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Microaccountability and biopolitics: Microfinance in a Sri Lankan village

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  • Alawattage, Chandana
  • Graham, Cameron
  • Wickramasinghe, Danture

Abstract

Based on a micro-level study of microfinance, this paper explores how basic accounting technologies and interpersonal accountability are used to make lending to poor village women profitable and low risk. We argue that “microaccountability,” our term for the structuring and formalization of convivial relationships into a capillary system of accountability, must be recognized as a central tool of social governance under neoliberalism. Our field research in Sri Lanka allows us to analyse how microaccountability is employed by for-profit banks to create from poor villagers a legion of bankable individual entrepreneurs, trained to invigilate each other's savings and credit behaviours. Using the theoretical lens of biopolitics, we show how microaccountability enables the extension of the finance industry into untapped sectors of the global population.

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  • Alawattage, Chandana & Graham, Cameron & Wickramasinghe, Danture, 2019. "Microaccountability and biopolitics: Microfinance in a Sri Lankan village," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 38-60.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:72:y:2019:i:c:p:38-60
    DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2018.05.008
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    7. Nguyen, Minh-Hoang & Huyen, Nguyen Thanh Thanh & Pham, Thanh-Hang & Yen, Nguyen Thi Quynh & Vuong, Quan-Hoang, 2020. "On the 50-year research landscape of entrepreneurial finance: A sign of Western ideological homogeneity?," OSF Preprints qf62s, Center for Open Science.
    8. Minh-Hoang Nguyen & Thanh-Hang Pham & Manh-Toan Ho & Huyen Thanh T. Nguyen & Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2021. "On the social and conceptual structure of the 50-year research landscape in entrepreneurial finance," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-29, January.
    9. Cameron Graham & Martin E. Persson & Vaughan S. Radcliffe & Mitchell J. Stein, 2023. "The State of Ohio’s Auditors, the Enumeration of Population, and the Project of Eugenics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(3), pages 565-587, October.
    10. Kingston, Kylie L. & Luke, Belinda & Furneaux, Craig & Alderman, Lyn, 2023. "Examining the re-territorialisation of beneficiary accountability: Digitising nonprofit services in response to COVID-19," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(5).
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