Credit Between Cultures: Farmers, Financiers, and Misunderstanding in Africa (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)

Parker Shipton brings a variety of perspectives - cultural, economic, political, and religious-philosophical - and years of field experience to this fascinating study about people who borrow and lend in the interior of Africa. His conclusions challenge the conventional wisdom of the past half century (including perennial World Bank orthodoxy) about the need for credit among African farming people. Parker Shipton Offers A Range Of Perspectives On The Process Of Lending And Borrowing In Africa. His Conclusions Challenge The Conventional Wisdom Of The Past Half Century About The Need For Credit Among African Farmers. Introduction: A Golden Pendulum -- Context For Credit : A Setting At The Source Of The Nile -- Three Faces Of The Loan : Charity, Usury-- And Fantasy -- Plans And Dreams : An Integrated Approach On Paper -- Lenders And Lineages : Nepotism As Loyalty -- Untying A Package Deal : Borrowing Green Revolution Technology -- Debts And Dodges : The Moral And The Hazard In Repayment -- In A White Elephant's Shadow : Reversal And Repetition -- Wildfire : Tobacco Contract Farming -- Self-help And The Underground : Individual Incentive And The Group Guarantee -- Self-help With Help : Banking Between Charity And Usury -- Crossing Back : Rethinking Credit Between Cultures. Parker Shipton. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Contents 7 Preface 9 Acknowledgments 19 Abbreviations 25 CHAPTER 1. Introduction A Golden Pendulum 29 CHAPTER 2. Context for Credit A Setting at the Source of the Nile 47 CHAPTER 3 .Three Faces of the Loan Charity, Usury, . . . and Fantasy 64 CHAPTER 4. Plans and Dreams An Integrated Approach on Paper 83 CHAPTER 5. Lenders and Lineages Nepotism as Loyalty 93 CHAPTER 6 .Untying a Package Deal Borrowing Green Revolution Technology 108 CHAPTER 7 .Debts and Dodges The Moral and the Hazard in Repayment 130 CHAPTER 8. In a White Elephant’s Shadow Reversal and Repetition 147 CHAPTER 9. Wildfire Tobacco Contract Farming 165 CHAPTER 10 .Self- Help and the Underground Individual Incentive and the Group Guarantee 184 CHAPTER 11. Self- Help with Help Banking Between Charity and Usury 207 CHAPTER 12. Crossing Back Rethinking Credit Between Cultures 238 Notes 275 References 327 Index 349 For more than half a century, aid and development organizations have been creating programs in which credit is a central aspect. In this thought-provoking volume, prize-winning anthropologist Parker Shipton presents a study about people who borrow and lend in the deep equatorial African countryside and about several styles of credit and debt found there. Shipton undertakes not only to describe local particularities of culture but also to expand the discussion, encompassing patterns of action and principles of human thought and feeling that seem more enduring, maybe timeless "Shipton ... moves us from quotidian observation to high theory with beguiling prose and rigor. If I could press [these books] on every World Bank economist, every formal theorist of political economy, every practitioner of cost-benefit analysis, and everyone who wants to understand how social ̀structure' is created and sustained, I would be very happy." James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology and Director, Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University Building on years of field experience with the Luo people (which include Barack Obama's father and paternal kin) and others in western Kenya, and on other "fieldwork" in organizations where programs for rural-dwelling people are planned and directed (which include the World Bank, a multinational agribusiness, private philanthropic agencies, and local self-help groups involved in microenterprise finance), the author "Important [works] written by an impressive scholar that tackle a complex subject with analytical subtlety, ambitious intellectual range, and a meticulous attention to empirical detail ... Written in a refreshingly engaging and lucid style that should make its many provocative and productive insights accessible to a wide audience." Michael Dietler, University of Chicago Together with its widely respected sister volumes, The Nature of Entrustment and Mortgaging the Ancestors, this book provides a close look at an African way of life. It also offers an esteemed scholar's deeply considered warnings, correctives, and retrospectives for an era of overreliance on financial credit and the mortgage. --Book Jacket Explores the moral, managerial, and material issues of borrowing and lending. He examines real projects to discover what broad promise long-distance lending holds--or doesn't--for increasing agricultural production, addressing poverty, and improving rural African lives "Shipton takes what he finds for an African people, the Luo, as the material for a much broader and more powerful examination of the fates of the world's rural populations." David William Cohen, University of Michigan "This fine study of the Luo of Kenya shows how lending, borrowing, and indebtedness are moral before they are economic. This is anthropology at its best." David Parkin, Oxford University "Impressive, original, and extremely well written. Parker Shipton's work is of considerable theoretical and practical importance." John Middleton, Yale University