Ebook: Mutualist microfinance: informal savings funds from the global periphery to the core?

This is a comparative, ethnographic, and historical study of mutual funds that flourished in nineteenth-century Europe and North America. Today mutual funds abound in Asia and Africa; they have returned to European and American cities along with immigrants from overseas. The principle is simple: a number of participants each pay a contribution into the fund for as many rounds as there are participants and at each round one player receives the total of contributions paid. Until the time that players receive the lump sum, they are creditors to the fund. From that moment on they become debtors who must be trusted to go on paying their contribution until the end. Usually creditworthiness, prestige, privilege, need, lottery or discounts determine the sequence that the organizer imposes. Abram de Swaan is distinguished university professor of social science at the University of Amsterdam. Marcel van der Linden is research director of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, professor of the history of social movements at the University of Amsterdam, and executive editor of the International Review of Social History.