The painting on the left, by Byron Kim, is called Synecdoche, 1991/1998. The hue of each panel represents the skin color of twenty people that Kim randomly encountered on The University of Texas at Austin campus. Together, the panels represent the University population.

I love this painting, because it shows how silly it is to keep classifying people by skin color. We are a rainbow race, as Pete Seeger said.

I thought of this because I was chatting with a friend about classifying Savings Groups. I’ve probably seen more savings groups in person than anyone alive except for Hugh Allen and maybe a couple of other people. And I wonder if I have ever seen two that have exactly the same procedures? Now, savings groups DO fall into big families - passbook users and ledger users; monthly and weekly; managed and not managed; savings oriented and credit oriented; and probably many others. But each of those categories has sub categories. Classifying all the savings groups of the world would take a long long time. 

The worldwide brands - VSLA and SILC and WORTH and Savings for Change - are trying to squeeze groups with very disparate practices into categories. When we give our groups a brand name, are we talking about the groups, or talking about ourselves?

Just askin’…

Reader Comments (1)

Good point Paul - do you really want an answer?

In my view, the names are more about the promoters than the groups. I doubt the groups even care (no pun intended) what they are referred to. I however find a general 'identity' that groups give themselves - not to the worldwide brands but project names.

Mon, September 16, 2013 | Kuria