty-focused approach to vulnerability, whereby economic poverty is seen as a key barrier to resilience suffered by people living in exposed areas, which can be amended from a "traditional economic development perspective" (Parvin & Johnson, 2015: 889).…”

Section: Adaptation In Bangladeshmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change adaptation in Southwest Bangladesh: vulnerability and gender inequality

MacMahon¹

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The threat of climate change looms large for Bangladesh, located between the Ganges Delta and the Bay of Bengal. Climate change is expected to impact the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh, particularly those who live in coastal areas and are poor or disadvantaged. Women are considered to be particularly vulnerable as a result of gendered roles, responsibilities and limited entitlements. While there is a growing body of work regarding the ways in which gender, class, and livelihoods contribute to climate change vulnerability in Bangladesh, there is little scholarship examining adaptation in terms of its capacity to address the social and political aspects of vulnerability. In addition, much gender and climate change research suffers from static representations of women and gender relations.To address these gaps in the literature, this thesis uses adaptive capacity vulnerability theory, in conjunction with feminist political ecology, to examine the transformative capacity of adaptation initiatives in the Bagerhat region of Southwest of Bangladesh. By adopting a bottom-up approach to social enquiry, this thesis investigates, 1) The nature and community experiences of environmental and climate changes in the region; 2) The social factors that mediate experiences of environmental and climate change, including gender, class and governance; and 3) The ways in which adaptation initiatives interact with underlying causes of vulnerability, with a focus gender.Employing an embedded case study approach and utilising a range of participatory methods, this thesis makes four key findings. Firstly, climate change in Southwest Bangladesh is situated within local political, economic and ecological contexts. The impacts of climate change were found to be 'magnifying' a range of pre-existing environmental challenges that have occurred as a result of political and economic interventions in agriculture in the Southwest. Secondly, women's experiences of, and responses to, environmental change were being shaped by gendered roles, responsibilities and expectations. Gender in this context was undergoing changes as a result of material needs, and women's own agentic desires to help their communities. However, these shifts were having little impact on women's broader capabilities and entitlements. Thirdly, the adaptation initiatives observed were doing little to enhance community capacities in climate change adaptation, and were failing to respond to macro political and economic issues. Most adaptation initiatives, including small-scale improvements to farming and livelihoods, had largely failed to address poverty, gender inequality or the underlying causes of environmental change. Rather, these iii initiatives were assigning obligations to communities, allowing governments to abdicate their responsibilities. Finally, what these findings suggest is that in order to initiate adaptation measures that are sustainable and socially just, there is a need for an approach that is inclusive and transform...

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‘Selling Our Own Skin:’ Social dispossession through microcredit in rural Bangladesh

Cited by 41 publications

References 63 publications

Threatening Dystopias: Development and Adaptation Regimes in Bangladesh

Threatening Dystopias: Development and Adaptation Regimes in Bangladesh

Alternate wetting and drying in Bangladesh: Water‐saving farming practice and the socioeconomic barriers to its adoption

Climate change adaptation in Southwest Bangladesh: vulnerability and gender inequality

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