Microfinance and Third World Development: A Critical Analysis

Microfinance is emerging as an integral part of the new development paradigm, described by the phrase participation and development. Although the idea has become quite popular among donor agencies, development practitioners, and academicians, theoretical premises on which this idea is founded seem entirely unexamined. Accordingly, this article investigates the academic merits, as well as potential consequences, of this popular poverty alleviating model from the supply-side perspective and asks a provocative question: Do the microfinance ventures have features which suggest that the establishment of this new finance industry in the Third World countries might further complicate their pervasive poverty problems? The answer to this question appears affirmative to be affirmative. First, the microfinance idea is founded on two theoretical premises, both of which are very controversial. Second, the lack of microcredit is not the cause of the Third World\u27s deplorable poverty situation--a fact that suggests that the supply of microcredit cannot alleviate poverty in these countries. Finally, the promotion of the microfinance ventures in the Third World has potentials to create private groups, which have vested interests in perpetuating their prevailing poverty situation

Moral Pluralism and Conflict

Institutions have often been characterized as responses to conflict, and assumptions about the nature of conflict have frequently determined the structure and scope of political activity. Two prevalent interpretations of conflict portray it as either a conflict of interest or a competition for resources. Yet there is another view of conflict that regards it in terms of a contest of values, something that raises a different set of questions and issues. These issues involve concerns about the incommensurability and incompatibility of values, and challenge contemporary arguments that rely upon the ordering of preferences or that urge the pursuit of a normative consensus. As I argue, both preference based theories and theories of deliberative democracy prove to deal inadequately with the challenges of moral pluralism and value conflict

A Memetic Analysis of a Phrase by Beethoven: Calvinian Perspectives on Similarity and Lexicon-Abstraction

This article discusses some general issues arising from the study of similarity in music, both human-conducted and computer-aided, and then progresses to a consideration of similarity relationships between patterns in a phrase by Beethoven, from the first movement of the Piano Sonata in A flat major op. 110 (1821), and various potential memetic precursors. This analysis is followed by a consideration of how the kinds of similarity identified in the Beethoven phrase might be understood in psychological/conceptual and then neurobiological terms, the latter by means of William Calvin’s Hexagonal Cloning Theory. This theory offers a mechanism for the operation of David Cope’s concept of the lexicon, conceived here as a museme allele-class. I conclude by attempting to correlate and map the various spaces within which memetic replication occurs

Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Seminar on Positive Resolution of Interpersonal and Substantive Conflict in the Hazelton, British Columbia, Seventh-day Adventist Church

Problem Some form of conflict is associated with virtually every human relationship, including relationships involving Christians. Negative conflict situations frequently injure Christians, and sometimes conflicts are severe enough to cripple churches. The purpose of this project was to study whether the teaching of concepts and skills that are, first, related to the management and resolution of interpersonal and substantive conflict, and second, congruent with biblical principles will have a positive impact upon how parishioners understand conflict and, as a result, upon how they behave in conflict situations so that the negative results of conflict are reduced and the positive results increased. Method A seminar designed to teach the concepts and skills that are, first, related to the management and resolution of interpersonal and substantive conflict, and second, congruent with biblical principles, was developed for the Hazelton Seventh-day Adventist Church. The seventeen participants in the project were volunteers from the congregation who met for ninety minutes on five consecutive Thursday nights beginning on February 24 and ending on March 24, 1994. The participants were tested before the seminar and again at its conclusion. The question addressed by the testing instrument was: Will a seminar on conflict change the participants\u27 attitude and feelings about conflict? For comparison purposes, the same testing instrument was administered to a control group just before and after the seminar was presented. Results A study of the treatment group test results compared with the control group test results indicated a significant modification in the attitude of the treatment group toward conflict. Based upon the test results, it seems clear that as a consequence of attending the seminar on how to deal with conflict, participants believed that they were better equipped to handle conflict situations and that they had a greater tolerance for conflict situations. Conclusions A training program utilizing a seminar designed to teach concepts and skills that are, first, related to the positive management and resolution of interpersonal and substantive conflict, and second, congruent with biblical principles, would likely be effectual in helping participating church members learn to relate during conflict situations with others in more caring, tolerant, and effective ways

Ideal Theory and "Ought Implies Can"

When we can’t live up to the ultimate standards of morality, how can moral theory give us guidance? We can distinguish between ideal and non-ideal theory to see that there are different versions of the voluntarist constraint, ‘ought implies can.’ Ideal moral theory identifies the best standard, so its demands are constrained by one version. Non-ideal theory tells us what to do given our psychological and motivational shortcomings and so is constrained by others. Moral theory can now both provide an ultimate standard and give us guidance; this view also gives us new insights into demandingness and blame

A 3-player protocol preventing persistence in strategic contention with limited feedback

In this paper, we study contention resolution protocols from a game-theoretic perspective. In a recent work, we considered acknowledgment-based protocols, where a user gets feedback from the channel only when she attempts transmission. In this case she will learn whether her transmission was successful or not. One of the main results of ESA2016 was that no acknowledgment-based protocol can be in equilibrium. In fact, it seems that many natural acknowledgment-based protocols fail to prevent users from unilaterally switching to persistent protocols that always transmit with probability 1. It is therefore natural to ask how powerful a protocol must be so that it can beat persistent deviators. In this paper we consider age-based protocols, which can be described by a sequence of probabilities of transmitting in each time step. Those probabilities are given beforehand and do not change based on the transmission history. We present a 3-player age-based protocol that can prevent users from unilaterally deviating to a persistent protocol in order to decrease their expected transmission time. It is worth noting that the answer to this question does not follow from the results and proof ideas of ESA2016. Our protocol is non-trivial, in the sense that, when all players use it, finite expected transmission time is guaranteed. In fact, we show that this protocol is preferable to any deadline protocol in which, after some fixed time, attempt transmission with probability 1 in every subsequent step. An advantage of our protocol is that it is very simple to describe, and users only need a counter to keep track of time. Whether there exist $n$-player age-based protocols that do not use counters and can prevent persistence is left as an open problem for future research.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1606.0658

The Leader as Moral Agent: Praise, Blame, and the Artificial Person

The leader as the moral agent can be both a singular and a collective entity. Regardless, that individual or group of individuals must establish and live by a moral paradigm where self-respect and respect for co-workers is paramount. In essence, the moral agent must lead by example. And it is not simply sufficient to choose the correct pathway but to care about choosing the correct pathway, stripping the decision-making process of disingenuous or superficial motives and injecting heart, concern, and passion for doing what is right