The Tools of Empire? Micro-finance, Neo-liberalism, and the Vietnamese State

Marxist studies of imperialism have long focused on the role global finance plays in the reproduction of capital in the West through exploitation of the global South. While recent cultural studies of imperialism have pointed toward the nuanced microtechnologies used to cement international systems of power, there has been relatively little thought given to the role local financial systems play in American imperialism. Thus, in this paper I explore how micro-finance programs have been employed as a technology of government, and how the various practices that constitute recent shifts in rural banking create new forms of economic subjection within increasingly neo-liberal rule.