Developing a culture of saving is key to poverty prevention, as it encourages self-help, prudence, independence, and personal responsibility.
We'll consider how local, self-governed, voluntary savings associations and banks encourage these virtues. We'll also look at some historical examples from Victorian England, reflecting on ideas of locality, self-governance, and self-help. Do trends in the direction of large, national, even global banking institutions best serve these ideals? And what are the implications of the loss of diversity in institutional and local provisions for personal saving? Finally, what does all this tell us about the nature of civil society?
