Here be monsters: a choreomaniac's companion to the danse macabre

Consider this a vade mecum: an invitation to “walk with me” through more or less uncanny terrains of worlds in the making in search, of(f) course, of monsters. The search will be delving into the areas of “creepypasta:” pieces of cursed prose and pictures that circulate online, waiting to contaminate and possess the next reader. Using a theoretical framework of posthuman and feminist theory, not least the work done by Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway, this vade mecum asks what it might mean to engage ethically with that which is not supposed to exist, but which haunts us nonetheless. In other words: what does it mean to move, live and engage with spectres in digital times?     

The international conference on research and teaching related to women: Report of the coordinator

Between July and August 4, 1982, 350 women from 71 countries met in Montreal at Concordia University for the first International Conference on Research and Teaching Related to Women. These meetings provided a unique opportunity for educators and investigators to make contact with their colleagues, gain insights from the experience of others and lay the foundation for future exchanges. They also helped to legitimize this new field of activity world-wide.In the course of the encounters suggestions and observations were also made on new methods of teaching, new approaches to research, and on objectives and strategies. It was a first, in that never before had such a large number of practitioners from so many different countries assembled to discuss research and teaching related to women.The following is the coordinator's report, a non-specialist herself in either teaching or research on women, but an internationalist and a feminist who strongly believes in the need for women to communicate, to pool resources, to network at all levels.The Montreal Conference was seen as a further building block on the foundation which had been laid in 1980 in Copenhagen to bring researchers and educators together. It helped to strengthen existing associations and to encourage the establishment of new associations where none existed.     

Making sense of communitarianism: the Bolivian experience

In Bolivia, the state and society is undergoing radical transformations. The indigenous movements have revitalised traditions such as communitarianism, and ‘communitarian development’ has come to the forefront of Bolivian politics. The aim of this article is to identify what communitarian development means in the Bolivian context; how it is conceived and how it is practiced. I examine how communitarian development is conceptualised in the Aymara indigenous movement and in policy documents, and analyse what communitarianism might mean to people who uphold such values. I identify and discuss five different but intertwined significations; communitarian economy, communitarian work, communitarian management, communitarian law and communitarian values. I show that Bolivian communitarianism contains conceptualisations of cultural phenomena, which emerge at the nexus of experiences and expectations for the future, and argue that, despite tensions and pitfalls, communitarian development has the potential to increase indigenous wellbeing and agency and to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of what communitarianism is, or could be.     

Conceptualizing lived religious citizenship: a case-study of Christian and Muslim women in Norway and the United Kingdom

The concept of ‘religious citizenship’ is increasingly being used by scholars, but there are few attempts at defining it. This article argues that rights-based definitions giving primacy to status and rights are too narrow, and that feminist approaches to citizenship foregrounding identity, belonging and participation, as well as an ethic of care, provide a more comprehensive understanding of how religious women understand and experience their own ‘religious citizenship’. Findings from interviews with Christian and Muslim women in Oslo and Leicester suggest a close relationship between religious women's faith and practice (‘lived religion’) and their ‘lived citizenship’. However, gender inequalities and status differences between majority and minority religions produce challenges to rights-based approaches to religious citizenship.     

Lesbian and Gay Immigrants' Post-Migration Experiences: An Integrative Literature Review

This integrative literature review synthesizes recent empirical knowledge about lesbian and gay immigrants' post-migration experiences. Twenty-four studies with various designs are included. The literature shows that those immigrants encounter some opportunities but also many challenges on economical, social and identity levels, thus soliciting coping strategies. Results are synthesized under five topics: the delicate situation in which they find themselves for revealing their lesbian or gay sexual orientation; the racist and homophobic discrimination they can experience; their renegotiation of socioeconomic status; the identity and affiliation challenges they have to overcome; and the hardships that can impact their health.     

When Supply Creates Demand: Social Democratic Party Strategies and the Evolution of Class Voting

This paper focuses on the policy strategies adopted by social democratic parties and their impact on the class basis of their support. It is argued that political appeals matter for explaining the development of class voting. This argument is tested through a comparison of the policy strategies of social democratic parties in Austria and Switzerland and the evolving patterns of class voting in the two countries. Using election surveys and data on the policy positions and media representation of the political parties from the 1970s to the 2000s, the article finds that the Social Democratic Party in Austria maintained a strong working class base. In contrast, the Social Democratic Party in Switzerland facilitated a major transformation of the class basis of its support by emphasising new cultural issues. It became the party of the ‘new middle classes’, leaving the working class to realign in support of the Swiss People’s Party.     

Employees’ resistance to users’ ideas in public service innovation

This article contributes to the existing criticism of the positive emphasis on user participation in service innovation as co-creation by examining employee resistance to user-driven innovation. The empirical base comprises interviews, document studies, and observations from a project that focused on implementing a user-initiated idea in public care services in Norway. To discuss employee resistance to innovative user ideas, a power perspective is included by drawing on the Foucault-based theory of identity regulation and discourse. Employees resist the required identity regulation by distorting the initial innovative idea to align with their problem representations, which is facilitated by entangled discourses. The power relations embedded in the different parties’ subject positions emphasize how governing the user side is incompatible with being governed by the users. The article contributes to our knowledge of service innovation and the co-creation of value by demonstrating discursive mechanisms for twisting value propositions.