Grameen Bank is a microfinance organization and community bank founded by Mohammad Yunus, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work pioneering micro-financing as a response to the depredations of global poverty. Micro-finance may be viewed as a bottom-up response to problems of poverty, regarding micro-loans to the poor as a means to utilize skills already possessed by the poorest of the poor, unleashing their creative, entrepreneurial potentials. To this extent, microfinancing represents an alternative to top-down, state-level welfare programs, which are often viewed by advocates of micro-financing as responsible for creating dependency and taking away individuals’ initiative to break out of the cycle of poverty. Although certainly a goal of Grameen’s micro-financing programs is to help individuals’ escape poverty, the Bank has focused on the practice of so-called solidarity lending. Here each borrower must belong to a five-member group. The group, however, is not required...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Karnani A (2007) Micro-finance misses the mark. Stanford social innovation review. http://www.ssireview.org/images/articles/2007SU_feature_karnani.pdf. Accessed 23 Mar 2011
Karnani A (2009) Romanticizing the poor. Stanford social innovation review. http://www.ssireview.org/pdf/RomaticizingthePoor.pdf. Accessed 23 Mar 2011
Rahman A (2001) Women and microcredit in rural Bangladesh: anthropological study of Grameen Bank lending. Westview Press, Boulder
Yunus M (2003) Banker to the poor: micro-lending and the battle against poverty. Perseus Book Group, New York
Yunus M (2008) Creating a world without poverty: social business and the future of capitalism. Perseus Book Group, New York
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Allen, M. (2011). Grameen Bank. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_526
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_526
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-9159-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-9160-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law