Sohini Kar
Areas of Interest:
My research interests are at the intersection of financial and moral economies. My dissertation, “Creditable Lives: Microfinance, Development and Financial Risk in India” examines how microfinance lenders and borrowers negotiate the often-divergent ethics of financial sustainability and locally constituted obligations and relationships. Over the past decade, the rapidly growing for-profit (and highly profitable) microfinance sector in India has extended credit to the poorest populations under the auspices of the government’s “financial inclusion” policy aimed at inclusive growth. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, my project takes credit as a site of encounter between global finance, state and institutional norms and regulations, and the situated everyday practices of the urban poor. I investigate the kinds of moral, ethical and cultural norms financial institutions deploy to manage the risk of enfolding the poor into expanding financial networks, and how these practices produce new economic subjects.
Status: Post field
MA Thesis: From Burra Bazar to Big Bazaar: Selling the New World Order in the Marketplaces of Kolkata
Previous Degrees:
MA Brown University (Anthropology)
MA University of Chicago (Social Sciences)
BA Columbia University (Economics and French)
Contact Information: sohini_kar@brown.edu
