Saturday, 4 February 2017

Mind mapping the topic of poverty

Mind mapping the topic of poverty

Joseph Kim-keung Ho
Independent Trainer
Hong Kong, China


Abstract: The topic of poverty is a main one in Social Sciences. This article makes use of the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach to render an image on the knowledge structure of poverty. The finding of the review exercise is that its knowledge structure comprises four main themes, i.e., (a) Descriptions of basic concepts and information (b) Major underlying theories and thinking, (c) Main research topics and issues, and (d) Major trends and issues related to practices. There is also a set of key concepts identified from the poverty literature review. The article offers some academic and pedagogical values on the topics of poverty, literature review and the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach.
Key words: Poverty, literature review, mind map, the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach


Introduction
Poverty is a main topic in Social Sciences. It is of academic and pedagogical interest to the writer who has been a lecturer on Housing Studies for some tertiary education centres in Hong Kong. In this article, the writer presents his literature review findings on poverty using the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach. This approach was proposed by this writer in 2016 and has been employed to review the literature on a number of topics, such as supply chain management, strategic management accounting and customer relationship management (Ho, 2016). The MMBLR approach itself is not particularly novel since mind mapping has been employed in literature review since its inception. The overall aims of this exercise are to:
1.      Render an image of the knowledge structure of poverty via the application of the MMBLR approach;
2.      Illustrate how the MMBLR approach can be applied in literature review on an academic topic, such as poverty.
The findings from this literature review exercise offer academic and pedagogical values to those who are interested in the topics of poverty, literature review and the MMBLR approach. Other than that, this exercise facilitates this writer’s intellectual learning on these three topics. The next section makes a brief introduction on the MMBLR approach. After that, an account of how it is applied to study poverty is presented.

On mind mapping-based literature review
The mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach was developed by this writer in 2016 (Ho, 2016). It makes use of mind mapping as a complementary literature review exercise (see the Literature on mind mapping Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page). The approach is made up of two steps. Step 1 is a thematic analysis on the literature of the topic chosen for study. Step 2 makes use of the findings from step 1 to produce a complementary mind map. The MMBLR approach is a relatively straightforward and brief exercise. The approach is not particularly original since the idea of using mind maps in literature review has been well recognized in the mind mapping literature. The MMBLR approach is also an interpretive exercise in the sense that different reviewers with different research interest and intellectual background inevitably will select different ideas, facts and findings in their thematic analysis (i.e., step 1 of the MMBLR approach). Also, to conduct the approach, the reviewer needs to perform a literature search beforehand. Apparently, what a reviewer gathers from a literature search depends on what library facility, including e-library, is available to the reviewer. The next section presents the findings from the MMBLR approach step 1; afterward, a companion mind map is provided based on the MMBLR approach step 1 findings.

Mind mapping-based literature review on poverty: step 1 findings
Step 1 of the MMBLR approach is a thematic analysis on the literature of the topic under investigation (Ho, 2016). In our case, this is the poverty topic. The writer gathers some academic articles from some universities’ e-libraries as well as via the Google Scholar. With the academic articles collected, the writer conducted a literature review on them to assemble a set of ideas, viewpoints, concepts and findings (called points here). The points from the poverty literature are then grouped into four themes here. The key words in the quotations are bolded in order to highlight the key concepts involved.



Theme 1: Descriptions of basic concepts and information
Point 1.1.              In the 1970s, the overall development discourse focused on economic growth and modernization …. Consequently, definitions of poverty concentrated on material aspects ….: poverty was viewed as the inability to fulfil the basic requirements to attain a decent life and therefore obtain adequate nutrition, housing and clothing” (Misturelli and Hefferman, 2010);
Point 1.2.               “…by the 1990s, the notion of ‘rights’ was accorded a greater prominence: Extreme poverty is a violation of human dignity and a denial of enjoyment of all human rights” (Misturelli and Hefferman, 2010);
Point 1.3.               “In the late 1990s, the German sociologists Leisering and Leibfried … argued that most poverty is of a temporary nature. …  Based on their work, individualization theorists such as Giddens and Beck argue that ‘for most people poverty is only a temporary experience’.” (Snel, Reelick and Groenenboom, 2013);
Point 1.4.              “The absolute approach [to poverty] assumes that necessities are determined by biology, thus rooting the determination of poverty cutoffs in the hard science of nutrition. However, possessions that are considered luxuries in one society can become necessities in another” (Swanstrom, Ryan and Stigers, 2008);
Point 1.5.               Definitions of chronic poverty reflect the duration of poverty and the way it is measured. Poverty can be experienced in a number of ways over time, for example as repeated spells varying in duration or as a single prolonged spell” (Nandy, 2008);
Point 1.6.              “Contemporary poverty is no longer a charac­teristic of certain marginalized social categories, but is closely related to individual life choices and unex­pected life events” (Snel, Reelick and Groenenboom, 2013);
Point 1.7.              “…poverty has been attributed a move from econometric to basic needs, to social implications and to multi-disciplinary formulations …. However, discourse is never constructed in such a singular and disjointed manner …. Further, by considering poverty as a single construct, the identification of more-subtle changes indicating shifts in thinking are concealed” (Misturelli and Hefferman, 2010);
Theme 2: Major underlying theories and thinking
Point 2.1.              “… micro-finance is neither entrepreneurship nor economic development; rather, it would inherently create, maintain, or exacerbate inequalities as part of a larger economic system of credit and debt. In that sense, it would bring about not poverty alleviation but its own round of Matthew effects, taking from the poor and giving to the rich” (Hsu, 2014);
Point 2.2.              “….entertainment is a highly valued dimension of life for many poor people because it provides a temporary escape from the unique and heightened stressors poor people routinely experience in their lives” (Foss, Generali and Kress, 2011);
Point 2.3.              Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) strategies recognize for the first time that global companies can contribute to the alleviation of worldwide poverty by adopting non-traditional and mostly non-Western models of business involvement” (Chatterjee, 2009);
Point 2.4.              During the 1980s, the discourse of development remained firmly rooted in the economic perspective, although more attention was paid to non-monetary factors …. Thus, the definitions of poverty began to include notions of powerlessness, isolation and vulnerability …, but the individual orientation was still prevalent” (Misturelli and Hefferman, 2010);
Point 2.5.              “On a sufficiency view, rich states need only assist people in poor states to reach a minimal level of well-being, for instance one that allows them to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, medical care and so forth” (Oberman, 2011);
Point 2.6.              “… the poor often lack the means to protect themselves from adverse income and employment shocks. They lack assets, such as bank deposits and land, and often have no direct access to credit markets (or face prohibitive borrowing costs when they do), to smooth the impact of these shocks” (Nikoloski, 2011);
Point 2.7.              “…..poverty-related stressors such as poor health care, housing problems, and limited access to basic resources may incite heightened forms of psychological stress and dysfunction” (Foss, Generali and Kress, 2011);
Point 2.8.              “….people living in poverty often share a common knowledge, language, and set of life experiences. Many individuals living in a culture of poverty are also noted to demonstrate an unusual level of resilience in the way they cope with the multiple stresses that are associated with living in this cultural group” (Foss, Generali and Kress, 2011);
Point 2.9.               “…poor people have a human right to stay in their home state, which entitles them to receive development assistance without the necessity of migrating abroad” (Oberman, 2011);
Point 2.10.         “An occurrence of a financial crisis puts pressures on informal sector workers and changes the sectoral composition of employment, which in turn may exacerbate poverty levels. Financial crises lead to a fall in earnings of both formal and informal sector workers due to job losses in the formal sector and reduced demand for services in the informal sector” (Nikoloski, 2011);
Point 2.11.         “Certain deprivations (e.g. childhood malnutrition) are known to have negative effects in later life, and prolonged exposure to poor housing or insufficient food is known to be associated with a range of negative outcomes, including raised morbidity and premature mortality” (Nandy, 2008);
Point 2.12.         Charity is necessary to ameliorate the conditions of the poor. But it does not go far. That is why Vivekananda wanted empowerment of the poor. He said, “All the wealth in the world cannot help one little Indian village if the people are not taught to help themselves”..” (Baneshananda, 2014);
Point 2.13.         In 2000, the global community declared eight Millennium Development Goals to substantially reduce global poverty (UN, 2000). To meet these goals, there has been an increased focus by development actors on how poverty can be measured and assessed. To this end, there has been a renewed interested in utilizing the narratives of the poor as a tool to better understand the nature and impacts of poverty” (Misturelli and Heffernan, 2011);
Point 2.14.         “In general, currency and debt crises are associated with hyperinflation, which has been shown numerous times to hurt the poor much more than the middle or the upper classes” (Nikoloski, 2011);
Point 2.15.         In subsistence marketplaces, poverty is a normal circumstance, rather than an outlier, and is characterized by deprivation of basic needs, as well as a lack of formal services and infrastructure that are often taken for granted in developed economies” (Gau, Ramirez, Barua and Gonzalez, 2014);
Point 2.16.         “On an egalitarian view, rich states have a duty to help people in poor states achieve some form of distributive equality with their own citizens” (Oberman, 2011);
Point 2.17.         “People with unfavourable initial conditions in remote villages have little prospect of moving out of poverty; their lack of physical capital closes off both pathways out of poverty” (De Weerdt, 2010);
Point 2.18.         “Prior research has pointed to the combination of microfinance and entrepreneurship as a possible route to poverty alleviation … In this regard, the motivation of the individual entrepreneur is harnessed to spur economic activity. Thus, instead of simply providing other countries with low cost goods, primary and ancillary economic activities emerge which serve those living in subsistence, while in the process working to improve their living standards” (Gau, Ramirez, Barua and Gonzalez, 2014);
Point 2.19.         Spending cuts affect the volume of publicly provided critical social services, including social assistance outlays, and limit the access of the poor to these services at a time when their incomes are declining ….… indirect sources of income and public transfers may decline during crises” (Nikoloski, 2011);
Point 2.20.          “The standard method of determining poverty, pioneered in the late 19th century by Booth and Rowntree in the United Kingdom, was to measure the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet and determine whether a household had the means to procure it” (Swanstrom, Ryan and Stigers, 2008);
Point 2.21.         “The term ‘‘community-based initiative’’ is not meant to describe a specific institutional structure, but rather the organization of business activities within a subsistence-level marketplace wherein individual entrepreneurs are highly motivated to cooperate with one another and to seek mutually beneficial arrangements” (Gau, Ramirez, Barua and Gonzalez, 2014);
Point 2.22.         “Theorists opposing immigration restrictions have made two main arguments: one from poverty, the other from freedom. The poverty argument holds that rich states have a duty to assist people in poor states and that, under current circumstances, immigration restrictions conflict with this duty since they deny poor people one means to improve their lot” (Oberman, 2011);
Point 2.23.         “Under a relative approach to poverty, the cutoff must go up as the average, or median, income in the community increases, because the resources necessary to participate in society with dignity increase as well” (Swanstrom, Ryan and Stigers, 2008);
Theme 3: Main research topics and issues
Point 3.1.              “…the psychological well-being of a person in poverty still tends to be treated on a narrow individual-level or as a separate domain from the person’s financial problems or the broader socio-economic and political context” (Jo, 2012);
Point 3.2.              “….the reality of the poor is often more complex and cannot be reduced to a sum of different lacks … Indeed, an important aspect that is often ignored concerns the expectations of the poor regarding their own future, and whether they believe that change is feasible or possible..” (Misturelli and Heffernan, 2011);
Point 3.3.              “…while the idea of ‘time poverty’ is not new and many time-use analyses have hinted at the concept, there have been few attempts to formally profile society’s ‘time-poor’.” (Chatzitheochari and Arber, 2012);
Point 3.4.              “A lower social participation rate in extracurricular organisations decreases opportunities for informal learning and consequently reduces life chances. Poverty research has demonstrated that financial constraints and the social withdrawal that result from feelings of shame cause lower participation rates” (Damelang and Kloß, 2013);
Point 3.5.              “Banerjee and colleagues found little support for the proposed benefits (i.e., the empowerment of women, the increased levels of health and education) of entrepreneurship via microfinance in a study comparing poor neighborhoods serviced by a microfinance lender to those that were not … Implied is that this approach to poverty alleviation may result in an inequitable distribution of benefits” (Gau, Ramirez, Barua and Gonzalez, 2014);
Point 3.6.              “Despite the need this population has for counseling services, the values, expectations, and requirements for participating in counseling may be at odds with the needs of many poor people. This is often the case because most traditional counseling models are more consistent with middle-class values than with values exhibited by poor people in U.S. society” (Foss, Generali and Kress, 2011);
Point 3.7.              Free time … is… the time that remains at one’s own discretion after conducting daily work and personal care activities, ……  recent years have witnessed an increasing preoccupation with the phenomenon of time poverty, drawing attention to the distribution of free time and its relationship to structural and family circumstances” (Chatzitheochari and Arber, 2012);
Point 3.8.              “How should concentrated poverty be measured? U.S. scholars have almost universally defined it as census tracts in which 40 percent or more of the population falls below the official federal poverty line. This standard, originally based on a minimally acceptable diet, has become increasingly divorced from the realities of our affluent society and ignores differences across metropolitan areas” (Swanstrom, Ryan and Stigers, 2008);
Point 3.9.              Optimism for micro-finance was high from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, culminating with events like the Microcredit Summit in 1997, where delegates from the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank, together with individuals such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and megastar Bono, pronounced the goal of alleviating all poverty through the practice of micro-finance” (Hsu, 2014);
Point 3.10.         “Poverty studies worldwide have demonstrated that the need to avoid and/or conceal shame emanating from a state of deprivation is acutely felt by those living in poverty …, and is just as pertinent in relatively affluent countries as it is in poor-resource ones” (Jo, 2012);
Point 3.11.         “The empirical study of free time owes a great deal to the development of the time-diary methodology, which constitutes the most accurate and reliable method for the measurement of time allocation at a population level” (Chatzitheochari and Arber, 2012);
Point 3.12.         “The proposition that global poverty can be alleviated by companies in partnership with national or regional governments and a range of NGOs has gained widespread credibility through many successful case examples. These examples include the programme of ‘Patrimonio Hoy’ by the Mexican company Cemex, Grameen Telecom in Bangladesh, Kick Start in Kenya, the alliance of Starbucks with Conservation International …” (Chatterjee, 2009);
Point 3.13.         “The study of MDPs [microenterprise development programmes] as a mean of attaining social and gender emancipation lacks a rich understanding of the local context in which social and gender inequalities are framed. Consequently, it ignores the hegemonic discourses that accept class and gender inequities as legitimately constructed social and gender realities” (Strier, 2010);
Point 3.14.         “Until recently, a lack of appropriate data has stifled proper examination of long-term poverty and poverty dynamics in developing countries” (Nandy, 2008);
Point 3.15.         Urban poverty and rural poverty can differ in several aspects. First, urban poverty did not experienced reduction during 2000s. …. Second, urban poverty can be underestimated using household surveys ….. Migrants and unregistered people in urban areas who are more likely to be poor are not sampled in household surveys. Third, the urban poor can include a large number of temporary migrants and unregistered people. These groups are more vulnerable to economic shocks and not entitled for social protection policies such as credit subsidy and health insurance .…. Fourth, there is a widening gap in welfare even within urban areas” (Misturelli and Heffernan, 2011);
Point 3.16.         “While accelerated growth in India has been widely attributed to the reforms of the early 1990s, their impact on poverty is still much debated” (Siggel, 2010);
Theme 4: Major trends and issues related to practices
Point 4.1.              “…the poverty and social exclu­sion target is revealing of the fundamental conflicts around social policy and the model of capitalism to be promoted in the EU” (Copeland and Daly, 2012);
Point 4.2.              “…there are two paths out of poverty in Kagera. For those with sufficient endowments of land and human capital there is agriculture, which lies at the heart of village economies. The more successful people were those who have diversified their farming activities, growing food crops for their own consumption, cash crops for sale, and keeping livestock” (De Weerdt, 2010);
Point 4.3.              “A large proportion of the clients served by community mental health centers are individuals classified as working poor and those living in poverty” (Foss, Generali and Kress, 2011);
Point 4.4.              “In 2008 and 2009, micro-credit industries crashed in Bosnia, Morocco, Nicaragua, and Pakistan. Analysts blamed various causes such as debtor revolts and political backlash. In 2010, a rash of suicides associated with micro-credit repayments in India further tarred the practice of social incentive” (Hsu, 2014);
Point 4.5.              “In the United States of America poverty remains high even in a time of relative prosperity and low unemployment. In the 1930s and 1960s when poverty was high it led to a massive poor peoples movement” (Difazio, 1998);
Point 4.6.              “Israel has developed a strong, free-market economy. Economic and social policies in the last decade have replicated those of other neoliberal economies: frequent reductions in the national budget, increasing privatization, the opening of local markets to globalization, repeated welfare cutbacks, an emerging welfare-to-work reform and a constant erosion of social benefits. These policies have ….turned Israel into the country with the highest percentage of child poverty among the industrialized countries” (Strier, 2010);
Point 4.7.              “More than one-fifth of the human population are poor and half of them live in “abject poverty” with less than a dollar income per day. There are other types of inequalities which are a drag on human progress as a whole” (Baneshananda, 2014);
Point 4.8.              Policymakers increasingly focus on the market for promoting gender equity and alleviating poverty among low-income women. Development agencies claim that MPDs [microenterprise development programmes] enable people to work their way out of poverty” (Strier, 2010);
Point 4.9.              “There are some challenges to further reduction of poverty in Vietnam. First, when poverty rate is as low as it is now, a relatively large proportion of the poor are in chronic poverty, which tend to be more resistant to economic growth .… Second, economic growth itself has slowed down since 2008 due to the global economic crisis. ….Third, the proportion of households who are just above the poverty line tends to increase, indicating that a growing number of near-poor households are vulnerable to shocks (economic and social) … Fourth, the integration process also produces the so-called agglomeration effects with the resultant acceleration of the urbanization process” (Misturelli and Heffernan, 2011);


Each of the four themes has a set of associated points (i.e., idea, viewpoints, concepts and findings). Together they provide an organized way to comprehend the knowledge structure of the poverty topic. The bolded key words in the quotation reveal, based on the writer’s intellectual judgement, the key concepts examined in the poverty literature. The referencing indicated on the points identified informs the readers where to find the academic articles to learn more about the details on these points. Readers are also referred to the Literature on poverty Facebook page for additional information on this topic. The process of conducting the thematic analysis is an exploratory as well as synthetic learning endeavour on the topic’s literature. Once the structure of the themes, sub-themes[1] and their associated points are finalized, the reviewer is in a position to move forward to step 2 of the MMBLR approach. The MMBLR approach step 2 finding, i.e., a companion mind map on poverty, is presented in the next section.

Mind mapping-based literature review on poverty: step 2 (mind mapping) output
By adopting the findings from the MMBLR approach step 1 on poverty, the writer constructs a companion mind map shown as Figure 1.




Referring to the mind map on poverty, the topic label is shown right at the centre of the map as a large blob. Four main branches are attached to it, corresponding to the four themes identified in the thematic analysis. The links and ending nodes with key phrases represent the points from the thematic analysis. The key phrases have also been bolded in the quotations provided in the thematic analysis. As a whole, the mind map renders an image of the knowledge structure on poverty based on the thematic analysis findings. Constructing the mind map is part of the learning process on literature review. The mind mapping process is speedy and entertaining. The resultant mind map also serves as a useful presentation and teaching material. This mind mapping experience confirms the writer’s previous experience using on the MMBLR approach (Ho, 2016). Readers are also referred to the Literature on literature review Facebook page and the Literature on mind mapping Facebook page for additional information on these two topics.

Concluding remarks
The MMBLR approach to study poverty provided here is mainly for its practice illustration as its procedures have been refined via a number of its employment on an array of topics (Ho, 2016). No major additional MMBLR steps nor notions have been introduced in this article. In this respect, the exercise reported here primarily offers some pedagogical value as well as some systematic and stimulated learning on poverty in Social Sciences (including Housing Studies). Nevertheless, the thematic findings and the image of the knowledge structure on poverty in the form of a mind map should also be of academic value to those who research on this topic.



Bibliography
1.      Baneshananda, S. 2014. “Towards eradication of poverty and inequality: Vivekananda’s perspective for sustained human development” International Journal of Development Issues 13(3), Emerald: 250-259.
2.      Chatterjee, S.R. 2009. “Multinational Firm Strategy and Global Poverty Alleviation: Frameworks and Possibilities for Building Shared Commitment” Journal of Human Values 15(2), Sage: 133-152.
3.      Chatzitheochari, S. and S. Arber. 2012. “Class, gender and time poverty: a time-use analysis of British workers’ free time resources” The British Journal of Sociology 63(3): 451-471.
4.      Copeland, P. and M. Daly. 2012. “Varieties of poverty reduction: Inserting the poverty and social exclusion target into Europe 2020” Journal of European Social Policy 22(3), Sage: 273-287.
5.      Damelang, A. and G. Kloß. 2013. “Poverty and the social participation of young people – an analysis of poverty-related withdrawal mechanisms” J Labour Market Res. 46: 321-333.
6.      De Weerdt, J. 2010. “Moving out of poverty in Tanzania: Evidence from Kagera” Journal of Development Studies 46(2) February, Routledge: 331-349.
7.      Difazio, W. 1998. “Poverty, the Postmodern and the jobless future” Critical Perspectives on Accounting 9: 57-74.
8.      Foss, L.L., M.M. Generali and V.E. Kress. 2011. “Counseling People Living in Poverty: The CARE Model” Journal of Humanistic Counseling 50, Fall: 161-171.
9.      Gau, R., E. Ramirez, M.E. Barua and R. Gonzalez. 2014. “Community-Based Initiatives and Poverty Alleviation in Subsistence Marketplaces” Journal of Macromarketing 34(2), Sage: 160-170.
10. Ho, J.K.K. 2016. Mind mapping for literature review – a ebook, Joseph KK Ho publication folder October 7 (url address: http://josephkkho.blogspot.hk/2016/10/mind-mapping-for-literature-review-ebook.html).
11. Hsu, B.Y. 2014. “Alleviating poverty or reinforcing inequality? Interpreting micro-finance in practice, with illustration from rural China” The British Journal of Sociology 65(2): 245-265.
12. Jo, Y.N. 2012. “Psycho-social dimensions of poverty: When poverty becomes shameful” Critical Social Policy 33(3), Sage: 514-531.
13. Literature on literature review Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.literaturereview/).
14. Literature on mind mapping Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.mind.mapping/).
15. Literature on poverty Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-poverty-1686719908219667/);
16. Misturelli, F. and C. Hefferman. 2010. “The concept of poverty: a synchronic perspective” Progress in Development Studies 10(35): 35-58.
17. Misturelli, F. and C. Heffernan. 2011. “The Language of Poverty: an Exploration of the Narratives of the Poor” Sustainable Development 19. Wiley: 206-222.
18. Nandy, S. 2008. “‘Misunderstanding’ Chronic Poverty?: Exploring Chronic Poverty in Developing Countries Using Cross-Sectional Demographic and Health Data” Global Social Policy 8(1), Sage: 45-79.
19. Nikoloski, Z. 2011. “Impact of Financial Crises on Poverty in the Developing World: An Empirical Approach” Journal of Development Studies 47(11), Routledge: 1757-1779.
20. Oberman, K. 2011. “Immigration, Global Poverty and the Right to Stay” Political Studies 59: 253-268.
21. Siggel, E. 2010. “Poverty alleviation and economic reforms in India” Progress in Development Studies 10(3), Sage: 247-259.
22. Snel, E.,F. Reelick and N. Groenenboom. 2013. “Time and poverty revisited: A replication of Leisering and Leibfried” Journal of European Social Policy 23(2), Sage: 179-191.
23. Strier, R. 2010. “Women, Poverty, and the Microenterprise: Context and Discourse” Gender, Work and Organization 17(2) March: 195-218.
24. Swanstrom, T., R. Ryan and K.M. Stigers. 2008. “Measuring Concentrated Poverty: The Federal Standard vs. a Relative Standard” Housing Policy Debate 19(2): 295-321.



[1] There is no sub-theme generated in this analysis on poverty.

1 comment:

  1. Pdf version at: https://www.academia.edu/31224038/Mind_mapping_the_topic_of_poverty

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