Ambiguous incorporations: microfinance and global governmentality

In the spring of 2007 an event dramatically reshaped conversations relating to microfinance. This event was the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Mexico's largest microfinance organization, Compartamos. The IPO, as this article suggests, is indicative or a broader trend through which microfinance is increasingly becoming financialized, increasingly becoming governable as a financial object. This is important at one level because it crystallizes some of the key issues at stake as microfinance becomes increasingly more reliant on global capital markets. At another level, however, the Compatarmos case is significant because of the conceptual issues it raises in relation to global finance. The main argument I put forward in this article is that the Compatarmos case – and the process of financialization it represents – is important because it allows us to glimpse global finance, and the question of global financial governance, as a decentred process in formation. Drawing on a Foucauldian notion of governmentality, I argue that the Compatarmos case orbits around two processes; processes of incorporation and differentiation. In this context, the Compartamos case implies the importance of analyses that can make global finance visible as a diverse and mundane object that is never settled in any final kind of way.