Microcredit is part of a global trend of financial inclusion that brings banking services, especially small loans, to the world’s poor. In this book, Caroline Schuster explores Paraguayan solidarity lending as a window into the tensions between social development and global finance.Social Collateral tracks collective debt across the commercial society and smuggling economies at the Paraguayan border by examining group loans made to women by nonprofit development programs. ...

Based in the agrarian world of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, Forecasts tells a story about what happens when global insurance companies promise financial safety nets to local farmers struggling with the effects of climate change. This striking graphic novel brings together original ethnographic research and Paraguayan gothic art to confront the limitations of finance to respond to a deteriorating environment.Taking a human-centered approach to complex wea...