Adult learning and literacy learning for livelihoods: some international perspectives

Reflecting contemporary interest in developing new adult literacy learning programmes based on ‘literacy for livelihoods’, this article examines some case studies from New Zealand, Bangladesh, and Egypt, illustrating literacy being used in livelihoods, and relates these to the kind of literacy being taught in many adult literacy programmes today. It argues that people often change their livelihoods, and that each livelihood has literacy practices embedded within it. The authors suggest that the use of these literacy practices embedded within the livelihood activities might be a better starting point for adult literacy learning than a school-based textbook.     

Towards Strong Local Governance: Current Reform Scenario in Fiji

This article examines how the historical context of poor central-local relations and inefficient service delivery structure is used by the current military-led government in Fiji as a ploy for its local government reform agenda. Based on an analysis of secondary information on local government structure and a review of the reforms undertaken by the Review/Reform Committee, this article identifies the concentration of economic and political power at the central level as one of the major obstacles towards empowering local governance in Fiji. The article emphasizes the need for effective institutional reforms to devolve governance and resources from the centre to the grassroots.     

Bureaucratic Perceptions to the Politics–Bureaucracy Relations in Bangladesh: A Moral Dilemma in between Political Neutrality and Responsiveness

Irrespective of the systems of government, a major question is: what are the views and perceptions of the bureaucrats about politics–bureaucracy relations? Aiming to address this problem, in this article an attempt has been made to undertake an empirical study of bureaucracy in Bangladesh. The study reveals that as a post-colonial structure, government bureaucracy is an essential and integral part of the administration in Bangladesh but the bureaucracies are always in a dilemma regarding their relationship with the political leaderships. The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is neither normatively dichotomous with political neutrality nor abundantly cohesive or responsive to the political leaderships according to the perceptions of bureaucracy. Moreover, bureaucracy in Bangladesh is suffering from a moral puzzle between political neutrality and political responsiveness even though the bureaucrats are still in a dominant position in some cases.     

Sympathy for the Devil: When and How to Negotiate with Criminal Gangs—Case of El Salvador

ABSTRACT

Criminal gangs, while posing the most substantial threat to security in the Western hemisphere, fall outside the scope of contemporary studies in the field of mediation and negotiation. The prevailing wisdom that gangs are unmanageable due to their apolitical nature and the high political cost of dialogue has led to an approach that relies heavily on the security sector. While the security sector can and must play a role, confrontation alone has proven insufficient. The three-step theory presented in this article seeks to explain how and when to engage in dialogue as an alternative means of confronting criminal gangs. The success of this process, a reduction in violence and criminality through the transformation of gang-related conflict, hinges on sequencing and begins with state-sponsored mediation conducted in secret to establish a cease-fire between the gangs, then enters the phase of public negotiation between the state and the gangs, and finally concludes with a process of mainstreaming the reformed structures into society. This theory assumes that mediators can work with the gangs through a process of assisted articulation to develop a negotiating position, opening a zone of possible agreement between the government and the gangs. El Salvador offers a compelling example of how a society steeped in gang violence might pursue dialogue while also highlighting the threats posed to any negotiation.     

Analysis of the Effects and Relationship of Perceived Handwritten Signature's Size,Graphical Complexity,and Legibility with Dynamic Parameters for Forged and Genuine Samples

This article presents an analysis of handwritten signature dynamics belonging to two authentication groups, namely genuine and forged signature samples. Genuine signatures are initially classified based on their relative size, graphical complexity, and legibility as perceived by human examiners. A pool of dynamic features is then extracted for each signature sample in the two groups. A two‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA) is carried out to investigate the effects and the relationship between the perceived classifications and the authentication groups. Homogeneity of variance was ensured through Bartlett's test prior to ANOVA testing. The results demonstrated that among all the investigated dynamic features, pen pressure is the most distinctive which is significantly different for the two authentication groups as well as for the different perceived classifications. In addition, all the relationships investigated, namely authenticity group versus size, graphical complexity, and legibility, were found to be positive for pen pressure.     

Bangladeshi migration to Italy: the family perspective

Reformation of immigration policy in Italy has paved the way for the emergence of some non-European emigrant communities in Italy including Bangladeshi community. This study addresses the Bangladeshi migration to Italy by highlighting context of immigrant reception in Italy, characteristics of Bangladeshi emigrants, their channels of migration, role of intermediaries in the migration process, economic cost of migration and inflows of remittances and its implications on family dynamics. This study draws from the Bangladesh Household Remittance Survey conducted by the International Organization for Migration—Dhaka in 2009. The study reports that opportunities in the Italian labour market translate into the increased opportunities for migrant families left behind in Bangladesh.     

Analysis of energy consumption and indicators of energy use in Bangladesh

Rapid growth in the demand for commercial energy in Bangladesh poses serious development constraints in recent years. Per capita energy consumption of Bangladesh is one of the lowest in the world (252 kgoe in 2005). This paper undertakes an empirical investigation to find out the trends in energy intensities by comparing the energy consumption per capita and energy consumption per GDP for agriculture, industry, commercial, and transport sectors of Bangladesh and investigate their conditions over the long run. Only 43% of total population has access to electricity facility. Though natural gas provides two-third of the nation’s commercial fossil fuel supply, only 4% households have access to natural gas networks. Biomass fuels are estimated to account for about 73% of the country’s primary energy supply. The daily electricity output totals around 3800 MW against the demand of 6000 MW, leaving a supply crunch of 2200 MW. Natural gas has so far fuelled more than 90% of the power plants of the country. Hydro-electricity contributes only 3% of the total energy supply in Bangladesh. More than 90% of the oil and petroleum products are imported. The country has a substantial potential for coal, most of which has yet to be explored. Overall energy intensity increased approximately twofold from 1980 to 2005. The findings of the study show that change in energy intensity is due to structural effect, while increase in aggregate energy consumption is due to both the activity effect and structural effect. Renewable energy sources will largely mitigate the dire energy crisis in rural areas of Bangladesh. Over 400,000 Solar Home Systems (SHSs) have been installed so far, benefiting over 4 million rural people. More fiscal and other incentives should be included in the recently formulated Renewable Energy Policy to investors for rapid development of clean energy. In addition, regional cooperation should be enhanced specially in case of hydro-power and natural gas. Finally, coal based power plant should be set up as early as possible.     

An Evidence‐Based Forensic Taxonomy of Windows Phone Communication Apps

Communication apps can be an important source of evidence in a forensic investigation (e.g., in the investigation of a drug trafficking or terrorism case where the communications apps were used by the accused persons during the transactions or planning activities). This study presents the first evidence‐based forensic taxonomy of Windows Phone communication apps, using an existing two‐dimensional Android forensic taxonomy as a baseline. Specifically, 30 Windows Phone communication apps, including Instant Messaging (IM) and Voice over IP (VoIP) apps, are examined. Artifacts extracted using physical acquisition are analyzed, and seven digital evidence objects of forensic interest are identified, namely: Call Log, Chats, Contacts, Locations, Installed Applications, SMSs and User Accounts. Findings from this study would help to facilitate timely and effective forensic investigations involving Windows Phone communication apps.     

Female student athletes’ perceptions of acceptability and the occurrence of sexual-related behaviour by their coaches in India

The current study assessed the perceptions of acceptable sexual behaviour of coaches and the occurrence of sexual harassment among female student in India. A sample of 180 Indian female student-athletes at intercollegiate and inter-university levels with male coaches participated in this study. A questionnaire on sport-specific Touch and Behaviour versus Unwanted Intimacy from coaches (Vanden Auweele et al., 2008), consisting of 41 items on a 5-point rating scale was used. The participants were asked to indicate the acceptability of specific coaching behaviour as well as the occurrence of the behaviour represented in each item. The acceptability of the behaviour was determined by means and standard deviations, while the occurrence was determined by frequencies. Factor analysis was performed to determine the structure of the coaches’ behaviour and athletes’ acceptability thereof, which yielded four factors. Cronbach’s alpha was used to determine the internal consistency of the extracted items on each factor. Two factors, namely, unwanted sexual behaviour and inappropriate verbal and physical sexual behaviour, were regarded by athletes as very serious and unacceptable coach behaviour, while a third factor represented context-dependent suspicious behaviour (a grey area in which athletes differ in their opinion) and was perceived to be serious and unacceptable. A fourth factor represented acceptable behaviour. The occurrence of very serious and unacceptable behaviour was reported by 31% of the female athletes.