27:T47d,

ICTs provide knowledge and resources that hold potential for women 's empowerment. Access to technology is not only the availability of hardware, but a training approach that facilitates computer adoption. This study examined the adoption of computer tech nology by novice urban women. It explored the contribution of psychological variables such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease ofuse, subjective norm, and computer self- efficacy to behavioral intention to adopt computers. Both familial (encouragement, fi nances, a computer literate member, computer ownership, and access) and institutional (proximity of the training center, preferred gender of the trainer, attributes, and role) support variables were considered. Results indicated that women adopt computer technology if it is evaluated to be useful to them and their family. Familial support such as a computer literate family member and a family computer and institutional support such as convenience of the training center and a patient and flexible trainer were found to be significant factors in facilitating computer adoption.

28:T482,

Through a theoretical discussion of cyberfeminism, especially focused on Donna Haraway and Sadie Plant 's texts, this article traces the interrelationship of women, weaving, computer, and technology from the point of constructing a 'herstory' of technology. This 'herstory' is woven together by threads of small stories, such as Ada Lovelace's biography, Charles Babbage's creation of Difference Engine, the fables of weaving in mythologies, tales of weaver in poetry, etc. I try to overcome the dualist framework im plicit in Sadie Plant 's work by contrasting the vision of cyberfeminism on the representa tion of the digits with that of ancient Chinese philosophy. Unlike Plant, who sees zero and one—the only digits in the digital form of computer—as representative of the binary system in western civilization, ancient Chinese philosophical texts offer multiple possibil ities embodied in the interaction between the ones and the zeros. As this is the first ever attempt of its kind, I have chosen only a couple of texts to begin with—Lao Zi and I- Ching or Book of Change.

29:T4f7,

The recent rise of religious militancy in Muslim countries has been explained either in theological idiom or as an offshoot of national, regional, and international geopolitics. However, such analyses have often ignored micro-level actors in Jihadi ventures, leaving the breeding grounds at the grassroots unexplored. The meta-narratives articulated by these actors have privileged traditional hegemony at the cost of the social, which is complex. This article explores the dynamics of power and identity in the context of Jihad at the level of the individual, family, and Jihadi organizations, focusing on the participation of Pakistani civilians in cross-border violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Applying Foucault's concept ofpower as the framework for analysis, this article demonstrates that the desire to exercise power, rather than any commitment to some divine project, is the major reason behind decisions to join Jihadi organizations. Identities based on gender, age, class. education, social status, and ethnicity were employed as instruments in the theater of power. In a complex process. multiple factors brought indi viduals into the ambit of Jihadi organizations to undertake violent actions.

2a:T624,