Tool For Empowerment Research Articles

Experiences of Older Adults With Mobile Phone Text Messaging as Reminders of Home Exercises After Specialized Manual Therapy for Recurrent Low Back Pain: A Qualitative Study

BackgroundClinical experience of manual therapy for musculoskeletal pain is that patients often suffer from recurrent pain and disorders, but that they do not continue to perform their physical home exercises when they are free from symptoms. The chance of positive long-term effects of manual therapy would probably increase if patients were reminded that they are to continue to perform their exercises. Mobile phone text messaging (short messaging service, SMS) is increasingly used as an innovative intervention to remind patient to exercise. However, there are only a few studies on such interventions in the field of low back pain (LBP). Qualitative studies of patients’ experiences of receiving text messages as reminders of home exercises after manual treatment for recurrent LBP have to the best of our knowledge never been published.ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to explore older persons’ common experiences of receiving reminders of home exercises through mobile phone text messaging after specialized manual therapy for recurrent LBP.MethodsA total of 7 men and 8 women (67-86 years), who had sought specialized manual therapy (Naprapathic manual therapy) for recurrent LBP were included in the study. Individual one-way text messages as reminders of home exercises (to be performed on a daily basis) were sent to each patient every third day for 3 weeks, then once a week for another 2 weeks. Semistructured interviews with 2 broad, open-ended questions were held and data were analyzed with systematic text condensation, based on Giorgi’s principles of psychological phenomenological analysis.ResultsThe participants appreciated the messages, which were perceived as timely and usable, and also stimulated memorizing. The messages made the participants reflect on the aim of the exercise, value of being reminded, and on their improvement in pain. During the interviews, the participants created their own routines for continued adherence to the exercises.ConclusionsIt seems plausible that mobile phone text messaging may serve as a useful tool for patient empowerment with regard to recurrent LBP in older persons. Further studies are needed to explore whether future compliance with the exercises will be as large if the participants are not being interviewed.

MODEL LAB SITE PLS MELALUI PELEMBAGAAN RUMAH PINTAR BU EEN

This study was based-backs SCTV findings regarding the phenomenal figure of Mrs. Een Sukaesih as inspirational women in the learning of the children and the community built around that by SCTV was awarded the Special Awards category of education, dedication to the community and humanity. With the assistance of assistance by the department (laboratory) facilities design by PLS embodies the children's learning and community development are packed with smart home albarokah name, and has five program activity centers. The formulation of the research problem: (1) whether the exploration results in Rumpin Albarokah there is a vision, mission, goals, objectives and programs and their conformity with the realization? (2) whether the results of the analysis are Rumpin Albarokah delegation, leadership and familiarization program implementation strategy? (3) How do find / labsite PLS models prove effective in enhancing the competence of students on community empowerment through Andragogy approach? Qualitative research approach with data collection techniques interview, observation and document and using processing techniques and data analysis with data reduction, data display and verification. This study places in Rumpin Albarokah Sumedang, West Java. The results show Rumpin are: (1) tools for community empowerment that embodies the activity of children, youth, and elderly women, (2) facilitate learning and empowerment, (3) prove the model lab site PLS is effective in enhancing the competence of students on community empowerment through approach Andragogy ,

Common Sense: An Examination of Three Los Angeles Community WiFi Projects that Privileged Public Funding Over Commons-Based Infrastructure Management

Public funding for community WiFi initiatives in the United States is rare—despite that these networks are comparatively low-cost to deploy, and that a peer-to-peer model of connectivity may foster community and boost civic engagement. However, in 2015 the New York City Economic Development Corporation awarded the Red Hook Initiative several million dollars to expand its community WiFi network in Brooklyn. This development suggests a potential shift in attitude toward government support for grassroots WiFi networks. Therefore, it is critical to understand the successes and failures of projects that previously operated with government grants and subsidies. Using both a public goods framework and theory of the commons, this study examines three community WiFi networks in geographically and ethnically diverse L.A. communities subsidized by the city of Los Angeles or by California state agencies. Specifically, this research examines whether Little Tokyo Unplugged, Open Mar Vista and a cluster of network sponsored by Manchester Community Technologies relinquished the ability to function as commons by accepting, or simply pursuing, grants and resources from public agencies. Each of these initiatives faltered, despite a combined $700,000 in government funding. The analysis is based on interviews with 11 key stakeholders, as well as a comprehensive review of relevant grant reports, archived website pages and media coverage. In exchange for government subsidies, these three community WiFi projects prioritized public good goals articulated by policymakers—closing the digital divide in Los Angeles through infrastructure deployment and encouraging computer usage. In order to fulfill promises made to granting agencies, these community WiFi networks treated wireless internet access as a commodity, rather than as a tool for community empowerment. Significantly, none of the networks developed a strategy to remain sustainable after public subsidies expired, or after government agencies rejected requests for additional funding. Had these three L.A.-based community WiFi projects privileged a commons-based approach, characterized by inclusivity and a flat governance structure, they may have thrived. In a commons, communication systems are truly democratic, in the sense that community members themselves determine how the network is designed and deployed. Neither corporations nor policymakers get to influence those decisions. The study concludes that, ultimately, money and resources provided by government agencies are inadequate substitutes for volunteers who traditionally share skills and passion to sustain community WiFi networks. However, the findings recognize that it is certainly possible for grassroots initiatives to partner with government agencies, while continuing to manage infrastructure as a commons. In 2010, the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition allocated a portion of its $1.8 million grant from the federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program to launch community wireless networks in several neighborhoods. A guiding principle of this project, which continues to expand, is to enable community members to create their own technologies and to help shape communications infrastructure. The research stresses that both policymakers and community broadband groups must agree to balance potentially competing goals.

CORE PDS: empowering the poor

Structured abstract Subject area information and communication technology (ICT) for development. Study level/applicability Master of Business Administration Program’s Management Information Systems courses. Or introductory courses in Masters in ICT for Development. Case overview The paper aims to highlight the endeavour of public distribution system (PDS), a food security scheme for under-privileged people in India, towards excellence, using ICT in the state of Chhattisgarh. It presents two important roles of ICT: one, as a system improvement tool, through supply chain integration (in Phase 1) and, the other, as tool for empowerment, by providing choices through computerized online real-time electronic (CORE) PDS (in Phase 2). CORE PDS was intended to provide choices of retail outlets to poor beneficiaries for collecting their food entitlement, breaking the retail outlet’s monopoly. The project was successfully implemented in some urban areas of Chhattisgarh, providing motivation for its mass scale roll-out. But, the contextual differences between rural and urban settings were raising questions on the ultimate value expected to be delivered by the project in rural areas. Expected learning outcomes Two major learning outcomes of the case: students will appreciate the multi-faceted role of ICT in improving the performance of a system meant for a financially poor section of the society; students will understand the role of contextual settings in a developing economy in the endeavour of ICT projects for societal development. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 10: Public Sector Management.

Entrepreneurship education: a vital instrument for youth empowerment, industrial development and consolidation of national integration in Nigeria

The concern of this paper is to explore Entrepreneurship Education (EE) as one of the vital tools for youth empowerment, industrial development and consolidation of national integration in Nigeria. To achieve this feat, the paper takes its roots from the role of EE in youth empowerment programmes, national integration and some integrative structures since 1960, how national integration, industrial development and youth empowerment became an issue in Nigeria, the role of entrepreneurship education in youth empowerment, industrial development and national integration, challenges of EE and its implication on youth empowerment, industrial development and national integration, the benefits of youth-empowerment in Nigeria and some challenges in the delivery of EE for youth empowerment and industrial development. To surmount these challenges, the paper examines the need for a synergy and the relevant agencies to be collaborated in the EE programme. In addition, there is the proposed strategy for effective implementation. Then the paper concludes and recommends that through EE, the nation’s quest for youth empowerment, industrial development and the consolidation of national integration could be realized in records time. Keywords: Entrepreneurship Education, Industrial Development, Youth Empowerment, National Integration and Nigeria

Autopornography and the struggle for the recognition of a sexual subjectivity: a theoretical analysis from Loree Erickson’s testimony in The Feminist Porn Book

The present article aims to reach an understanding of the recognition process at work in autopornography through the analysis of Loree Erickson’s testimony of her own production of pornography in which she performs. I want to especially address the issues of sexual agency and recognition of a positive erotic potential for women living with disabilities. Paradoxically, if mainstream pornography can be a tool of oppression—i.e., the fetishization of differences and the exclusion of the sexual sphere according to racist, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist criteria—it can also be subverted into an emancipation or empowerment tool in order to enlarge the scope of available sexual scripts and of sexual subjectivities.

A Black Theological Response to Race-Based Medicine: Reconciliation in Minority Communities.

The harm race-based medicine inflicts on minority bodies through race-based experimentation and the false solutions a race-based drug ensues within minority communities provokes concern. Such areas analyze the minority patient in a physical proxy. Though the mind and body are important entities, we cannot forget about the spirit. Healing is not just a physical practice; it includes spiritual practice. Efficient medicine includes the holistic elements of the mind, body, and spirit. Therefore, the spiritual discipline of black theology can be used as a tool to mend the harms of race-based medicine. It can be an avenue of research to further particular concerns for justice in medical care . Such theology contributes to the discussion of race-based medicine indicating the need for the voice, participation, and interdependence of minorities. Black theology can be used as a tool of healing and empowerment for health equity and awareness by exploring black theology's response to race-based medicine, analyzing race in biblical literature, using biblical literature as a tool for minority patient empowerment, building on past and current black church health advocacy with personal leadership in health advocacy.

Joint autoethnography of teacher experience in the academy: exploring methods for collaborative inquiry

ABSTRACTThis manuscript uses a joint autoethnographic methodology to explore the experiences of two language teacher scholars working in the academy outside the global centre in Japan. Emphasis is given to how the methodology used, cycles of reflective writing, reveals commonalities and differences in our respective experiences of working in the Japanese academy. Our accounts are interlinked with literature on global flows of labour and the marginalized position of non-Japanese within the Japanese academy. We present our reflective methodology as a tool of empowerment that allows for otherwise marginalized voices to be explored, heard, and shared with the larger academic community.

From the ground up: cultural heritage practices as tools for empowerment in the Homeless Heritage project

The Homeless Heritage project took place across two English cities (Bristol and York) between 2010 and 2014. The project sought to use a range of participatory heritage practices to engage contemporary homeless people in documenting their perspectives on each city. Drawing on data gathered over three and a half years this paper reflects on how collaborative cultural heritage practices can be useful in recording diverse stakeholder perspectives which can become catalysts for social change. It is further argued that two interactive exhibitions that resulted from the Homeless Heritage project contributed to the democratisation of knowledge, aiding negotiation of the complicated politics of contemporary homelessness in valuable ways.

“Veni, vidi, … vici?” EU performance and two faces of conditionality towards Ukraine

ABSTRACTConcluding an Association Agreement (AA) has been a major incentive of EU conditionality towards Ukraine and most other Eastern Partnership countries. Contrary to what was intended and expected, Ukrainian government under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych refused to conclude the AA and, in the course of the subsequent countrywide mass uprising, turned into a more authoritarian version of itself. To explore EU performance, in this case, the article analyses EU conditionality towards Ukraine in 2010–2014. If conditionality is conceptualised as intergovernmental bargaining, then EU policy failed because the conditions were not met by Yanukovych. However, if conditionality is conceptualised as a tool of societal mobilisation and differential empowerment of domestic actors, then EU policy succeeded because the desired outcome was achieved, albeit through an unexpected course of events. This second face of conditionality is essential to understanding EU performance and anticipating effects of EU policies in the neighbourhood.

"The pen is a powerful weapon; it can make you change": The value of using reflective writing with adolescents

INTRODUCTION: Adolescent programmes have been criticised for implementing activities but not allowing opportunities for reflection. One way that reflection can be facilitated is through writing. This paper describes the use of reflective writing with adolescents as part of a health promoting schools project in Cape Town, South Africa. METHOD: The project included an annual leadership camp for adolescent learners. A descriptive, qualitative study was conducted to describe how the learners responded to writing as a means to express their feelings about, and experiences of, the camp. Thirty learners participated in two writing sessions resulting in 53 written reflections that were analysed thematically. FINDINGS: Three themes emerged: (1) Reflections on self; (2) Reflections on self in relation to others; and (3) Reflections on writing. Participants reflected on connecting with complex, positive and negative feelings, and felt that reflective writing had enabled them to express themselves with courage and honesty, connect with themselves, identify weaknesses and let go of negative emotions and feelings. Furthermore, writing was perceived as being non-judgmental, providing a sense of relief and release, and evoking emotions. CONCLUSION: Reflective writing enabled the participants to acknowledge personal changes and development, and provided insight into their feelings and experiences. This study shows the value of reflective writing for use by health professionals such as occupational therapists, as a tool for empowerment in the pursuit of health and wellbeing. Key words: reflective writing, adolescents, empowerment, health promoting schools

LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE LAZOS DE TRABAJO ASOCIATIVO: ARTICULACIONES DESDE LA EXTENSIÓN UNIVERSITARIA

This article shares the experience of the activities of the outreach university projects “Work and production as tools for empowerment and inclusion” and “Ties of work, production and social inclusion” in the UNLPam with organizations working in partnership linked to the economy solidarity (labor cooperatives and productive microcredit). The projects aimed at designing strategies that promote social inclusion of groups with difficulties in finding employment, as well as socio-productive strategies and to promote the exchange of knowledge between academia and other community workplaces where students, graduates and teachers are committed to environmental issues. As the study population and intervention has several particularities, the projects propose an interdisciplinary approach and a participatory approach, from action research in which needs assessments are done in the field and with stakeholders, through joint construction of learning, thus strengthening the autonomy of workers.

Interview with Jan Willis

Interview with Jan Willis Emily Cohen (bio) and Jan Willis Keywords black women and spirituality, Buddhism, Buddhism and race, Jan Willis, women in Buddhism Click for larger view View full resolution Jan Willis Click for larger view View full resolution Emily Cohen Jan Willis is professor emerita of religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and visiting professor of religion at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She is author of The Diamond Light: An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhist Meditation (1972), On Knowing Reality: The Tattvartha Chapter of Asanga's Bodhisattvabhumi (1979), and Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition (1995); and editor [End Page 127] of Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet (1989).1 In addition, Willis has published numerous articles and essays on various topics in Buddhist studies, including Tibetan Buddhist meditation, hagiography, the role and authority of women in Buddhism, and the intersection of Buddhism and race. In her memoir, Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist—One Woman's Spiritual Journey (2008), Willis recounts her experiences of growing up in the Jim Crow South, leaving home to attend Cornell University, her brief and instructive involvement in the Black Panther Party, and her chance to travel to Nepal where she would meet her beloved teacher, Tibetan Lama Thubten Yeshe.2 Jan's work as a Buddhist philosopher, translator, and author continues to shape the field of Buddhist studies and is deeply influential in bringing forth the voices and stories of African American Buddhists in the United States. Her contributions to ongoing scholarship and conversations about gender, racism, and white supremacy in this country are rooted in her experiences of being black, Baptist, and Buddhist and, as such, put a spotlight on the real and enduring legacy of slavery in this country, including its current manifestations in our academic and religious institutions. Jan's was an early voice in conversations about race and Buddhism in the United States, through pieces such as "Buddhism and Race: An African American Baptist-Buddhist Perspective," in Marianne Dresser's edited volume Buddhist Women on the Edge (1996) and "Diversity and Race: New Koans for American Buddhism," in Women's Buddhism, Buddhism's Women (2000), a collection edited by Ellison Banks Findlay.3 Since then, Jan has done a number of interviews on the subject, published both in the United States and overseas. In addition to her own writing, Jan has received wide recognition for her contributions to the field of religious studies and the wider community. In 2000, she was named one of Time's "spiritual innovators for the new millennium."4 Her story and experience of religious hyphenation has been featured in texts that highlight uncommon religious narratives. For example, she is featured in William David Hart's text, Black Religion: Malcolm X, Julius Lester, and Jan Willis (2008), wherein Hart is arguing against Afro-centricity by giving examples of what he calls Afro-Eccentricity, or, "those figures who do not conform to standard expectations of what it means to be a black person and a religious [End Page 128] person."5 Jan is also highlighted in Stephanie Evans's Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment (2014), which serves as a guidebook for young people to explore their own stories through the autobiographies of two hundred African Americans.6 No matter the entry point, Jan's life is an illuminating example of the richness that is brought to spiritual practices and religious traditions when women of color have a space and place to center their stories and voices. As she said to me during our conversation, "We have to include more of all of who we are." Jan is often asked to comment on being an African American and a Tibetan Buddhist. She admits the rarity of this combination but also says that "it hasn't seemed anomalous to me; it is, after all my life. It is me and it is what I do."7 I am someone who often uses "ands" and hyphens when speaking about who I am as well. I recently completed the master of divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School, where I studied gender-based violence, Buddhist ministry, and trauma...

Tecnologia educacional em saúde para pacientes em tratamento quimioterápico ambulatorial

Introduction: Antineoplastic chemotherapy is a systemic therapeutic modality for the treatment of cancer, a serious public health problem. In this context, health education represents an important facilitating tool for community empowerment, with emphasis on the use of educational technologies during nursing consultations in oncology. Thus, the objective was to develop educational material in the form of a booklet with guidelines intended for patients who undergo chemotherapy treatment at the High Complexity Oncology Care Unit (Unacon) Dr. Vitor Moutinho in Tucurui-PA. Methods: The product was included in the category of Education Technology, and it is intended for both adult patients with cancer diagnosis who undergo chemotherapy treatment in the outpatient clinic and the nursing professionals who are involved in the care of these patients. Its construction took place between the months of November 2013 and May 2014 and was updated in 2017. For this, a review of the scientific literature on the chemotherapy treatment of antineoplastic and educational materials in health was carried out, being selected 03 textbooks, 05 manuals / Protocols of other institutions and 01 monograph. Results and Discussion: A simple and colloquial language and the strategy of interaction with the reader were adopted, aiming at bringing the target public as close to the subjects as possible. The elaborated primer contains the main doubts presented by oncology patients submitted to the chemotherapy treatment and the contents of interest extracted were organized in the following categories: 1- Knowledge about cancer; 2- Knowledge about the forms of treatment and 3- Knowledge about the chemotherapy. Conclusions: The relevance of the educational materials was perceived, since they favor the interactive process between nurse, patient or family, help in the dialogue and provide the valorization of the humanization of care. Also, through the generated product, it will be possible to suggest actions to contribute to the structuring process of the oncology services in Tucurui-PA.

Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment by Stephanie Y. Evans

Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment by Stephanie Y. Evans

Inhabiting Indianness: Sherman Alexie's <em>Indian Killer</em> and the Phenomenology of White Sincerity

Inhabiting IndiannessSherman Alexie's Indian Killer and the Phenomenology of White Sincerity Zachary S. Laminack (bio) Have we somehow travelled back to the nineteenth century? —Sherman Alexie, Indian Killer On July 9, 1998, Spokane / Coeur d'Alene writer Sherman Alexie appeared alongside President Bill Clinton on PBS NewsHour as part of a series of panel discussions entitled "President Clinton's Dialogue on Race."1 Turning to Alexie early in the broadcast, Clinton offered the following: When I was running for President in 1992, I didn't know much about the American Indian condition except that we had a significant but very small population of Indians in my home state and that my grandmother was one-quarter Cherokee. That's all I knew. I spent a lot of time going around … to the reservations … to learn about this sort of nation-to-nation legal relationship that is supposed to exist between the US Government and the Native American tribes. … What I concluded … [was] that they have not been given enough empowerment or responsibility or tools to make the most of their own lives. … So they literally got the worst of both worlds. They weren't getting enough help and they certainly didn't have enough responsibility and power, in my view, to build a future. So what do you think the most important thing is for Americans to know about American Indians?2 Asked to maneuver within a narrow framework that confines Native American political sovereignty to the precarious status of a "sort of … supposed to" liminality and positions Indigenous peoples themselves as living in the "worst" of possible worlds, Alexie responded: "I think [End Page 29] the primary thing that people need to know about Indians is … that we really do exist as political entities and sovereign political nations … [and that] we are separate politically and economically. And should be." Alexie's "really do exist" pointed to the gap between Clinton's notional "Indian" and the former president's apparent inability to recognize the reality of Indigenous political sovereignty. Recounting the ways people talk to him about race, Alexie sharpened the point: "Usually … what [people] will do is come up to me and tell me they're Cherokee. But that's usually what it amounts to. Nobody talks about Indians." Taken together, Alexie's responses pointed out two related phenomena: on the one hand, how claims to Indigenous identity, particularly Cherokeeness in this example, work to open up affective space for sincere claims to solidarity; and on the other, how the sincere feelings those claims generate work for those who offer them to silence Indigenous peoples' political—and affective—sovereignty, filling space instead with talk about themselves.3 At least for most of the panel's hour, indeed no one was talking about Indians. The irony of this relative silence, especially given Clinton's claims, is that Alexie needed to make the point in the first place. Alexie and Clinton's conversation, and its quick fizzling out, reads like a scene-for-scene rewrite of the interactions between well-meaning but utterly unreflective white anthropology professor Clarence Mather and politically motivated Spokane student Marie Polatkin in Alexie's 1996 novel Indian Killer. Throughout the course of their interactions, Mather repeatedly attempts to build bridges and gain Marie's goodwill, only to not recognize how his efforts silence her abilities to respond from a position not already bounded by his discourse. While the stakes are different, the effect is the same. In both sets of interactions between white men and the Indigenous people they attempt to stand in solidarity with, what gets most in the way of seeing their sincere ambitions realized is the degree to which their whiteness colors their affects and, as a result, screens out the violence of their good intentions. How is it that such sincere moments, good intentions, and well-meaning gestures at solidarity—in Indian Killer as well as on PBS—get in the way of genuine engagement with the core problem of actively silencing Indigenous peoples and dismissing Indigenous sovereignty? How do claims to "Indianness" position Indigenous identity, for the white men in these examples, as a supplement for their affective experience [End...

Contesti in volo

Traditional design tools and procedures are not always appropriate to tackle the continuous movement of buildings and contexts. Starting from such apt consideration by Latour and Yaneva, this essay reflects on the issues that the introduction of movement and of time as strategic components of a design project involves, particularly within an Italian context. The move away from the binding duality of text and context requires an overcoming of the separation between objects and subjects that is substantial to a traditional determinist and authorial approach to the project: this is only possible through the proposition of a different dialogical and argumentative process and, consequently, a fundamental change in the role of the designer. This perspective finds a few premises within Italian discourse in the course of the 20th Century as regards three fundamental points: the city and its transformations; the necessary relationship between theory and project; the central question of form. In the conclusive remarks of the paper I propose an interpretation of form not as final solution but, as tentative form, as indispensable empowerment tool for the various actors involved.

Violencia cotidiana, marginación, limpieza social y pandillas en Guatemala

El artículo analiza la relación entre las pandillas, la violencia cotidiana y la marginación en Guatemala. Esta propuesta considera que las pandillas son un ejemplo excepcional del empleo de la violencia, y repara en la orientación de estos grupos, hacia las actividades de trasgresión de la legalidad como herramienta de afirmación y empoderamiento. En el documento se describe que el impacto de la desigual distribución de la violencia a nivel social, se acentúa en los barrios depauperados y adquiere un carácter crónico. Finalmente, el artículo menciona la limpieza social dirigida hacia el Barrio 18 y la Mara Salvatrucha porque este fenómeno es una manifestación de la profundización de las agresiones comunitarias. La violencia es protagonizada por diversos actores sociales, las pandillas son un caso más de la realidad necropolítica en Guatemala. Abstract:The article analyzes the relationship between the gangs, the daily violence, and the marginalization in Guatemala. This proposal considers that gangs are an exceptional example of the use of violence, repairs in the orientation of these groups towards the activities of transgression of law and considers the use of the body as a tool of affirmation and empowerment. The paper describes the impact of the unequal distribution of violence at the social level, it is accentuated in impoverished neighborhoods and acquired a chronic character. Finally, the article mentions social cleansing directed at the Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha because this phenomenon is a manifestation of the deepening of community aggressions. The violence is used by diverse social actors, the gangs are one more case of the necropolitics reality in Guatemala.

The Silicon Valley Ethos: Tech Industry Products, Discourses, and Practices

This special issue of Television and New Media critically examines the ethos of Silicon Valley, imagined broadly, by analyzing its products, discourses, and practices. We argue that, as a technology industry and a cultural force, Silicon Valley’s practices and discourses reflect and produce particular social and economic investments in technology as a tool of empowerment and social change. Overall, the issue argues that the ethos of Silicon Valley privileges disruption over sustainability, sharing economies over union labor, personalized access over public health, data over meaning, and security over freedom. We analyze the ways this ethos extends beyond Silicon Valley itself and shapes the way we think about and act toward labor, security, sexuality, and health. As such, Silicon Valley’s technology products—as well as the way we think about them—affect the social, political, and economic conditions of everyday life.

Empowerment of Microfinance Beneficiaries in India and Bangladesh: A Factor Analysis Approach

It is a widely known fact that micro finance plays an important role in empowering the poorer section of the population, particularly rural women, who traditionally lack access to the banking related services. From its basic norm to providing small amount of loan to the poor women to implement a number of social development programmes, micro finance is now considered as a tool of women empowerment. The present paper aims to identify the socio-economic factors that affect the empowerment level of microfinance beneficiaries in India and Bangladesh most. Further, it checks whether demographic characteristics of the beneficiaries have any association with the identified factors.