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This paper aims to study the Pesantren’s role in alleviating the poverty in rural region, and the discussion is connected to the theory of local economic development and Maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah.

This paper engages a case study and an interview to get insight into the subject matters.

This study finds that the roles of an entrepreneur and a stimulator are evident from the sampled Pesantren in empowering the local economy and the underprivileged community. Further, inasmuch as the fundamental concept of local economic development is in line with Maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah, the evidence from the sampled Pesantren is also representative of its role in actualising it. This study is relevant for academics, local government in Indonesia and other related stakeholders.

This paper credits both theoretical and practical implications for academics and the government. Firstly, by discussing the concept of prosperity from the Western and Islamic perspective, this paper creates a notion that these theories are harmonisable. Secondly, by sampling a Pesantren to draw how these two concepts are applied to advance a rural economy, this paper comes out with the hands-on advice for Indonesian government to legally engage with the existing Pesantrens to perform its rural development programmes.

While a Pesantren’s role in empowering a disadvantaged community is comprehensively investigated, an accurate evidence is documented which can best challenge its radicalism and terrorism issues.

This is the first study to harmonise the theory of local economic development and Maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah and presents the practical evidence from a Pesantren.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the multifaceted information disadvantages facing the so‐called information poor in today's society. It has two specific objectives: to identify, from the empirical evidence of individuals' daily and regular information practices, meaningful constructs for defining information inequality; and to investigate how the “information poor” characterise on these constructs in comparison with others.

The study developed its findings in relation to the above objectives inductively from the interview transcripts of 73 people of different social statuses and occupations regarding their daily and regular information practices.

Three concepts emerged as meaningful constructs to define information inequality, hence to describe the information poor: individuals' information resource bases, information practices, and information assets. The information poor are found to be disadvantaged in all these aspects. They are first disadvantaged by limited freedom and/or opportunities in claiming society's vast and rapidly increasing information resources into their own information resource bases; then by the constraint of their information practices in developing their information resource bases and obtaining information utilities from these resources; and further more by impoverished information assets to empower themselves in normal and problematic situations.

Understanding of the information poor as sketched above will likely demand further research into a number of issues/areas hitherto ignored by information inequality studies.

This paper is one of the first to address empirically one of the most fundamental questions in information inequality studies; it extends library and information science understanding of the information poor hitherto dominated by the information deficiency thesis.

The international marketing field has witnessed many studies related to “country of origin” (COO) effects or the “made in” concept over the past few decades. Yet COO research is deeply rooted in the so-called “production-related” approach, which mainly accounts for production- or technology-based factors. Barely considered is the “consumption-related” perspective, which reflects consumers' proclivity to base their buying decisions on foreigners' product choice. In this paper, we propose the “country of reference” (COR) concept, in which consumers deliberately imitate the product choices of consumers from another country, to whom the former (i.e. the imitators) attribute superior or more prestigious personas.

Unlike the made in concept, which emphasizes favored product qualities from superior manufacturing countries, we believe product preferences may arise from cross-border benchmarking or “cross-country referencing.” Pivoting on the optimal distinctiveness theory, this paper suggests a COR framework that incorporates the system justification theory and the self-discrepancy concept, along with decision heuristics and mental simulation effects. The proposed framework aims to explain consumers' inclination to “buy what certain foreigners buy.”

We suggest critical propositions related to the COR concept, discuss its marketing implications, and pinpoint further research issues.

COR may become a coping strategy through which low-status consumers perceiving themselves as less privileged than their high-status counterparts can narrow this gap by means of decision mimicking.

This chapter considers the conflicts which arise at the intersection of the free exercise of religion and sexual minority rights in the domains of work and non-work activities. Specifically, by examining the key features of various discrimination cases from the US and UK contexts, the chapter identifies the possible tensions between different minority groups and the negotiation and settlement of their respective interests and entitlements. In an effort to reconcile the seemingly competing claims made for equality, the chapter considers a theoretical middle range within which the existing debates may be addressed through the careful application of Isaiah Berlin’s theory of positive and negative freedoms in public life. The use of Berlin’s theory contributes to the analysis of the justice standing of religious and sexual minority groups, what protections minority groups in conflict must be accorded vis-à-vis each other, and the nature of remedies which should be accorded to each group in theory and practice.

The history and significance of equal opportunities are outlined and the development of initiatives within the library profession in Great Britain is examined. Two relevant research projects in Manchester Polytechnic′s Department of Library and Information Studies are discussed and outlined by their authors.

It is the contention of this paper that the state of siege on the part of students against academics and administrators of the 1960s has been replaced by one led by university administrators who are now waging a war of “political correctness” against students and faculty. These administrators were in large part the radicals of the 1960s. The present paper attempts to analyze the effects of government involvement in this industry on this phenomenon and the role of free speech rights in the presence and absence of marketplace considerations.

Discusses political correctness and the economics of higher education.

The contention is that competition brings about a better product at a lower price, and that the educational sector is no exception to this general rule. If free enterprise were allowed to operate in this context, much of these difficulties would disappear.

The paper offers insights into today's higher education industry and how economic analysis can explain the current “state of siege” on university campuses.

This chapter reviews some of the cohesive concepts raised in the recent literature regarding normative dialogues between business and society. The purpose is to draw a few meaningful implications toward formulating new guiding philosophies for interaction between large global businesses and society in general. As these concepts tend to counterbalance the preponderance of the pure free market ideology and the traditional understanding of cultural segregation, the chapter's discussion thereof should help synthesize divergent arguments into a unified framework for business–society interface in this globalized environment.

As a failure analysis emphasizing school leadership in underprivileged schools serving socioeconomically disadvantaged and minority students, the study is interested in determining whether and to what extent variations in distributed leadership (DL) practices are related to student performance through the mediating effects of four-path variables.

This research conducted secondary data analysis using the 2015 PISA American data. The study employed factor analysis and structural equation models (SEMs) to investigate multidimensional associations among a set of variables, including school socioeconomic status (SES), student composition, DL practices, school four-path factors and student performance. The research used a design-based resampling approach with balanced repeated replication (BRR) weights to analyze the complex survey data.

The results indicate that, within a DL framework, teacher leadership in instructional management is positively and directly related to student performance. Governing board leadership in school administration is indirectly related to student performance through four-path variables' mediating effects. Importantly, though the two leadership sources help improve student performance, they are less prevalent in underprivileged schools with disproportional minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

This research is a failure analysis through the lens of DL for underprivileged schools. The study used rigorous quantitative approaches and examined multidimensional associations among school socioeconomic status (SES), DL, school factors that school leaders could maneuver and student performance. The evidence sheds light on remedial actions in failed schools to focus on improving teacher leadership and organizational capacity.

Brazil’s economic growth in the first decade of this century was accompanied by greater visibility of the disadvantaged economic classes in films, in television, and in the press. Even the celebrated telenovelas and TV series began to feature a side of Brazil which, previously, had only been presented in a negative light. This chapter proposes a central question: Could media visibility be masking the complexity of economic class for social structure or class structure in Brazilian society, which, despite recent improvements, is still marked by stark social divides?

Our objective is to approach this issue from a cultural perspective focused on analyzing media representations of underprivileged groups, following Douglas Kellner’s (1995) ideas that suggest a contextualizing account of media cultural artifacts.

The analysis encompasses the audiovisual production as its corpus – telenovela and TV series – from Rede Globo produced from 2002 to 2012. However, bringing to bear complementary data, we reference other genres and formats as well. We argue that, while attention has been paid to the recent contesting of some of the negative stereotypes surrounding the underprivileged classes circulating within the media, they do not do justice to the complexities of social inequality in contemporary Brazil. We show that mainstream media treatments of social inequality focus entirely on showing the lifestyle of the underprivileged “working poor,” while overlooking many other aspects of social inequality and deprivation.

This study aims to look into the scope of exploring and promoting business zakah for the enhancement of the well-being of the underprivileged in society.

This is mainly a qualitative research conducted using both primary and secondary data. Primary data have been collected from 34 business entrepreneurs in Bangladesh through semi-structured in-depth interviews. The secondary data have been collected from annual reports with a view to calculating business zakah of five business enterprises for providing an indicative picture of prospective volume of business zakah in Bangladesh. Finally, collected qualitative data have been analyzed thematically following the due procedures with a view to addressing the research questions.

The findings reveal that around thirty five percent of sample entrepreneurs have used business zakah fund for fully and partially financing their social projects. It also reveals that on average annual business zakah fund amounts to nearly 144m BDT (around US$1.7m) per business enterprise. These findings bear clear witness that business zakah has extensive scope and promising prospect to be an instrument of financing social projects aimed at ensuring social well-being of the disadvantaged.

The findings of this research can be used as a guide to promote business zakah to finance social programs aimed at ensuring the well-being of the underprivileged of all societies particularly of Muslim countries representing one-fourth of the world population.

Exploring and promoting business zakah as an initiative of broadening the base of zakah is an innovative move and net addition to the literature of Islamic finance. It contributes greatly to the poverty alleviation movement in the sense that Muslim business entrepreneurs will now find their business zakah fund readily available to finance their social projects aimed at ensuring well-being of the impoverished.