Knowledge in Microsocial Milieus: the Case of Microfinance Practices Among Women in India
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Knowledge in Microsocial Milieus: the Case of Microfinance Practices Among Women in India Arvind Ashta 1 & Chandralekha Ghosh 2 & Samapti Guha 3 & Frank Lentz 1
Received: 1 November 2015 / Accepted: 8 March 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract It is often considered that weak ties permit obtaining new information which contributes to successful ventures. However, is this true for all segments of the population? We explore the use of ties in very poor microsocial milieus of people who have resorted to microcredit. We find that strong ties and weak ties are both relevant in different situations for borrowers with different profiles. For the very poor, strong ties are more important in obtaining knowledge of sources of finance. However, more educated people in our sample of microcredit borrowers are able to exploit weak ties better. Keywords Microcredit . Microfinance . Social ties . Social milieu JEL codes A13 . A14 . 017
* Arvind Ashta [email protected] Chandralekha Ghosh [email protected] Samapti Guha [email protected] Frank Lentz [email protected]
1
Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, ESC Dijon-CEREN, Banque Populaire Chair in Microfinance of the Burgundy School of Business, Dijon, France
2
West Bengal State University, Kolkata, India
3
School of Management and Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
J Knowl Econ
Introduction With the increasing participation of banks and non-bank financial institutions in supplying microcredit and the increase in competition between them, attested by multiple lending, it is evidently interesting for microfinance institutions to go in search for new borrowers. For this, they need to create awareness by tapping into the social milieus of the poor. A milieu is a social environment. The phrase microsocial milieu (Boutillier and Uzunidis, 2014) therefore repeats the word social for emphasis. Examples of microsocial milieus to which one may belong include family, schools, professional activity, and churches. Each person may belong to many different milieus and as a result, contradictions are created in the system. In fact, deviant behavior acts as a motive for change. Social milieus could have impact on lifestyles such as drug use (Legleye et al., 2008) and diseases such as cancer (Thouez, 1984). The social milieu created in a hospital may also impact the treatment of psychiatric patients (Greenblatt et al., 1959). There is already some work on how social networks to which one belongs influence our credit/borrowing decisions (Wydick et al., 2011, Piot-Lepetit and Nzongang, 2014, Okten and Osili, 2004). There is research also on how belonging to economic groups may enhance social behavior (Sanyal, 2009) or create identity conflicts which may restrain development (Mokhtarnia, 2011). Thus, an explanation for persistence of poverty may be based on the group dynamics which keep a person within his zone of comfortable routines and social ties, part of the social milieu. Exiting from poverty would require new infor
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