Date of Award

8-1-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Department

Human Communications

First Advisor

Joshua Hanan, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Christina Foust

Third Advisor

Robert Urquhart

Keywords

Articulation, Commensuration, Grameen, Microcredit, Microfinance, Yunus

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the rhetoric of Muhammad Yunus as an articulation of a new governing logic, one that reconstitutes the concept of poverty and binds the poor to the apparatus of global capitalism through a new logic of micro-enterprise. Working within a Foucauldian critical framework informed by the rhetorical scholarship of Ronald W. Greene and Joshua Hanan, the argument proceeds by first paying careful attention to Yunus' work as constitutive of a new grid of intelligibility through which to view the poor and then demonstrating the application of this reformed discourse on "creditworthiness" in articulating a novel regime of commensuration. This line of reasoning culminates in an examination of the role Yunus' reconstitution of the poor through the logic of micro-enterprise played in implementing an increasingly neoliberal policy framework in apparatuses of international development such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

Rights holder

Kaleb W. Brooks

File size

79 p.

File format

application/pdf

Language

en

Discipline

Rhetoric, Economics, Communication

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Finance Commons

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