Listen to UO anthropology professor Lamia Karim on NPR’s All Things Considered:
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134208312/nobel-winner-removed-from-bank-he-founded
Lamia Karim, associate professor of the University of Oregon Department of Anthropology and associate director of the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society, was interviewed March 2 on NPR for her expertise on microfinance and the Grameen Bank. The story, titled “Nobel Winner Removed From Bank He Founded,” focuses on the efforts of the Central Bank of Bangladesh to remove Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus from his post as director of the Grameen Bank.
Karim had critical remarks to make about the effects of microfinance lending by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh: “Women, poor women in particular, are getting deeper and deeper in debt. And this is largely because, similar to the banking industry in the U.S., microfinance for a very long time has been an unregulated industry. So people could go out and extend loans to people without any kind of oversight.”
Karim has a new book coming out this month from the University of Minnesota Press. Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh is an in-depth feminist critique of the much-lauded microcredit process in Bangladesh.
