Monsters: interdisciplinary explorations in monstrosity

There is a continued fascination with all things monster. This is partly due to the popular reception of Mary Shelley’s Monster, termed a “new species” by its overreaching but admiringly determined maker Victor Frankenstein in the eponymous novel first published in 1818. The enduring impact of Shelley’s novel, which spans a plethora of subjects and genres in imagery and themes, raises questions of origin and identity, death, birth and family relationships as well as the contradictory qualities of the monster. Monsters serve as metaphors for anxieties of aberration and innovation. Stephen Asma (2009) notes that monsters represent evil or moral transgression and each epoch, to speak with Michel Foucault, evidences a “particular type of monster” (2003, 66). Academic debates tend to explore how social and cultural threats come to be embodied in the figure of a monster and their actions literalize our deepest fears. Monsters in contemporary culture, however, have become are more humane than ever before. Monsters are strong, resilient, creative and sly creatures. Through their playful and invigorating energy they can be seen to disrupt and unsettle. They still cater to the appetite for horror, but they also encourage us to feel empathy. The encounter with a monster can enable us to stop, wonder and change our attitudes towards technology and our body and each other. This commentary article considers the use of the concepts of ‘monsters’ or ‘monstrosity’ in literature, contemporary research, culture and teaching contexts at the intersection of the Humanities and the Social Sciences

Into the void: a realist evaluation of the eGovernment for You (EGOV4U) project

e-government for You’ (EGOV4U) was a European Commission (EC) funded project developed to pilot models of multi-channel, public and community e-services designed to tackle social exclusion and disadvantage through a range of initiatives delivered by five project partners from a variety of European countries. The project evaluation employed a theory-driven approach and the use of mixed methods for data capture and analysis. In this article we combine this with a form of mechanistic explanation that has been specifically developed for realist evaluation: namely the context + mechanism = outcome (CMO) approach. Our contention is that by so doing we further enhance the analytical focus and granularity of the evaluation process and thus the material we present here. This article aims to make use of previously unused material from the EGOV4U evaluation, and provide a realist insight into what works, for whom, in what circumstances and why

Ethical Purchasing Dissonance: Antecedents and Coping Behaviors

The pressure of oversight and scrutiny in the business-to-business purchasing process has the potential to cause psychological distress in purchasing professionals, giving rise to apprehensions about being ethically inappropriate. Utilizing depth interviews with public sector purchasing professionals in a phenomenological approach, the authors develop the notion of ethical purchasing dissonance to explain the psychological distress. An inductively derived conceptual framework is presented for ethical purchasing dissonance that explores its potential antecedents and consequences; illustrative propositions are presented, and managerial implications are discussed