Cryptids – animals that are sometimes observed but have not been scientifically verified – can be said to belong to the realms of myth or imagination. They are often strongly associated with particular regions and landscapes, and are therefore frequently used for tourism, marketing, and regional branding purposes. Consequently, public authorities and government agencies must sometime navigate their relationship to these animals that may – or may not – exist. In this article, we discuss the Jämtland County Administrative Board’s decision in 1986 to safeguard a local cryptid, the Great Lake Monster. By following the Board’s handling of the case, we show how authorities, organizations, and private individuals apply conventional laws to an unconventional case, in unconventional ways. We introduce the term “playful legal space” to describe the space established by the Board in their attempt to navigate the tension of two simultaneously overlapping social frameworks – nature conservation of verified species and heritage preservation of a culturally important cryptid. The term introduced offers great potential to scholarship of various fields, and in further developments in understanding creativity in cultural and social life.
Borders cannot be avoided and will always be present in everyday life. Border issues may vary, starting from politics, geography, socio-economics, culture, and nature. Not to mention, much literature and films expose border issues as the main themes. Maleficent (2014) and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) depict the division between humans and nature, with humans representing the kingdom and the Moorland creatures as nature. This research employed a qualitative descriptive method with a thematic approach to identify and explore the main ideas underlying the films. This research found that the films highlight human behaviors like envy, lust, greed, and craftiness, while fairies are marginalized. Understanding and trust are needed to overcome border conflict, as seen in Phillip and Aurora’s wedding. This article contributes to ecosystem preservation and future research in ecocriticism and border issues. However, since this article only focuses on the ecological and border issues, any other issues are ruled out.
As artificial intelligence, robotics, and hybrid embodiment become increasingly embedded in daily life, legal systems are struggling to address the status, rights, and responsibilities of these posthuman entities. This article argues that such difficulty is not merely technical but symptomatic of deeper conceptual limitations embedded in modern legal thought. Drawing on monster theory, posthumanist philosophy, and speculative fiction, it contends that AI and cyborgs are consistently figured as monstrous within legal discourse – entities that disrupt the human/non-human binary and are thus marked for containment or exclusion. By analysing key texts such as Ex Machina, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Blade Runner, alongside legal proposals including the European Parliament’s 2017 motion on “electronic personhood” and Frank Pasquale’s New Laws of Robotics, the article shows how monstrosity functions as a juridico-cultural strategy. This juridico-cultural framing legitimises the exclusion of human, non-human, and hybrid bodies construed as monstrous by casting them as deviations from the human norm, while concealing the fact that legal personhood is a historically contingent and epistemically unstable category rather than a fixed ontological given. Rather than viewing monstrosity as a rhetorical flourish, the article reframes it as a threshold category that reveals the limits of humanist law and the need to reimagine its underlying assumptions. While this need may appear urgent at the conceptual level, the argument does not imply a hasty juridical transformation. Legal systems are designed to move slowly, and any incorporation of posthuman subjects must unfold with deliberation, caution, and iterative reflection. What is at stake here is not the acceleration of legal reform but the recognition that the epistemic conditions under which the law operates are already shifting. Against this backdrop, the article proposes a relational approach to legal subjectivity grounded in vulnerability, interdependence, and distributed agency – one capable of guiding gradual yet necessary adaptations. In this sense, speculative jurisprudence becomes not an immediate overhaul, but a method for cultivating long-term transformations that allow the law to evolve from a site of containment to a field of recognition and shared becoming.
Sustainability in agriculture is as much a policy goal as a cultural and political project: privileging scientific expertise, innovation, and entrepreneurship, it defines what counts as competent farming, sidelining the everyday, hands-on skills that actually sustain it. This paper examines how skills shape sustainability in Southeastern European agriculture, focusing on North Macedonia and Greece. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, and specifically the concepts of in-difference and tinkering, we analyse three ethnographic episodes – ploughing, spraying, and hoeing – to show how farmers enact multiple versions of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Beyond demonstrating multiplicity, our findings reveal that skill itself functions as a central coordinating mechanism, mediating between inherited knowledge, technoscientific guidance, social expectations, and labour organisation. Yet this coordination is not seamless: in making different sustainability demands workable in practice, certain forms of labour, knowledge, and responsibility are set apart and set aside. By focusing on the practices through which skill coordinates these demands, our approach reveals dynamics that remain hidden when policy focuses mostly on measurable outcomes, providing a basis for more socially just and inclusive sustainability interventions.
This article explores how invasive alien species are imagined, represented, and regulated in contemporary Sweden, focusing on the entanglement between biological threat, cultural fear, and bureaucratic control. Drawing on ethnographic material, policy analysis, and consultation documents, it examines how plants and animals such as Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, and the “killer slug” are framed through tropes of monstrosity in media, legislation, and public discourse. Using monster theory (Cohen 1996) and scholarship on lists and classification, the article argues that monstrosity not only shapes perceptions of invasive species but also infuses the legal and administrative systems designed to contain them. The emerging regulating complex, a network of EU and Swedish regulations, lists, and responsibilities, appears both as a tool for ecological order and as a hybrid, excessive, and unruly entity in itself. The study shows how attempts to tame ecological disorder through listing practices mirror the very qualities attributed to invasive species: hybridity, excess, and uncontrollability. The result is a perfect monster of the present environmental moment – an assemblage of biological and bureaucratic life that reflects contemporary anxieties about nature, governance, and the limits of human control.
This study explores the socio-spatial dynamics surrounding the creation and perception of Sara kulturhus, a flagship cultural centre in Skellefteå, Sweden. While initially being framed within a discourse of urban attractivity, the project later became entangled with narratives of green transition following the establishment of the Northvolt battery factory, which came to influence meaning-making. Drawing on interviews with local actors within the local cultural scene and an analysis of municipal documents, this study describes this process. The study demonstrates how the cultural centre became a site of negotiation between commercial and independent cultural values – celebrated as a symbol of progress yet criticised for centralising cultural resources and marginalising grassroots initiatives – while also revealing strategic rebranding efforts aimed at aligning with green transition objectives. Additionally, it reveals gendered concerns surrounding rapid industrialisation and the perceived role of culture in mitigating emerging social tensions. Ultimately, the study illustrates how flagship projects in peripheral regions are shaped by evolving discourses, local identity, and broader political-economic transformations; particularly how a discourse on ‘green transition’ stretched far beyond the industrial investments.
This article investigates how the Norwegian police’s Online Patrols contribute to the cultural production of monstrosity through their posts on social media. Drawing on theories of monstrosity as a shifting moral and cultural category, the study examines how police communication—though framed as preventive and informative—implicitly constructs boundaries between humanity and its monstrous others. The article employs the concept of “implicit narrative,” derived from Bakhtin’s theory of speech genres, to analyze how police posts implicitly activate broader cultural scripts. Through a close reading of posts about sexual predators, hate crime and women’s rights, the article explores different ways that the police’s social media presence draws from and play into ongoing cultural negotiations ultimately connected to morality and humanity. By situating police storytelling within the algorithmically governed and affectively charged landscape of social media, the article argues that digital policing practices are deeply entangled with cultural processes of othering. In this context, the law is not only a regulatory framework but also a narrative device through which monstrosity is constructed, contested, and circulated.
This introduction to the special issue on Monsters and the Law for Culture Unbound breaks down both how the editors see monsters within human lives and stories, real and fanciful, and how the authors in this collection explore themes within monster studies as applied to law or legal cases and/or within legal studies using monster theory. Three major themes emerge as central to his collection: technology as monster, nature and culture as boundaries highlighted and permeated by monsters, and monsters in our authoritative and cultural heritage.
Today, the phenomenon of the golem becomes a symbol of technological progress, especially in the form of modern android robots, raising important questions about technological singularity, subjectivity, and authorship (as presented in a number of legislative and regulatory documents). Creepy examples of golems in mythology, scientific and journalistic literature, performances, or modern technological experiments evoke feelings of fear and cause cognitive dissonance (the uncanny valley effect), which serves as a protective human reaction to the ‘behaviour of artificial monsters’. However, modern practices of organising the creative process using a brain-computer interface are taking on special characteristics, given the merging of humans and AI into a single organism. After all, in such practices, it is extremely difficult to determine the creativity of a technological golem and the corresponding risks to humans. Therefore, the article raises important questions about the potential misuse and abuse of AI’s technological capabilities in the production process, summarises legal and regulatory aspects, and considers possible future scenarios for the development of humanity in the context of transhumanist ideas.
Chancery records of medieval England record an interaction between two men, one disguised as a monster. The first man, William, asks the second to disclose his real identity and when he only growls, William kills him. The details of this case are recorded in the letters patent, which were sent out to the public to address particular legal and royal matters that everyone needed to know. William, the record tells the reader, had a mental health condition, and Augustine, the second man, refused to act human even when William asked him “in the name of God” to do so. This article explores several issues, including how William and Augustine know what monsters looked and acted like, how medieval English law defined monsters, and what medieval people understood about mental health.
Research on monstrification has broadly examined how Western rhetoric targets marginalized groups, including Muslim immigrants. Much less attention has focused on how religiously conservative Muslim immigrants, especially those affected by war, displacement, and trauma, may develop their own forms of counter-monstrification in response to exclusion in the host society. Drawing on Sweden as a case study, this conceptual article calls for a bilateral approach to monstrification. It employs the cognitive penetration framework, which holds that prior beliefs, fears, and cultural worldviews shape social perception. Because many religious communities accept the existence of supernatural beings, monstrification in such contexts cannot be understood solely as a rhetorical process. To explore this dynamic, the article turns to historical periods in which belief in supernatural beings was widespread. Two Swedish court cases from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries involving alleged encounters with the folk monsters Näcken and the Skogsrå illustrate how Christian legal authorities used such beliefs to reinforce institutional power and collective identity. The article proposes that analogous perceptual dynamics may arise within some Muslim subgroups in Sweden and argues that unaddressed fears of otherness may heighten vulnerability to extremist actors seeking to position themselves as alternative authorities. Finally, it suggests that drawing on the complexity of historical folkloric monsters in contemporary monster-film genres may allow cinema to mediate implicit fears within marginalized communities.
Technological innovations are often perceived as something alien, terrifying, and monstrous. Blockchain technology that creates shared “blocks” of information, which are interconnected and verified by the network comes as no exception. Two main features of blockchain (1) the absence of a gatekeeper organisation controlling the data, and (2) the fact that the information is rather hard to corrupt and hack, makes the technology very attractive and versatile. It is also what makes it appear frightening, especially for the traditionally centralised and hierarchical disciplines like law. As there is no one to control the data and the access to it, blockchains open a whole world of new possibilities with cryptocurrencies being one of the most popular examples. Approaching blockchain technologies in the context of J. J. Cohen’s monster theory demonstrates that they can be perceived as modern monsters. Our inability to understand the technology and the way it works makes this particular monster both fearful and desired (thesis 6), and law reacts to the fears that circulate in the society. Thus, blockchain technologies are often banned by law in a similar way as in medieval narratives dragons were banished by saints and heroes. Building on Cohen’s thesis 7, which argues that monsters show how we (mis)interpret our surroundings, this article will employ the historical perspective upon the fear of the monstrous to create a better understanding of the legal policies surrounding blockchains. By comparing current legal decisions concerning blockchain technology with the strategies of dealing with monsters, offered by medieval chronicles and collections of wonders (including William of Malmesbury and William of Newburgh), we will analyse the modern way of controlling monsters – or controlling the fear of them.
Visual reconstructions generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) are swiftly gaining popularity in both academic circles and entertainment industries. Without credible sources, disseminating AI-generated visual depictions of historical figures and ancient sites on social media may perpetuate misinformation and cognitive bias. AI-generated reconstructions have been developed within the scientific practice of History, Anthropology, and Archaeology. However, there are limited studies regarding the utilisation of AI to visualise historical objects, in terms of public reaction to the AI-generated visual. By conducting sentiment analysis of comments on AI Nusantara’s TikTok platform, the study intends to provide an overview of public response to the visual design of historical figures and sites generated by AI technology. The public response to AI is important because many researchers are using social media as a source of data to forecast and explain human behaviour in real life. Related to the use of AI technology that penetrates various fields of life, this research in general can be useful for reading public responses and tastes so that they can project the use of AI in the future. Sentiment analysis methodology was employed to analyse comments posted under uploaded AI-generated images of historical figures and sites. The sentiment classification process uses the Naïve Bayes classifier algorithm in the RapidMiner software. This study finds that public sentiment regarding the utilisation of AI is categorised into three domains: accuracy, technology, and common knowledge. The categorisation is based on scientific opinion and local knowledge opinion. Accuracy relates to the similarity of AI-generated visuals to public expectations. Technology refers to the public's curiosity about the tools that are used to create the visualisation. Common knowledge refers to public perception and custom. This study also illustrates how AI can facilitate the creation of creative characters which are accurate by integrating academic references.
This research explores three interrelated theoretical aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-mediated cultural heritage preservation: challenges in epistemological authenticity, power asymmetries in AI-driven conservation, and socio-technical structures in digital cultural activities. Employing a mixed-methods strategy coalescing critical discourse analysis, digital ethnography, and case study examination, the study probed AI-directed cultural heritage discussion and applications over the preceding decade. The findings exhibit that AI technologies concurrently augment conservation capacities while threatening historical legitimacy, enabling algorithmic bias and potential cultural homogenisation. The investigation unveils how AI conservation projects unreasonably give an advantage to Western European cultural artefacts regardless of Indigenous and Global South traditions composing a significant part of human cultural heritage. The study recommends an ethical structure dealing with representational power and data bias, which is causative to comprehending how technological structures mirror and redesign power relationships in cultural backgrounds. This exploration stresses the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration between heritage experts, technologists, and policymakers to guarantee impartial conservation processes.
Cultural heritage (CH) is a core element of the identity and self-determination of minorities and Indigenous peoples. Digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI), offer new ways to preserve, revitalise, and share CH. However, issues related to intellectual property, human rights, and data governance often limit fair participation and hinder authentic representation of these communities. This article examines these issues and explores governance models, proposing more inclusive frameworks for digital CH. Protecting, preserving, and revitalising the CH of minorities and Indigenous peoples has been prioritised by current regulatory frameworks, e.g. in the European Union. Nevertheless, there is a lack of comprehensive mapping of the current models of governance employed by CH institutions. Such mapping would enable scholars and stakeholders to better understand the challenges and opportunities posed by digitisation and AI, particularly regarding the authenticity of content representation in minority and Indigenous CH. This article offers a new holistic overview of governance models in the digitisation of Indigenous and minority CH. The findings are based on a scoping review undertaken to identify scientific publications dealing with the role of law and policies governing the participation of minorities in decision-making processes. This review sheds light on overlooked, unresolved, or controversial legal and policy issues implicit in the existing governance models. Such issues can hinder the participation of minorities in CH digitisation decision-making processes. Consequently, this can affect the authenticity of the contents of the digitised material. We conclude by proposing ways of leveraging user-centricity and proactiveness. This will promote more effective engagement and participatory practices to better support the existing governance frameworks for digitisation and the use of AI in relation to minority and Indigenous heritage.
This essay explores the legal challenges and risks posed by tools associated with artificial intelligence (AI) for the protection, preservation, promotion, and regeneration of digital cultural heritage. In particular, it focuses on copyright litigation over AI training projects. However, it also touches upon other forms of intellectual property protection, such as passing off, trademark law, publicity rights, patent law, and trade secrets. This article considers the implications of copyright litigation in respect of AI projects for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (composing the GLAM sector). It surveys the host of copyright action over AI projects – looking at literary works, journalism, databases, artistic works, musical works, performances, and cinematographic films. It explores the relationship between copyright law, the Creative Commons, and cultural heritage. It also considers how Indigenous intellectual property will be impacted by AI. The work investigates law reform options in respect of copyright law and AI in the GLAM sector. It also considers comparative perspectives on the regulation of AI – with a particular focus on copyright law, transparency, and AI training materials.
This article explores the interplay between traditional knowledge (TK), artificial intelligence (AI), and the law, with a focus on challenges and opportunities in protecting TK. TK, often intrinsic to the way of life of indigenous communities, faces threats of erosion, misappropriation, and neglect due to both modernisation and historical injustices. While digitisation and AI present promising tools for preserving and reconstructing lost TK, these technologies also raise concerns about authenticity and ownership. AI can support TK preservation through techniques such as deep learning and data mining, which can reconstruct lost elements and provide tools for cultural revitalisation. To ensure cultural authenticity and alignment with communal values, AI-driven restoration necessitates collaboration with traditional communities. This raises complex questions about whether AI-restored TK qualifies as authentic and registrable under existing legal TK protection frameworks. The article is divided into three sections, providing an overview and analysis of various legal aspects relating to the protection of TK in general and AI reconstructions of TK in particular. To this end, the article highlights the limitations of traditional intellectual property laws and rather focusses on national sui generis laws and the use of TK databases as a tool for protection. These sections are followed by a discussion, reflecting on the legal aspects in a wider cultural context, particularly proposing that authenticity should reflect the living community's values rather than rigid historical fidelity.
The museum, as an institution, has a long-standing tradition of presenting the public with seemingly authentic and evidence-based narratives. Recent surveys indicate that museums are widely regarded as highly trustworthy across various countries. However, as museum practices increasingly intersect with marginalised and contested politics, this trust can no longer be assumed. This article offers an in-depth process study of the development of the Swedish Holocaust Museum, with a particular focus on the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) project. DiT features video recordings of Holocaust survivors, each of whom has been filmed responding to approximately 1,000 questions. Visitors engage with these testimonies in real time, through AI driven natural language processing. The analysis draws on a review of documentation and communications, as well as observations and interviews with museum professionals and visitors. It is guided by the conceptual distinction and operationalisation of relational and essential authenticity, and situated within the broader context of the affective turn in museums. A critical dialogue with contemporary scholarship explores the implications of AI technologies for authenticity and trust in the museum sector. The study identifies a notable shift over time in how the term ‘AI’ is used and understood, accompanied by emerging ethical concerns. Developing a shared institutional language around new technologies has proven challenging. In just a few years, AI has moved from being framed as an exciting innovation in exhibition design to a more cautiously referenced, and sometimes avoided concept. This evolution presents significant challenges to the accurate representation of historical evidence, the authenticity of survivor testimonies, and the ethical integrity of the narratives conveyed. While visitors generally express trust in the DiT narratives, persistent concerns remain regarding the role of AI in shaping evidence-based content and the ethics of digitally mediated representation.
This paper discusses the experiments with human subjects in clinical trials related to the investigation of African human trypanosomiasis at Lisbon’s Colonial Hospital during the first decades of the twentieth century. The research draws on evidentiary photographs and archival documents produced by leading Portuguese tropical medicine researchers. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first Portuguese medical mission went to Angola and São Tomé to study African trypanosomiasis. Images of ill persons, some of them in near-death condition, illustrated the mission’s report. The investigation about sleeping sickness continued in the recently inaugurated School of Tropical Medicine in Lisbon, where instruction and research on exotic pathologies relied on clinical cases brought to the metropole. Since 1903, the colonies’ health departments sent patients affected by tropical diseases to the Colonial Hospital in the Portuguese capital. Flies of the Glossina genus, identified as the causes of the illness, were also shipped for medical entomology studies. Ayres Kopke, professor of bacteriology and parasitology at the School of Tropical Medicine, was responsible for the institution’s insect collection and was one of the leading “sleeping sickness” researchers. In Kopke’s files, kept at the Hospital archive, a few portraits of Africans lay among photographs of flies and protozoa. The portraits of Africans at Lisbon’s Colonial Hospital are evidence of life stories that intertwine with the history of tropical medicine in the context of colonial empires.
