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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

microcredit replication, Theravada Buddhist communities, microentrepreneurial activity

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Economics

Abstract

Microenterprise activities have increased significantly in South-East Asia during the past five years. Many non-governmental organizations have now incorporated microcredit and/or microfinance schemes into their developmental agendas. Such projects abound throughout the lower-income regions of South-East Asia. These projects are often styled after the Grameen Bank model and other foreign models and are based on social mechanisms (e.g. peer collateral) that depend on cultural and community values specific to the communities they were developed within. To date, all replication attempts in South-East Asia have been direct imitations of preconstructed models. These foreign systems, although successful within their specific contexts, are not always effectively grafted into other cultural systems. In particular, the economies of Theravada Buddhist communities, spread throughout South-East Asia, may prove to be very unreceptive to the stimuli of microentrepreneurial activity as represented by these popular foreign models. The replication of economic models based on alien social values are likely to fail, or even worse, damage the values and general well-being of Theravada Buddhist individuals and communities.

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