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The bread and butter of marginal communities primarily rely on their artisanal work, to which the communities’ women have notable contributions despite facing numerous challenges. This study aims to unveil the challenges along with latent opportunities of different marginal women entrepreneurs in the rural areas of Bangladesh.

This study used narrative inquiry to explore the real-life business phenomena of 15 marginal women entrepreneurs with more than 5 years of business experience living in 4 districts of Bangladesh. This approach was used to document participants’ responses through the storytelling of their daily business experiences.

The findings of this paper indicate that vulnerable living conditions, social negligence, availability of substitutes, frequent sickness, increasing price of raw materials, lack of entrepreneurial skills and lack of managerial skills are the major challenges of marginal women entrepreneurs. In contrast, minimum capital requirement, home-based business, traditional profession, retaining cultural heritage and lack of accountability are the main opportunities that motivate marginal women to continue their entrepreneurial activities.

The insight of this research can promote and sustain marginal women entrepreneurship and aid researchers, policymakers and businesses in improving the various entrepreneurial aspects of informal community entrepreneurs in developing countries. However, the study was limited to five marginal community entrepreneurs (Rishi, Kumor, Jele, Cobbler and Kamar) in Bangladesh. Therefore, conducting future research encompassing all marginalized communities is recommended, and empirical studies on this domain are highly encouraged.

The insight of this research can promote and sustain marginal women entrepreneurship and aid researchers, policymakers and businesses in improving the various entrepreneurial aspects of informal community entrepreneurs in developing countries.

In the authors’ knowledge, this is unique research on marginal women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.

The primary goal of the Restorative Justice process is not punishment but making good the harm done by offending for the victim, the community and the offender. Offenders have to take responsibility for their actions as a precondition to addressing the harm that they have caused. Offenders become aware that a crime is committed, not against an abstraction, but against someone real, a person like themselves and against their community, who are directly and indirectly affected by what has happened. Crime and conflict affect relationships between individuals who are left outside the court system altogether by conventional justice. Proceedings and arguments of the restorative process are voluntary for all parties. People are given the opportunity to partake in mediation, or to accept reparation. The process is always confidential however; outcomes and agreements can be made public, depending on the authorisation by participants.

An empirical study of the aspirations of Israeli Arab high school students shows that in comparison with the low educational and occupational attainments of their predecessors, Israeli Arab high school students hold unrealistic, highly optimistic views regarding their future educational and occupational destinations, irrespective of their social origins. These findings contradict extant sociological perspectives, which view the gap between aspirations and destinations as improbable, and to the extent that this gap exists, as an expression of naiveté, ignorance, or non-rationality. The puzzling gaps between aspirations and destinations among Israeli Arab adolescents led to a new model of the production of minority aspirations. This model suggests that high aspirations among minority youth are produced by converging expectations of local community leaders, school personnel, and parents, who actively heat up future aspirations amongst young cohorts. The paper concludes with proposals for comparative studies of minority aspirations in different societies.

This paper aims to present a new master’s programme for promoting energy access and energy efficiency in Southern Africa.

A transdisciplinary approach called “participatory integrated assessment of energy systems” (PARTICIPIA) was used for the development of the curriculum. This approach is based on the two emerging fields of “multi-scale integrated assessment” and “science for governance”, which bring innovative concepts and methods.

The application of the PARTICIPIA methodology to three case studies reveals that the proposed transdisciplinary approach could support energy and development policies in the region. The implementation of the PARTICIPIA curriculum in three higher education institutions reveals its ability to respond to the needs of specific contexts and its connection with existing higher education programmes.

Considering energy issues from a transdisciplinary approach in higher education is absolutely critical because such a holistic view cannot be achieved through engineering curricula. Deliberate and greater efforts should be made to integrate methods from “multi-scale integrated assessment” and “science for governance” in higher education curricula to train a new breed of modern-day energy planners in charge of coming up with solutions that are shared by all relevant stakeholders.

This paper presents an innovative higher education curriculum in terms of the attention given to energy access and energy efficiency that affect the southern Africa region and the nature of the methodology adopted to face these issues.

Health in low-income countries has become associated with the provision of minimum guaranteed public health services though Essential Health Packages (EHPs). How far do EHPs deliver the human right to health for all? This study addresses this question through qualitative research into access to health care for vulnerable communities, using Malawi as a case study. This study shows that there are significant accountability gaps and perceptions of weak service provision in Malawi’s EHP in relation to some particularly marginalised (and stigmatised) groups that limit the right to health and the promise of “health for all”.

This study extends the body of qualitative work on EHPs in general and on Malawi in particular by exploring the perceptions of key stakeholders in relation to inclusivity and the delivery of health policies to particularly vulnerable groups. To do so, this study adopted an approach based on interpretive epistemologies (Scott, 2014). This study conducted largely unstructured interviews with a range of health stakeholders, speaking to stakeholders individually, rather than through focus groups due to the potentially sensitive nature of the topic.

The findings of this study are as follows: limited inclusion of civil society actors and local communities; local communities and local policymakers feel frustration with the gap between the promises of consultation in the EHP and the reality, and the difficulties of not having effective channels of communication; and exclusionary health practices for particularly vulnerable groups.

There are limitations based on the qualitative methodology, and in terms of the particularly vulnerable groups – the authors studied two such groups (people with disabilities and those who identify as LBTQ) but a wider survey of vulnerable groups is needed to extend and confirm the findings.

Greater attention to the health rights of vulnerable groups would improve access and services, even in the context of resource restrictions. This study suggests that a deeper engagement with human rights-based approaches would pay dividends in terms of increasing access to health in Malawi, even within the constraints of the EHP process. Furthermore, without this, there is the risk that discrimination and exclusion will become more embedded in health policies, rather than progressively minimised.

Without addressing these issues, there is the risk that discrimination and exclusion will become more embedded in health policies, rather than progressively minimised.

This paper makes an important contribution to the growing literatures on EHP in sub-Saharan Africa and Malawi in particular and to the importance of listening to stakeholder perceptions. It provides original data on stakeholder perspectives of the challenges associated with universalising health care in resource-constrained countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is one of the first papers to focus on the rights of disabled and LBTQ people in relation to EHPs.

Zakat is an important Islamic economic instrument that plays significant role in Sustainable Development Goals. Accordingly, Zakat Institutions must manage zakat in a proper and efficient manner. This study aims to examine the efficiency of Zakat Institutions based on their clusters which are government, business and social organizations.

This study uses three quantitative methods: data envelopment analysis (DEA), free disposal hull and super-efficiency DEA. The analytical method is based on production approach, variable return to scale assumption and output orientation. The sample consists of 14 Zakat Institutions from three clusters: Zakat Institutions managed by government, Zakat Institutions managed by corporation and Zakat Institution managed by social organizations.

The results revealed that all of three techniques culminate the same ranking order of efficiency. Zakat Institution managed by the government is the most efficient Zakat Institution, with the average value of 0.87 by using three approaches combined. Meanwhile, Zakat Institutions owned by company and social institutions cluster are in second and third position, with the average value of 0.65 and 0.4, respectively, based on the results of the three approaches. This study contends that the level of efficiency of Zakat Institutions may be supported by clusters (affiliations) in their management.

This study’s limitation is the inadequacy of the required data. Nonetheless, this study provides insights to improve the efficiency of Zakat Institutions based on their clusters. Zakat Institutions in each cluster can improve their efficiency by optimizing inputs to produce multiple outputs.

This study enhances research on the efficiency of Zakat Institutions using three methods to assess the consistency and strength of Zakat Institutions’ efficiency values. In addition, this study examines the efficiency level of Zakat Institutions based on their clusters.

The purpose of this paper is to detect causes of potential vulnerability via indicators of non-resilience among marginalized groups. These causes could become a catalyst for a major deprivation of resilience and further victimization of a group, either while disaster is occurring or in its aftermath.

Exploration of resilience was based on social and economic research conducted in Serbia 2012-2013 with one of the most vulnerable communities, with the goal of mapping local understandings of resilience in contrast to issues of risk and vulnerability. A specific two layer methodology, i.e. phenomenology of desperateness was based on sociological imagination and social action.

The author detected and labeled the most relevant socio-economic causes of miserable life conditions among the given marginal group. Such analytical dimensions become marked as the indicators of vulnerabilities. Mapping these vulnerabilities, especially among the marginal communities, is the first step in preventing their victimization.

The responsible social agents are compatible with the creation of the relevant map and profile of the most vulnerable actors with the goal of preventing a possible eugenics selection during DRR and response.

In addition to preventing victimization during a disaster, this study provides preventives of the sentiment-driven actions induced by paternalistically organised everyday life (established by way of the same indicators) within the framework of a new totalitarian ideology, such as a para-military organization of daily activities.

This paper provides a specific methodology for detecting desperateness as an inner process in vulnerability and new insights into the comprehension of the relation between social structure of marginal groups, their resilience and their members’ vulnerability.

This chapter reflects on the approach and learning of an innovative project in Bangladesh that addresses drinking water security issues of the poor and marginal communities through participatory research, innovation, and social mobilization. The people, living in the most difficult geophysical areas, are facing severe crisis of drinking water and associated health risks due to remoteness, seasonality, social isolation, and poor institutional links. The geophysical constraints such as growing salinity, arsenic, flood and drought, and drawdown of groundwater tables have aggravated the problems. The existing government services hardly reach to the most unserved and needy people because of remoteness and lack of responsiveness of the government departments. A participatory action research project led to collective understanding about the severity of the problems and associated health risks and vulnerability. This again built greater awareness and motivated the poor, women, and marginal communities to establish links with key actors and take various local and collective actions toward ensuring their greater access to drinking water, sanitation facilities, and health services from the relevant government departments and development agencies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of peripherality and centrality in relation to entrepreneurial learning and development. Peripherality has previously been considered from a mainly geographical perspective as being remote, loosely connected and marginal. A broader conception of the topic is addressed, asking: in what ways is peripherality relevant to entrepreneurial learning? How can centre-peripheral connectivity enhance this? What are the implications for communities, learners and educators?

Discourses of entrepreneurship development relating to policy, economics, geography and culture favour the concept of centres, which attract attention, resources, activities and people. Whilst peripherality is an enduring topic of interest in regional studies, it is widened through using the conceptualisation of legitimate peripheral participation in social learning as a methodological lens for the study. A case study of the technology sector in Cape Breton, Canada is included to illustrate peripheral entrepreneurship.

The paper suggests ways in which peripheral-central relationships can be a positive factor in entrepreneurial learning. It suggests that rebalancing the bidirectional “flow” of knowledge, talent and resources between centres and peripheries can enhance the value of peripheral entrepreneurship, learning and innovation.

The paper connects with prior work on community economic development, offering observations for entrepreneurial learning and development of knowledge-intensive businesses in peripheral areas. Boundary-spanning leadership and skills are required to facilitate peripheral-central interaction and entrepreneurship.

Peripherality is defined more widely than in prior work, suggesting peripheral learning is part of the fundamental human experience and offers new insights, innovations and opportunities which can create shared value. A conceptual framework for peripheral-central entrepreneurial learning is proposed, which may assist in rebalancing central-peripheral value creation, innovation and regeneration.

In the context of intense intercultural experience, the individual’s identity is often transformed by the forces of acculturation. Unexpectedly powerful demands, influences, and resistances buffet the values, beliefs, and behaviors of the sojourner, leading to confusion, and eventually resolution of profound identity issues. The resulting sense of being between two cultures or more, living at the edges of each, but rarely at the center, can be called cultural marginality. When these issues remain unresolved, the person is often confounded by the demands, and feels alienated in a state called encapsulated marginality. The constructive marginal resolves these questions by integrating choices from each culture of which the person is a part, choosing the appropriate frame of reference, and taking action appropriate for the context.

Global leaders need to recognize the characteristics of the marginal identity and leverage the skills the marginal brings to the organization. The mindset of hybrid professionals fosters increased creativity, culturally appropriate problem solving, and collaboration with other culture partners. Educators, trainers, and coaches can design developmental opportunities for sojourners to acculturate to new environments in a way that potentiates their intercultural competence and comfort with their bicultural mindset. By viewing a complex cultural identity as an asset to the organization, global leaders can avoid the common pitfall of overlooking cultural marginals and instead maximize their contribution to globalization.