The Role of Social Capital and Cooperation Infrastructures Within Microfinance

Abstract

Microfinance has become a most important instrument for rural development. In regard of its technology, there are two main positions: a static analysis points out that ICT does not play a central role in many of today’s microfinance activities and, therefore, will not do so in future, whereas technological determinism assumes the technological path of microfinance to follow the one of established banking in the North. In this paper, in which the well-known Bangladesh Grameen Bank is analyzed as an example, we want to show that both assumptions are wrong. Instead CSCW foci may play a productive role in developing appropriate technology for microfinance.