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This chapter adopts the midrange theories schema to expand Pels and Sheth (2017) matrix on business models to serve the low-income consumers (LIC): market adaptation, mission focus, radical innovation, and inclusive ecosystems. To this end, it identifies the underlying general business theories (systems theory and neo-classical economics) and ontological theories (positivism and interpretivist) nested in each of the matrix’s four cells.

Understanding the general theories from which concepts and guidelines are drawn allows a two-way contribution. On one hand, it comprehends which other concepts can be integrated into the LIC literature. Alternatively, it highlights what insights generated from the study of the LIC markets bring to these theories.

Pro-poor innovations are innovations targeted at economically poor consumers. These innovations have the potential to improve consumer wellbeing. However, while take up of some such innovations has been rapid (e.g., mobile phones) take up of others has been slower (e.g., fuel efficient stoves). What explains why some pro-poor innovations fail and some succeed? While the literature on consumer innovation adoption in economically wealthy countries is vast, there is very little literature in the context of the “bottom-of-the-pyramid” (BoP) and subsistence marketplaces. This chapter aims to begin answering this question through a review of the extant literature in the area of consumer innovation adoption, which is integrated with literature in the area of consumption within subsistence marketplaces and the BoP. A conceptual model is proposed which outlines key parameters for marketers and managers. The chapter closes by outlining implications and a future research agenda.

People who are “othered” confront an epistemic injustice that silences and discards their knowledge. Rather than being actors in their own future, people in positions of authority dictate prescriptive procedures, removing marginalized individuals – and often the communities that care about them – from participating in what could be real and sustainable solutions to harmful social conditions. These injustices create us/them narratives, which can become social landmines that may explode under pressure. Restorative practices prize shared learning and decision-making to harness collective energies around a common purpose to repair relationships. Dialogue facilitated in a circle format ritualizes acts of inclusion and utilizes the power of followership – those without formal authority – to create a shared understanding. Revealing complexities beyond a myopic us/them perspective expands cognitive empathy and refocuses participants on unmet needs to help defuse social landmines. This chapter illustrates three inclusive circle processes that can be employed to uphold human dignity by affirming belonging within a diverse community and honoring all people’s voice and agency. Dialogue circles respond to the injustice of being othered by granting people the right to interpret their own lives. In Detroit, Guatemala, and Singapore, facilitated circles create space for reciprocal storytelling and foster social connections among neighbors, police, and migrants. Most significantly, people become stewards of their future, not problems to be managed, kindling life-affirming resolve collectively supported within their communities.

This chapter draws on data from two studies, one in Canada and another in the United States, focused on the experiences of pedagogical partnership as described by students traditionally underrepresented and underserved in higher education. These students argue that such collaborations with faculty hold promise for creating more inclusive and responsive practices. Using the concept of epistemic justice, the authors explore how partnerships can facilitate epistemological forms of equity and inclusion by (1) creating more equitable conceptions of knowing and knowledge that open possibilities for (2) fostering students’ confidence in their knowledge and willingness to share it with others. The authors argue that partnerships – in their epistemic, relational, and affective impacts – are one powerful way to recognize underrepresented and underserved students as “holders and creators of knowledge” (Delgado-Bernal, 2002, p. 106) and bring about greater epistemic justice in higher education.

This chapter argues that the near-universal exclusion from the academy of the Shakespeare Authorship Question (or SAQ) represents a significant but little-understood example of an internal threat to academic freedom. Using an epistemological lens, this chapter examines and critiques the invidious and marginalizing rhetoric used to suppress such research by demonstrating the extent to which it constitutes a pattern of epistemic vice: that, by calling skeptics “conspiracy theorists” and comparing them to Holocaust deniers rather than addressing the substance of their claims, orthodox Shakespeare academics risk committing acts of epistemic vice, injustice and oppression, as well as foreclosing potentially productive lines of inquiry in their discipline. To better understand this phenomenon and its implications, the chapter subjects selected statements to external criteria in the form of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ 2015 Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, which provides a set of robust normative dispositions and knowledge practices for understanding the nature of the scholarly enterprise. The analysis reveals that the proscription against the SAQ constitutes an unwarranted infringement on the academic freedom not only of those targeted by this rhetoric, but – by extension – of all Shakespeare scholars as well.

In this chapter, I use the issue of violence against transgender individuals to explore the (limited) meanings of gender within the context of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in the United Nations (UN).

Using constructivist grounded theory and institutional ethnography I bring together field research from two ethnographic qualitative research projects I have been pursuing from 2008 to 2012; I studied transgender communities in the US and the CSW through their annual meetings in the New York Headquarters of the UN.

I first demonstrate the severity of transphobic violence as a global public health problem. I proceed to report highlights of global LGBT activism, such as the Yogyakarta Principles and the latest developments within the Human Rights Council of the UN for the first time addressing global LGBT violence in 2011. I then examine the silencing of transgender experiences in the CSW by exploring the contested use of the term gender over the last two decades of intergovernmental negotiations.

This study highlights the need to broaden the conceptualization of violence and gender violence which has important theoretical and policy implications. Linking micro experiences of violent victimization in local trans-communities to the macro context of gender violence in global gender equality policy development is crucial to the advancement of human rights.