Reluctant solidarity: Boundary making and financial mutuals in Cape Town, South Africa

Dr Erik Bähre. He recently completed his Ph.D. thesis 'Money and Violence: Financial mutuals among the Xhosa in Cape Town, South Africa' at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research. Since August he works as a tutor at University College Utrecht.

Financial mutuals - also known as group lending schemes, informal financial self-help groups, or rotating credit associations - are often described as 'solidarity groups'. Financial mutuals are mostly organised by women who pool money together and who help each other to save. The members of financial mutuals highlight the solidarity among the participants and the literature on financial mutuals too easily follows this image of unproblematic solidarity. Research on financial mutuals among African women in Cape Town, South Africa, however, reveals that this image of 'solidarity' does not do justice to the complexity of relationships in which financial mutuals are embedded. Particularly when one analyses how a financial mutual organises its boundaries between members and non-members, it becomes clear which contradictory values lead to reluctant solidarity.