The dense social and politic life of social agents in the “banco do povo” organizational structure

This article is based on interviews and field research in the Banco do Povo. We started by identifying the social credit agents who are part of the Banco do Povo’s organizational structure and by presenting some of their daily practices. Then, we explored the possible links among these agents and local politicians. Subsequently, following our hypothesis of the presence of a “patronage grammar” which defines the social and practical relations in the social relation chain constituted of local politic power/organizational structure/client, we explored the empirical data and related it, in a systemic fashion, to the literature about microfinance. Finally, we entwine considerations about the inflections which local power politic imprints onto the whole social relation, leading to considerations never registered in the existent literature.