Caste Embeddedness and Microfinance: Savings and Credit Cooperatives in Andhra Pradesh, India.

This paper examines how the introduction of a new set of institutional practices through the creation of new organizations bump up against, but also build on, the existing social structure and practices of the setting in which they are introduced. In this case, the new practices were cooperative governance and financial accounting practices introduced through the medium of cooperative organizations into villages in Andhra Pradesh, by the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF) during the 1990s. The paper demonstrates how the CDF both built on and challenged the existing social structure of the villages in which their cooperatives developed. In particular, the paper shows that the new institutional rules the cooperatives implemented interacted with the existing caste and gender structure in a variety of ways that included direct conflict, mutual support, and indifference.