Two Sides of the Same Coin: Sustaining Loan‐Use Ambiguity in Microfinance through Harmonizing Practices
研究南非农村小额信贷组织如何通过尊重还款、共情金融支持和创业自由裁量三种实践，维持贷款用途在创业与家庭消费之间的模糊性，从而在资源稀缺和社区伦理背景下保持组织 viability。
Abstract Despite its promise to alleviate poverty through entrepreneurship, microfinance is widely used for household purposes, challenging Western assumptions of microfinance as entrepreneurial finance and raising questions about the viability of microfinance organizations (MFOs). To understand how microfinance persists despite such use, we conducted an embedded case study of a South African MFO operating in a rural, resource‐constrained context shaped by Ubuntu – a communitarian ethic emphasizing relational interdependence and mutual care. Drawing on scarcity theory and a practice‐based view of financial resourcing, we show how scarcity is collectively navigated through culturally embedded practices that stabilize loan‐use ambiguity in everyday microfinance interactions. We find that loan officers and recipients jointly enact three harmonizing practices – reverence for repayment, empathic financial support, and entrepreneurial discretion – that sustain this ambiguity between the MFO's espoused entrepreneurial schema and enacted livelihood‐oriented practices. Through these practices, microfinance remains viable as a community‐embedded system of financial support, even as loan use departs from formal entrepreneurial prescriptions. By conceptualizing microfinance as a community‐embedded system of financial resourcing rather than a narrowly entrepreneurial intervention, this study contributes to research on microfinance, scarcity, and resourcing in communitarian settings.