Showing papers on "Emancipation published in 2010"

The Communist Hypothesis

Abstract: We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy - the form of state suited to capitalism - and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities. Alain Badiou's formulation of the communist hypothesis has travelled around the world since it was first aired in early 2008, in his book, "The Meaning of Sarkozy". The hypothesis is partly a demand to reconceptualize communism after the twin deaths of the Soviet Union and neoliberalism, but also a fresh demand for universal emancipation. As third way reforms prove as empty in practice as in theory, Badiou's manifesto is a galvanizing call to arms that needs to be reckoned with by anyone concerned with the future of our planet.

Sexual Politics, Orientalism and Multicultural Citizenship in the Netherlands

Abstract: Sexuality features prominently in European debates on multiculturalism and in Orientalist discourses on Islam. This article argues that representations of gay emancipation are mobilized to shape narratives in which Muslims are framed as non-modern subjects, a development that can best be understood in relation to the ‘culturalization of citizenship’ and the rise of Islamophobia in Europe. We focus on the Netherlands where the entanglement of gay rights discourses with anti-Muslim politics and representations is especially salient. The thorough-going secularization of Dutch society, transformations in the realms of sex and morality since the ‘long 1960s’ and the ‘normalization’ of gay identities since the 1980s have made sexuality a malleable discourse in the framing of ‘modernity’ against ‘tradition’. This development is highly problematic, but also offers possibilities for new alliances and solidarities in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (LGBTQ) politics and sexual and cultural citi...

Beyond Subordination vs. Resistance: An Intersectional Approach to the Agency of Veiled Muslim Women

Abstract: Engaging with a figure that came to operate as a powerful cultural signifier of otherness in debates over migrant/Muslim integration across the West, the ‘veiled woman’; the paper questions the idea of agency that inheres in the contemporary feminist discourses on Muslim veil. After showing the shortcomings and adverse effects of two dominant readings of the Muslim veil, as a symbol of women's subordination to men, or as an act of resistance to Western hegemony, it explores an alternative avenue drawing on both the poststructuralist critique of the humanist subject and feminist intersectional theorising to answer the question of what kind of conception of agency can help us to think about the agency of the veiled woman without binding a priori the meaning of her veiling to the teleology of emancipation, whether feminist or anti-imperialist.

A new logic of emancipation: the methodology of jacques rancière

Abstract: The idea of emancipation plays a central role in modern educational theories and practices. The emancipatory impetus is particularly prominent in critical traditions and approaches where the aim of education is conceived as that of emancipating students from oppressive structures in the name of social justice and human freedom. What is needed to effect emancipation, so it is assumed in this tradition, is an exposition of the workings of power, as it is only when one sees and understands how power operates that it is possible to address its influence. In several of his publications the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere has raised questions about the logic of this view of emancipation. Throughout his career Ranciere has also worked consistently on the articulation of a different approach, an alternative way to understand and do emancipation. In this essay Gert Biesta provides a systematic reconstruction of Ranciere's ideas on emancipation from three angles: political theory, political practice, and the practice of education. Biesta argues that Ranciere provides us with a new and different way to understand how education might contribute to emancipation and also where and how, often in the name of emancipation and democracy, it actually hinders emancipation.

Jacques Ranciere: Education, Truth, Emancipation

Abstract: 1. On Ignorant Schoolmasters, by Jacques Ranciere 2. A New Logic of Emancipation 3. The Figure of the Child in Ranciere and Paulo Freire 4. Inclusion in Question 5. Recognition's Pedagogy 6. Truth and Emancipation 7. Learner, Student, Speaker 8. Conclusion: The World is Not a School Bibliography Index.

You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery

Abstract: Introduction: the journee of 20 June 1793 in Cap Francais and the abolition of slavery 1. A colony in revolution 2. Municipal revolution in a colonial city 3. French Jacobins and Saint-Domingue colonists 4. Creating revolutionary government in the tropics 5. A model republican general 6. The powderkeg explodes 7. Freedom and fire 8. The road to general emancipation 9. Saint-Domingue in the United States 10. The decree of 16 Pluviose An II Conclusion.

from absolute invisibility to extreme visibility: emancipation trajectory of migrant women in the Netherlands

Abstract: After years of invisibility, the position of migrant women from Islamic countries now forms the core of the Dutch discourse on integration and emancipation. This article presents the downside of this visibility by showing that it is situated within a growing culturalist discourse. In addition to being culturalist, this discourse focuses on the shortcomings of migrants and is flavoured with a touch of new realism in its argument that it is a right to break the taboos of migrants. More visibility for migrant women will not help their empowerment if the basic assumptions of the dominant discourse are not challenged. Through presenting a case study, this article shows how this visibility can even strengthen the border between the Dutch as ‘emancipated self’ and Islamic migrants as the ‘unemancipated other’. In so doing it reinforces boundaries instead of alliances, isolation instead of empowerment, and suppression instead of emancipation.

The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery

Abstract: When colonial slavery was abolished in 1833 the British government paid £20 million to slave-owners as compensation: the enslaved received nothing. Drawing on the records of the Commissioners of Slave Compensation, which represent a complete census of slave-ownership, this book for the first time provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society.

From NATO to ESDP: A Social Constructivist Analysis of German Strategic Adjustment after the End of the Cold War

Abstract: This article addresses the question why Germany invested in what became the European Union's Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), a potential competitor to NATO. In addition to highlighting Germany's role in the development of ESDP, the paper offers a social constructivist explanation for this investment based on the concepts of friendship, estrangement, and emancipation. It develops the argument that (1) states gain ontological security by investing in international institutions to negotiate and pursue ideas of order with friends; (2) deep and enduring dissonance between friends signifies a process of estrangement and poses a threat to ontological security; and (3) if states cannot restore resonance with the old friend-institution configuration, they choose a strategy of emancipation by investing in an alternative. Applied to an analysis of German strategic adjustments between 1990 and 2009 in the context of U.S.-led interventions in Iraq, the Balkans, and Afghanistan, the article suggests that Germany in...

Falling from grace: Gender norms and gender strategies in Eastern Turkey

Abstract: This article calls for a critical scholarly engagement with women's participation in the Kurdish movement. Since the 1980s, women have appropriated the political sphere in different gender roles, and their activism is mostly seen as a way of empowerment and emancipation. Albeit legitimate, such a claim often fails to account for the social and political control mechanisms inherent in the new political gender roles. This article presents the life stories of four Kurdish women. Although politically active, these women do not necessarily define themselves through their political activity. Thus they do not present their life story according to the party line, but dwell on the different social and political expectations, state violence and the contradicting role models with whom they have to deal on a daily basis. Therefore, the status associated with their roles, especially those of the “new” and emancipated woman, does not necessarily represent their own experiences and subjectivities. Women who openly criticize the social and political constraints by transgressing the boundaries of accepted conduct face social as well as political sanctions.

Rethinking Education and Emancipation: Being, Teaching, and Power

Abstract: This essay describes two central principles for a renewed emancipatory pedagogy across educational contexts: the recognition of an essential equality between students and teachers and a liberatory agency that uncovers and builds on students' effectivity as beings against domination. While critical educational theory traditionally conceives of the human as a condition to be developed through the process of conscientization, De Lissovoy argues for the recognition of the human as the already existing fact of a body in struggle. He proposes an understanding of the human as the ontological kernel of the selves of students and teachers, as it asserts itself before contests over knowledge and identification. Building from recent work in cultural studies and philosophy that confronts the question of being as a political problem, the author develops an original understanding of emancipation as the discovery and affirmation of the persistent integrity and survival of beings in struggle.

Human Rights and Decolonization: New Perspectives and Open Questions

Abstract: ����� ��� In the global history of human rights in the twentieth century, decolonization is one of the most interesting fields to study. The independence of practically all of Africa’s and Asia’s nations, gained in the almost miraculously short span of the two decades after the Second World War, was one of the most dramatic processes of political emancipation in world history. The events and the consequences of decolonization were to profoundly shape international politics until at least the end of the century. Viewed from the angle of human rights history, the setting for the struggle against colonial domination after World War II greatly differed from what it had been before. It was only in the 1940s that the language of human rights gained a foothold in international relations, as part of the Allies’ attempt to spread positive visions for the postwar future. Even more importantly, the new international human rights regimes of both the United Nations and the Council of Europe, with their highly symbolic rights declarations and their monitoring committees, were established in the years after the war and thus well before the decolonization process took on steam. Consequently, unlike in the interwar years, the ideal of human rights was now available as a possible justification for the colonies’ struggle for freedom and as a potential supporting ideology. In the historian’s hindsight, this turns the study of decolonization into a crucial test for the emancipatory potential of the human rights idea in history. Two new books—both published dissertations—set out to delve into the complexities of this topic. By and large richly documented, they deal with different and mostly

An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C.

Abstract: "An Example for All the Land" reveals Washington, D.C. as a laboratory for social policy in the era of emancipation and the Civil War. In this panoramic study, Kate Masur provides a nuanced account of African Americans' grassroots activism, municipal politics, and the U.S. Congress. She tells the provocative story of how black men's right to vote transformed local affairs, and how, in short order, city reformers made that right virtually meaningless. Bringing the question of equality to the forefront of Reconstruction scholarship, this widely praised study explores how concerns about public and private space, civilization, and dependency informed the period's debate over rights and citizenship.

Renaissances: The One or the Many?

Abstract: Introduction 1. The idea of a renaissance 2. Montpellier and medicine in Europe 3. Religion and the secular 4. Rebirth in Islam 5. Emancipation and efflorescence in Judaism 6. Cultural continuity in India 7. Renaissance in China 8. Were renaissances only European? Appendices.

From Slaves to Citizens? Tannenbaum and the Debates on Slavery, Emancipation, and Race Relations in Latin America

Abstract: Why is Slave and Citizen, Frank Tannenbaum's influential comparative book on slavery and race relations, still referenced by modern scholars? How is it that a book that is frequently described as flawed continues to inform contemporary scholarship on race and slavery? This article seeks to answer these questions by reconstructing some of the scholarly debates sparked by Slave and Citizen. Specifically, the article discusses how some of the central premises of Tannenbaum's approach continue to inform the work of current scholars. Three of these premises are discussed in some detail: first, that “Anglo” and “Latin” America constituted two separate entities; second, that race relations in each area were fundamentally different; and third, that differences in modern race relations could only be explained by their divergent “slave systems.”

Critical perspectives on human security : rethinking emancipation and power in international relations

Abstract: 1. Introduction: Emancipation and Power in Human Security Nik Hynek and David Chandler Part I 2. `We the Peoples': Contending Discourses of Security in Human Rights Theory and Practice Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler 3. Development of the Human Security Field: A Critical Examination David Bosold 4. Post-Colonial Hybridity and the Return of Human Security Oliver P. Richmond 5. Towards a Critical Security Paradigm? Reconceptualizing the `Vital Core' of Human Security Giorgio Shani 6. Human Security, Biopoverty and the Possibility for Emancipation David Roberts 7. Institutionalised and Co-opted: Why Human Security Has Lost Its Way Mandy Turner, Neil Cooper and Michael Pugh Part II 8. The Limits to Emancipation in the Human Security Framework Tara McCormack 9. Rethinking Global Discourses of Security David Chandler 10. Human Security and the Securing of Human Life: Tracing Global Sovereign and Biopolitical Rule Marc G. Doucet and Miguel de Larrinaga 11. Problematising Life under Biopower: A Foucauldian versus an Agambenite Critique of Human Security Suvi Alt 12. Rethinking Human Security: Economy, Governmentality and Hybridization of Individuals Nik Hynek 13. Human Security: Sovereignty, Citizenship, Disorder Kyle Grayson 14. Inhuman Security Mark Neocleous

The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals

Abstract: Introduction: Ethics, Russia, History Part I. An Ethical Repertoire 1. In Search of Salvation on the Stroganov Estates 2. Faith, Family, and Land after Emancipation Part II. The Generations and Ethics of Socialism 3. Youth: Exemplars of Rural Socialism 4. Elders: Christian Ascetics in the Soviet Countryside Part III. Struggles to Shape an Emergent Ethical Regime 5. New Risks and Inequalities in the Household Sector 6. Which Khoziain? Whose Moral Community? 7. Society, Culture, and the Churching of Sepych 8. Separating Post-Soviet Worlds? Priestly Baptisms and Priestless Funerals Epilogue Bibliography Index

The Life of William Wilberforce

Abstract: William Wilberforce (1759–1833) was a politician, philanthropist and evangelical Christian, now best known for his work to end the slave trade. Elected to Parliament in 1780, he campaigned unsuccessfully for penal and electoral reform. In 1787, at the encouragement of his friend William Pitt, he took up the cause of abolition at Westminster and lobbied influential people tirelessly, but humanitarian and ethical arguments were slow to overcome the economic interests of those who had made fortunes from the slave trade or the use of slave labour. It was not until 1807 that the Abolition Bill was finally passed. Wilberforce continued his work for emancipation, and also campaigned for religious liberty. This biography, based on his own writings, was published by two of his sons in 1838, but sheds more light on religious than on political aspects of his life. Volume 5 covers the period from 1818 until Wilberforce's death.

Free trade, free labour, and slave sugar in victorian britain

Abstract: This article reconsiders the sugar duties controversy in early Victorian Britain. Rather than representing the defeat of abolitionism by free trade zeal, the sugar question was a contest of two varieties of anti-slavery thought which had previously co-existed: one believing that slavery's immorality was accompanied by its productive inferiority to free labour and the other asserting that slavery's profits in this world were punished outside the marketplace. West Indian decline after the end of protection led to a revision of free labour superiority, with providential externalities replacing marketplace competitiveness. The episode demonstrates how little most Britons understood the welfare of black freedmen to be connected to anti-slavery after emancipation. A fuller appreciation of the slave sugar debate furthermore recovers an important abolitionist strand in the new ‘human history’ of free trade.

The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War

Abstract: On the occasion of his famous address commemorating the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, delivered in Concord on August 1, 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson highlighted America’s avoidance of slavery’s implications. ‘What if it cost a few unpleasant scenes on the coast of Africa?’ he asked, rhetorically, since that was ‘a great way off.’ Back home in America, slavery’s realities could be avoided, by those in the North, at least, and if ‘any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures,’ Americans would simply ‘let the church-bells ring louder.’ So long as the sugar, coffee and tobacco produced by slaves ‘was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it.’(1) The African coast may have been sufficiently distant to be safely ignored; not so the Caribbean, which in many ways became too close for comfort as far as America’s slaveholders were concerned and which, in any case, was hardly entirely separate from the United States. As Edward Rugemer emphasizes at the start of his search for the Caribbean roots of America’s Civil War, ‘the United States was never a self-contained entity moved solely by the internal dynamics of American society,’ but was ‘firmly embedded in an Anglo-Atlantic world that transcended the political boundaries of nation-states’ (p. 5). America’s boundaries, indeed, were inherently ‘permeable,’ admitting an influx of information, individuals and, increasingly, abolitionist influences along with the commercial traffic that linked the colonies of the British West Indies to the United States. This reinforced a transatlantic perspective originally grounded in the slave trade but, by the mid-1830s, directed toward the debates over its abolition and the abolition of slavery itself. Any attempt to comprehend the coming of the Civil War, therefore, cannot, although too often does, remove the internal dynamics of abolitionist agitation and political debate within America from their broader transatlantic context; 19thcentury Americans could not avoid the implications of abolition in the West Indies and nor, Rugemer reminds us, should we. ‘White America’s problem with black emancipation,’ he stresses, most definitely ‘had Caribbean roots’ (p. 7).

Deaf epistemologies as a critique and alternative to the practice of science: an anthropological perspective.

Abstract: In the last decade, and responding to the criticism of orientalism, anthropology has engaged in a self-critical practice, working toward a postcolonial perspective on science and an epistemological stance of partial and situated knowledge (Pinxten, 2006; Pinxten & Note, 2005). In deaf studies, anthropological and sociological studies employing qualitative and ethnographic methods have introduced a paradigm shift. Concepts of deaf culture and deaf identity have been employed as political tools, contributing to the emancipation process of deaf people. However, recent anthropological studies in diverse local contexts indicate the cultural construction of these notions. From this viewpoint, deaf studies faces a challenge to reflect on the notions of culture, emancipation, and education from a nonexclusive, noncolonial perspective. Deaf studies research in a global context needs to deal with cultural and linguistic diversity in human beings and academia. This calls for epistemological reflection and new research methods.

Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment

Abstract: Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment By Nick Nesbitt Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008 ISBN 978-0-8139-2803-6 260 pp $2250 paperback In the second half of the twentieth century, revisionist versions of the legacy of the Enlightenment moved from plumbing the depths of the philosophies of the chosen few from France, England and, a little later, Germany, to examining the positive and negative effects of the eighteenthcentury sea changes in technology, cross-cultural contact, and revolutions on modern society To be sure, Enlightenment ideas and theories created new subjects and new aspirations, but the first twentieth-century revisionist schools concentrated primarily on the damage done by the Enlightenment In the 1970s, as a graduate student of the eighteenth-century, I studied the first round of critics who dethroned the Enlightenment's proud legacy of individual rights and freedom to pursue happiness and personal expression and who blamed the Terror and the Holocaust on the inherent bankruptcy of these theories which allowed the emerging bourgeoisie and capitalists to usurp authority for their own purposes Postmodernist critics honed these critiques while extending their sights to another failure of the Enlightenment: its inability to produce an effective critique of the expanding slave trade, an institution that most certainly contradicted all of its ideals Postmodernism's commitment to turn literary critiques into principled statements on contemporary political and economic conditions has created a new Enlightenment site, that of its racism, which they analyze alongside postcolonial critics Eighteenth-century conjectural discourses on the origins of the human race, such as those anthologized by Emmanuel Eze (1997), shows how the great minds, intent on categorizing all the cultural differences in the human race they claimed to be equal and universal, could do little more than establish hierarchies for the differences they found in non-Europeans These hierarchies, based in concepts of cultural and scientific progress placed the white race and European cultures clearly on top Enlightenment philosophers pragmatically compromised and betrayed their own ideals by adjusting them to the economic, political and social realities of their time Postmodernism is undergirded by the theories of Foucault, Lyotard and Derrida Most central is Foucault's conceptualization of the Enlightenment as the creator of new types of repressive authority The Enlightenment's faith in the dialectic of history rather than religious dogma and divine right to resolve the problems scientific and economic progress created engendered new ways of linking knowledge to power that postmodernism's skepticism and refusal of metanarratives claims to demystify Nonetheless, as Daniel Gordon argues, postmodernist historiography, popular in American and Australia, is often a victim of its own unvoiced presuppositions: its desire to critique Europe and deny their legacy to us and their own version of political mystique inspired by Foucault's Discipline and Punish (2001) Foucault did not totally dismiss the Enlightenment by refusing to idealize it Instead he proposes a new dialectic that would radicalize the Enlightenment by pushing its pursuit of freedom, which he calls "the art of not being governed," and would continue Kant's legacy of daring to know and call to overthrow submission to blind authority1 In Universal Emancipation Nesbitt enters the critical debates in how to salvage what is positive and relevant in the Enlightenment (on several occasions he announces his intent to analyze the relation between the Haitian Revolution and the predicaments of our present age (229, nl) as he defends the Haitian revolutionary ideals as a concretization of the Enlightenment's most radical ideas proposed by Spinoza and his followers The slaves and their "leaders were active participants in "a single, variegated transnational public sphere, not a mere segregated "counterpublic" (219, n …

Power, realism, and the ideal of human emancipation in a climate of change

Abstract: Most attempts to formalize climate politics have focused on the reform of current governance regimes, including norms, rules, regulations, political will, and decision-making procedures. Emphasis on reform entails a realist political approach, which only accounts for those incremental changes in power that can be objectively justified in terms of solving practical problems. This paper argues that political realism implicitly supports developmentalist logics of perpetual material growth which are precisely at the root of global environmental problems. Therefore, climate researchers have to move beyond this tradition of political thought, and engage in ‘critical theories’ and idealist approaches that question contemporary power relations. A few scholars have drawn on critical theory, historical materialism, Foucault, and Gramsci to explore power and human emancipation in the context of global environmental politics. These scholars identify hegemonic structures as essential causes of climate change. Accordingly, current power relations need to be fundamentally challenged, not only whenever extreme poverty averts the basic exercise of adaptive capacities, but, more broadly, whenever modernity and globalization set societies on unsustainable paths. This entails, on the one hand, redefining climate change as an opportunity to transform the structures under which modernity and global capitalism take place. On the other hand, it calls for reinterpreting adaptation within a broader project of universal emancipation from the structures that constrain our essential freedom and, with that, hinder effective and just societal responses to the challenges of climate change. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 781–785 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.87 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website

We Ain't What We Ought To Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama

Abstract: In this exciting revisionist history, Stephen Tuck traces the black freedom struggle in all its diversity, from the first years of freedom during the Civil War to President Obama's inauguration As it moves from popular culture to high politics, from the Deep South to New England, the West Coast, and abroad, Tuck weaves gripping stories of ordinary black people - as well as celebrated figures - into the sweep of racial protest and social change The drama unfolds from an armed march of longshoremen in post - Civil War Baltimore to Booker T Washington's founding of Tuskegee Institute; from the race riots following Jack Johnson's 'fight of the century' to Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery bus; and, from the rise of hip hop to the journey of a black Louisiana grandmother to plead with the Tokyo directors of a multinational company to stop the dumping of toxic waste near her home "We Ain't What We Ought To Be" rejects the traditional narrative that identifies the Southern non-violent civil rights movement as the focal point of the black freedom struggle Instead, it explores the dynamic relationships between those seeking new freedoms and those looking to preserve racial hierarchies, and between grassroots activists and national leaders As Tuck shows, strategies were ultimately contingent on the power of activists to protest amidst shifting economic and political circumstances in the US and abroad This book captures an extraordinary journey that speaks to all Americans - both past and future

Burning the veil: The Algerian war and the 'emancipation' of Muslim women, 1954–62

Abstract: List of illustrations and tables Acknowledgements Abbreviations Glossary Introduction 1. From the Setif massacre to the November insurrection: the origins of the Algerian women's movement, 1945-54. 2. The origins of the emancipation campaign, November 1954 to May 1958. 3. Unveiling: the 'revolutionary journees' of 13 May 1958 4. The propaganda offensive and the strategy of contact 5. The Mouvement de Solidarite Feminine: army wives and domesticating the 'native'. 6. Military 'pacification' and the women of Bordj Okhriss 7. The Mobile Socio-Medical Teams (EMSI): making contact with peasant society. 8. The battle over the personal status law of 1959. 9. The FLN and the role of women during the war 10.From women's radical nationalism to the restoration of patriarchy (1959-62). 11. The post-independence state and the conservative marginalisation of women. Conclusion Bibliography Index

Rethinking the Impact of Microfinance in Africa: ‘Business Change’ or Social Emancipation

Abstract: This article questions received wisdom that the benefits of microfinance start with poverty reduction and are subsequently followed by social emancipation. Taking the case of Uganda and by using a consensual people-centred relevance test to assess the impact of microfinance on poverty alleviation, microfinance is shown not to improve the well-being of microfinance clients much, with only marginal well-being gains achieved by clients. However, a subsequent (gender) power relations analysis reveals that in spite of these marginal well-being gains, women clients achieved more emancipation. The article therefore calls for a rethinking of the microfinance outreach campaign in Africa, and of the controversy between the adoption of a business or welfarist approach to microfinance, suggesting that social emancipation should be pursued in its own right rather than waiting for poverty reduction to occur first. Cet article remet en question l’idee preconcue selon laquelle les benefices de la micro-finance consistent tout d’abord en une reduction de la pauvrete, suite a laquelle s’opere une emancipation sociale. En se basant sur le cas de l’Ouganda, et en utilisant un test de pertinence consensuel qui se focalise sur les individus afin d’evaluer l’impact de la micro-finance sur l’attenuation de la pauvrete, cet article montre que les projets de micro-finance n’ameliorent pas enormement le bien-etre des clients, leurs gains de bien-etre etant marginaux. Cependant, une analyse plus recente des rapports de genre revele que malgre la faiblesse des gains de bien-etre, les femmes clientes de micro-finance parviennent a s’emanciper davantage que les femmes non-clientes. Cet article propose donc de reexaminer la campagne d’information sur le micro-credit en Afrique ainsi que la controverse entre l’adoption d’une approche welfariste ou commerciale a la micro-finance, suggerant que l’emancipation sociale devrait etre un objectif a part entiere et non pas dependant d’une reduction prealable de la pauvrete.