TY - JOUR
T1 - Small-scale cooperative banking and the production of capital
T2 - Reflecting on the role of institutional agreements in supporting rural livelihood in Kampot, Cambodia
AU - Scheidel, Arnim
AU - Farrell, Katharine N.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank the villagers of the case study for their cooperation and hospitality. Intellectual and institutional support is acknowledged from The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC), from the Mekong Institute, Thailand and from the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where substantial portions of the theory work presented here were developed; and from Bunchhorn Lim, Kimchhin Sok and Duk Piseth from the Royal University of Agriculture, Cambodia during the time of field research. The authors also thank Mario Giampietro, Kozo Mayumi and Jampel Dell'Angelo for productive discussions and debate on questions directly related to those addressed in this text and two anonymous peer reviewers for their attentive and constructive comments. This research has partly benefitted from previous projects funded by the Catalan government grants FI-DGR-2009/BE-DGR-2011. Shortcomings, oversights and error are, of course, our own.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2015/11/1
Y1 - 2015/11/1
N2 - This paper explores the ecological economics of small-scale cooperative banking (SSCB) through reference to the empirical case of a rice-farming village in Kampot, Cambodia. It combines Georgescu-Roegen's discussion of an economy's capacity to produce economic processes with Ostrom's concept of institutional performance, in order to address the implications and functioning of SSCB within a small-farmer economy. The local collective action situation of maintaining and making use of a SSCB system - a specific finance model - provides the studied community with access to a pooled capital fund that may play an important role in ensuring its capacity to produce and reproduce economic processes, according to its own specifications. The coordinated action among the villagers, which matches up well with Ostrom's criteria for effective institutional performance of common pool resource use governance, is found to include social and environmental dimensions, which we understand to be necessary for achieving transformations toward more sustainable economic activity. While we do not wish to suggest that the adoption of SSCB guarantees either improved ecological or social impacts, our results suggest that this finance model could play a supporting role in enhancing the potential of small-farming communities to improve both, should they wish to do so.
AB - This paper explores the ecological economics of small-scale cooperative banking (SSCB) through reference to the empirical case of a rice-farming village in Kampot, Cambodia. It combines Georgescu-Roegen's discussion of an economy's capacity to produce economic processes with Ostrom's concept of institutional performance, in order to address the implications and functioning of SSCB within a small-farmer economy. The local collective action situation of maintaining and making use of a SSCB system - a specific finance model - provides the studied community with access to a pooled capital fund that may play an important role in ensuring its capacity to produce and reproduce economic processes, according to its own specifications. The coordinated action among the villagers, which matches up well with Ostrom's criteria for effective institutional performance of common pool resource use governance, is found to include social and environmental dimensions, which we understand to be necessary for achieving transformations toward more sustainable economic activity. While we do not wish to suggest that the adoption of SSCB guarantees either improved ecological or social impacts, our results suggest that this finance model could play a supporting role in enhancing the potential of small-farming communities to improve both, should they wish to do so.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.09.008
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.09.008
M3 - Research Article
AN - SCOPUS:84942306244
SN - 0921-8009
VL - 119
SP - 230
EP - 240
JO - Ecological Economics
JF - Ecological Economics
ER -