While e-commerce has witnessed extensive growth in recent years, so has consumers' concerns regarding ethical issues surrounding online shopping. The vast majority of earlier research on this area is conceptual in nature, and limited in scope by focusing on consumers' privacy issues. This study develops a reliable and valid scale to measure consumers' perceptions regarding the ethics of online retailers. Findings indicate that the four factors of the scale - security, privacy, non-deception and fulfillment/reliability - are strongly predictive of online (...) consumers' satisfaction and trust. The results offer important implications for e-retailers and are likely to stimulate further research in the area of e-ethics from the consumers' perspective. (shrink)

The present collection takes stock of posthumanism and its theoretical development and impact in the field of Anglophone literary and cultural studies, with a particular focus on its role in education and the practice of teaching English. Posthumanism informs work in environmental or ecological criticism, climate change research, or human-animal studies - and poses an educational challenge since it also affects curricular and pedagogic theory and practice. Moreover, humanist idea(l)s of subject formation and individually acquired competences have a direct bearing (...) on conceptions of education. This is why the volume interrogates the potentials and pitfalls of posthumanist pedagogies and its connections with digitization, multiliteracies, non-European and non-anthropocentric thinking, and the role of literature pedagogy more generally, presenting case studies of teaching the posthuman from primary to tertiary levels. (shrink)

The development of the vital potential of the drama theater is in a continuous search for new forms of expression. Today, in an attempt to establish itself on the territory of a multicultural environment, as well as in an attempt to gain a unique method of communication with society, the theater as an art sphere expands the boundaries of its purpose. Going beyond the stage space turns out to be an important subject of research from the point of view of (...) the search for the artistic existence of the theater in the conditions of digital reality. This article discusses the issue of finding a place for a drama theater in a digital environment where the energy of human relations is significantly minimized and manifests itself in a specifically different way. The subject of the research for the author was the cultural and creative activity of the Tovstonogov BDT. The St. Petersburg Bolshoi Drama Theater does not need recommendations: it has a great history in the twentieth century, an attractive stage "today" for the audience and, undoubtedly, interesting prospects. In the practice of BDT under the leadership of Andrei the Mighty (2013-2023), there are such turns of dramatic action that are not directly connected with the stage and are almost out of place for the "repertory" theater. The phenomenon of the theater, as if removed from its ancestral roots, leaving the walls breathing tradition, is considered in the article as an experience of cultural and theatrical "exit" to the "stage" of digital reality. Among such experiments, the most significant are the social action "Help the doctors", as well as the experiments of "Minecraft" performances. In addition to the usual comparative historical method for art studies, others will be used, first of all, the formal method, which distinguishes the St. Petersburg school of theater studies. Scientific novelty is determined by the subject of research itself: BDT is considered as a phenomenon of a multi-genre cultural space, in which, as before, a special place is rightfully given to the actor, his role, as well as to the viewer who finds himself in the conditions of a new socio-cultural picture of the world. (shrink)

Evolution leads to more and more complex structures, e.g., molecules, cells and organisms. By means of such structures elementary dynamic bio-electrical fields originate in single cells. They further develop into neurons with neuronal fields, and these combine and integrate in brains into global neuro-electrical fields (NEF) as a medium for the fast representation of outer stimuli. The present hypothesis proposes a specific state of the global NEF in brains as the signature of consciousness. This NEF changes periodically between two states, (...) a de- and a hyperpolarized brain state, and these in turn are paralleled intimately by transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness. In the hyperpolarized state the elementary neuronal fields are ‘enslaved’ and synchronized by strong oscillations, and under these conditions the NEF is of low information capacity. In the depolarized state, however, the elementary fields are freed to self-organize and superimpose into an integrated NEF rich in information. In this condition the NEF acquires a qualitatively new state variable: consciousness. This new variable is no longer physically measurable; it can only be perceived by introspection. (shrink)

This study investigates the negative influence of consumer’s perceptions of online retailer’s deceptive practices on consumer’s relational variables. Also, the moderating role of product type, consumer’s attitude toward the Internet, and consumer’s demographics in the deception-relational outcomes link is considered. Data from 398 online consumers revealed that satisfaction totally mediated the influence of deception on loyalty. Furthermore, the deception-satisfaction link was moderated by all the hypothesized variables. Interestingly, a direct effect of deception on loyalty was found among more educated consumers, (...) consumers who had a more positive attitude toward the Internet and consumers who had purchased a physical product. Implications for theory and management are discussed. (shrink)

Le maintien des relations parent-enfant en prison représente un véritable défi au regard des différentes formes d’empêchement – véritable mise en suspens de la parentalité – auxquels se trouvent confrontés les parents détenus et les enfants ainsi que leurs accompagnants. Membre d’une recherche inter-disciplinaire (droit et psychologie), menée en France dans trois établissements pénitentiaires en appui sur des questionnaires et la conduite de focus-groups, l’auteur met en évidence, au travers d’une approche clinique psychodynamique, la tension qui s’exerce entre les attentes (...) exprimées par les parents détenus à l’égard de leurs enfants et la disqualification dont leur lien est l’objet, en raison du vécu des conditions de détention et d’accueil des enfants ainsi que de l’accès à la prison des personnes qui, de l’extérieur, sont en mesure de soutenir les relations parent-enfant (conjoint ou ex-conjoint, famille...). (shrink)

Philosophe polonais et disciple d'Edmund Husserl, Ingarden envisage la relation a l'oeuvre d'art comme une experience menee dans un echange reciproque et continu avec l'objet. Il defend ainsi une esthetique qui n'est ni purement subjectiviste en ce qu'elle n'est en rien reductible aux sentiments emotionnels d'un sujet, ni purement objectiviste en ce que les determinations reelles et materielles de l'oeuvre donnee exigent la participation intentionnelle du spectateur pour s'accomplir en manifestation intuitive concrete. Objet intentionnel par excellence, l'oeuvre d'art se tient (...) entre monde reel et monde spirituel, entre realite et jeu imaginaire. Elle se donne au spectateur comme une invitation a deployer son activite intentionnelle et, ce faisant, a participer a la vie de l'oeuvre a travers l'histoire de ses receptions. Les textes reunis ici offrent un large panorama des preoccupations esthetiques d'Ingarden. Ils presentent les principaux resultats de ses recherches theoriques concernant la nature des vecus et des objets esthetiques, ainsi que des applications concretes des analyses ontologiques menees sur differents types d'oeuvres d'art (litterature, peinture, architecture et film). L'ensemble des analyses ontologiques et phenomenologiques y est egalement toujours adosse a la question des valeurs, et de l'evaluation artistique ainsi qu'a la recherche d'un fondement objectif des valeurs. (shrink)

Die Buchreihe Konzepte der Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft gibt Aufschluss über Prinzipien, Probleme und Verfahrensweisen philologischer Forschung im weitesten Sinne und dient einer Bestimmung des Standorts der Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft. Die Reihe übergreift Einzelsprachen und Einzelliteraturen. Sie stellt sich in den Dienst der Reflexion und Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft. Die Bände sind zum Teil informierende Einführungen, zum Teil wissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge.