At this time of the year, our mailboxes and inboxes get flooded with Christmas appeals. Many of them feature heart-wrenching and guilt-inducing images of people in need, the idea being that they tug at our purse strings. This method of fundraising has provoked debates over the idea of “poverty porn” and the risk it runs of people getting tired of these images.
There is one kind of appeal that is different. It asks people to lend small amounts of money to budding entrepreneurs around the world, usually in developing countries. What has become known as microcredit or microlending has proven extremely popular with everyday people in the Global North.
Enduring Popularity
My research has shown that microcredit’s representational practices and the affective connections it forges between lenders and borrowers have much to do with it.
Firstly, images of microlending replace sad faces with smiling women, often in colourful traditional clothes in their places of work. These are photos of strong, responsible, enterprising women who work hard to elevate themselves and their families out of poverty. They are market women, vegetable growers, tailors and artisans. Men are usually absent from these depictions, much as they are absent from microcredit at large, although that is slowly changing.
These photos are usually accompanied by narratives of success, which generally take a standard format that recounts how a woman received a loan, started a business, grew it successfully and thereby escaped poverty. These representations speak of values with which the people asked to make loans can identify: improving one’s home, sending one’s children to school, growing a business. More often than not, these stories are positive and upbeat.
