Debt = Rope

May 26, 2009

Strong stuff from anthropologist Parker Shipton:

Juloo, “rope” to a Mandinko, means several things at once. It can refer to a small-scale trader, or to credit or debt. Every Mandinko knows the meanings are related. Traders are also lenders, and their loans, while sometimes useful like a rope ladder, also tie down a farmer like a rope around the neck. When rural people in The Gambia speak of juloo, in any of these uses, they consciously or unconsciously connote slavery. The Mandinko and other peoples of this small and impoverished West African river nation, an ancient trade route winding thinly through southern Senegal, have had occasion in history to learn quite a bit about ropes and involuntary servitude, and about debt. The linked images and overtones are not empty of emotion.

The source is a 1990 World Bank working paper, How Gambians Save, which commenter Kim Wilson pointed me to. For the book What’s Wrong with Microfinance, Kim contributed a provocative piece called “The moneylender’s dilemma” about rise and fall of Catholic Relief Services’s involvement in microcredit.

Shipton’s point is not that all debt is bad, but that poor people are often wisely wary of it and like to save too. I’m confronting the dual nature of credit/debt now as I think about usury and the ethics of lending.

The rope metaphor is linked to the Jubilee 2000 movement’s call to “break the chains” of third world debt:

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1. Tom Shaw Says:
   May 28th, 2009 at 10:27 am

   Thank you for continuing the important dialogue about microfinance initiatives. To clarify, CRS remains actively involved in microfinance. In 2008, more than one million people received savings or credit services from CRS-supported institutions and organizations. Our current focus in microfinance is pioneering savings-led microfinance methodologies to reach poorer and marginalized populations which remain under-served, even by MFIs. In addition to savings-led microfinance, CRS is working to bring social performance management to a large number of national microfinance networks in Latin America and is expanding the methodology to Africa. While CRS is no longer “greenfielding” new MFIs, it continues to support 19 partner institutions around the world. CRS, whose involvement in microfinance began in 1988, remains strongly committed to the microfinance sector with a renewed effort to reach out with more appropriate products and services to the poorest and most vulnerable populations around the world. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about CRS’ work and to discuss ideas and innovations in the microfinance sector.

   Tom Shaw
   Senior Technical Advisor – Microfinance
   Catholic Relief Services

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