To Örebro University

Through an increased knowledge of the causes of violence, violence prevention can be more effective. Such knowledge thus generates profits for society at large. The sports movement is often perceived as a health supporting arena. However, critical researchhas shown the opposite: For example there is a connection between (male athletes’) sexist and homophobic jargon and the inclination to practice violence against other men and women outside the sports environment. The purpose of this ongoing project is to examine how two traditionally male dominated, Swedish sports (ice hockey and football) can be understood as arenas for political socialization. By interviewing sports men and identifying their attitudes to violence (in a wide sense) a more qualified knowledge can be created about the potential of sports as a violent aggravating arena. Is there a homophobic, sexist and in other ways discriminating discourse in these team sports, and, if so, how can we use this knowledge to create a more adequate basis for preventative actions? Theoretically, inspiration is drawn from critical studies on men and masculinities (e.g. works by Connell, Hearn, Messner) and methodologically the study employs a discursive approach inspired by works from Wetherell and Edley. The discussion will focus on the complex constructions of ‘men’ and ‘masculinities’ and the somewhat contradictive links to violence in these constructions.

Ice hockey has traditionally been a male-dominated culture that has both promoted and legitimised masculine dominance and gender inequality. The question is, how might ice hockey games, or other male-dominated sports, be organised differently and thus become more gender equal? Our ambition in this article is to initiate a discussion about how the construction of gender in ice hockey events operationalises or opposes the dominance of men and the marginalisation of women. The specific purpose is to identify techniques that configure men/masculinities as dominant in the ice hockey culture. Taking critical studies of men and masculinities as the point of departure, with a specific focus on the situational aspects of gender construction, this case study makes use of participatory observations of eight qualification games in Swedish semi-professional ice hockey. Our results show that men and certain types of masculinity dominate in the events framing the game and how this links the ice hockey players and the club with the local body-worker culture and its industrial, economic and historical context. Identification with these men is ideally created amongst male spectators, given that children and women do not have the same obvious place in the event’s narrative. Some clubs seek to include women and children in their matches, which affects both the atmosphere and the situation. By focusing on the events’ introductions and general narratives, and how they make use of a (masculine) version of the place’s past in the present, we discuss how the ice hockey culture contributes to the current hegemony of men and masculinities.

This thesis explores experiences of meaningfulness and meaninglessness in wage labor, and how these work experiences relate to social and organizational factors in work situations (situational meaning). It also explores the centrality and value of wage labor in life in a broader sense (existential meaning). In the research field ‘meaning of work’, previous research is primarily leadership-oriented, psychological and quantitative. Sociological studies have remained scarce, and the concept of meaning tends to be used in confused ways. An explicit philosophically informed sociological perspective of lived experience, action and meaning is lacking. The thesis argues that this can be initiated through theorizing and interviews with a social phenomenological focus. Theoretically and empirically, the thesis contributes with a sociological perspective that integrates social phenomenological and structure-oriented perspectives. Based on 20 interviews with presently employed and recently retired individuals from professional and more manually oriented occupations, the findings suggest that (a) the wage is fundamental for employees’ initial conceptions and experiences of the purposive meanings of working. (b) People are not really themselves at work. Such inauthenticity has consequences for work experiences of meaning. (c) Employees perceive that managers do not understand their work situations and what is realistic to achieve in them. This can become a source of meaninglessness at work. (d) Some experience working life as a whole meaningful for its broader life structuring temporal and practical functions in terms of socializing, routines and habits in everyday life. (e) Working life biographies matter. Previous work experiences from past and current occupations are central for understanding employees’ expectations of- and ways of framing their experiences of meaning in the current job. (f) At work, non-work activities may be experienced as more meaningful than work tasks. (g) Habits and routines from work may generate an embodied form of work centrality. They may become internalized and embodied and spill over to life outside of work; (h) Employees across occupations value disconnecting from work, either at or in life outside work. This may be difficult to achieve because of (g).

To promote leadership research on managers' motivation, a measurement (Andersen Motivation Profile Indicator [AMPI]) has been developed and tested that (a) measures achievement, affiliation, and power motivation; (b) measures the relative strengths of these factors; (c) rests explicitly on the definitions of McClelland; and (d) measures managers' work motivation. The questionnaire has been tested for reliability and validity with responses from 580 managers. The application of the instrument in four studies with responses from 565 managers in other organizations supported McClelland's theoretical claims: (a) managers have motivation profiles, (b) there are differences in motivation profiles between managers across organizational types, (c) there are no significant differences in motivation profiles between female and male managers, and (d) managers who are predominantly power motivated enhance organizational effectiveness. Arguably, the application of the instrument may be an indicator of its quality. The instrument facilitates leadership research on the relationship between managers' motivation profiles and organizational specifics, gender, sociocultural factors, and organizational outcomes.

In this chapter Linda Arnell examines how conceptions and norms regarding families and family patterns influence girls’ lives and the constructions of their subjectivity. Arnell focuses on 18-year-old Amanda’s narrative about her families and her troublesome upbringing. The narrative is understood as a continuous creation in relation to a broader societal narrative that occurs in intra-action with the researcher, and in relation to discursive possibilities and constraints. Through this one narrative the chapter examines how normative ideas about family can be understood as regulatory power structures that are ever-present in a complex and troubled narrative about family, girlhood, and a girl with experience of acting out.

The role and design of global expert organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) needs rethinking. Acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all model does not exist, we suggest a reflexive turn that implies treating the governance of expertise as a matter of political contestation.

This doctoral thesis considers how factors from the home country, the family, and the individual impact the risk for criminal offending among young males from a foreign background residing in Stockholm. I use Swedish register data to examine the risk for police registered suspicion of criminal offending. The introductory chapter presents an historical overview of immigration in Sweden, theories of criminal offending, and details about analysis of register data. It is followed by three empirical studies that consider unique risk factors for crime among children of immigrants while controlling for factors encountered within Sweden. The first study shows that young male children of immigrants do not seem to be inherently violent as a result of coming from a war-torn country. The second study indicates that it is not the age at immigration, but the family situation that seems to dictate criminal propensity. The final study suggests that threats of deportation and stricter immigration policies do not seem to deter criminality. The most interesting result was probably that high home country human development was a protective factor against crime. This is the first known work to uncover such a result. Future theoretical development may be best aimed at unpacking and empirically evaluating the human development index as a risk factor. Together, these three studies suggest that some previously unconsidered uniquely immigrant factors are related to risk for criminality. 

The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study are an ongoing longitudinal investigation of health and behavior of a complete birth cohort that was drawn from the greater Dunedin metropolitan area, located in the southern coastal region of New Zealand's South Island. This chapter describes the methods used to develop and carry out the Dunedin Study, and how research using the Dunedin Study data is conducted. Location data are used by a "sample tracer" who is employed at each assessment to track, locate, and recruit Study members. The Dunedin Study uses a prospective-longitudinal, correlational design. The basic strategy of the Dunedin Study involves testing for causal relations within this correlational design. The Dunedin Study has comprehensive biomarkers of metabolic, liver, kidney, cardiovascular, dental, immune, and respiratory function, facial aging, and telomere length measured repeatedly at ages 26, 32, 38, and 45 years.

Importance : Health disparities between African Americans and Whites have persisted in the United States. Researchers have recently hypothesized that the relatively poor health of African Americans may be caused, in part, by African American overrepresentation in the criminal justice system.

Objectives: To test the hypothesis that criminal justice system involvement is associated with poor health and greater health risk when controlling for unobserved family factors through a discordant sibling design.

Methods: Subjects were drawn from the Carolina African American Twin Study of Aging (CAATSA). Criminal conviction records were extracted from North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety. Six measures of health and one measure of health risk were analyzed. The health of convicted respondents was compared to that of unrelated non-convicted respondents matched on childhood and demographic factors (“matched sample”). Convicted respondents were also compared to non-convicted siblings (“discordant sibling sample”).

Results: The matched sample included 134 CAATSA respondents. On average, convicted CAATSA respondents, compared to matched non-convicted respondents, were in worse health. Convicted respondents had worse mean self-reported health, worse lung function, more depressive symptoms, and smoked more. The discordant sibling sample included 74 respondents. Convicted siblings and non-convicted siblings had similar self-reported health, depressive symptoms, and smoking. In general, non-convicted siblings were in worse health than non-convicted respondents from the matched sample, implying that poor health runs in families.

Conclusions: This study provided preliminary evidence that some of the association between a criminal record and poor health is confounded by family factors. Though more research is needed to support these results, the study suggests that criminal involvement may not be associated with the surfeit of health problems observed among African Americans. The criminal justice system, nonetheless, could be used to decrease the health disparity.

After the reform in 1962 Sweden had an educational system that mixed a certain amount of level grouping and theoretical and practical streams with social coherence in the sense that classes contained pupils opting for different alternatives in those respects. In the first part of the 1990s a series of rapid reforms entirely transformed Swedish education which, amongst other things, abolished all forms of differentiated teaching and different tracks. The new school is an entirely unitary school, underpinned by principles of inclusiveness. As such, the reforms are a remarkable example of reforms committed to ideological (in the wide sense) principles, which is testified by the way they were orchestrated and subsequently evaluated. To this day, there is a consensus within politics, top administration and academia th at any form of differentiation of levels or into tracks is detrimental at it stigmatize andperpetuate class society. The present study presents how the Swedish education was made to a completely unitary system in a series of intervention, ranging from a new grading system to a thoroughly redesigned teacher education. The main empirical contribution is a survey which display how teachers regard the effects of the different forms of heterogeneity at classroom level that often follow suit with a unitary school system. The effects of heterogeneity at the classroom level are a highly charged issue not only in Sweden and extent research is at best ambiguous regarding the effects. Teachers in theoretical subjects from lower and upper secondary schools were included (n=973, response rate 63 percent). The results show that heterogeneity is largest where the pupils are socio-economically disadvantaged. A large share of the teachersr eports that they find it difficult to fulfil the needs of both weak and strong pupils. Heterogeneity also seems to be connected to other aspects of the teachers working conditions, such as influence, tasks that are perceived as illegitimate and emotional strain. These results are finally discussed with reference to the ideological commitments that shaped the advent of these reforms and that still prevail.

Almost three decades have passed since the publishing of the last, and only, special issue on the sociology-environmental nexus in this journal. Since then, few of the articles published in Sociologisk Forskning have addressed climate change at all or in any substantial way. This silence could be interpreted as a quiet statement that sociology does not need to concern itself with climate change. However, no such line of argument is suggested in this special issue “Climate crisis”, which (re)presents current Swedish sociological research on climate change. Many of the authors take a similar stance that (environmental) sociology should not shy away from the climate crisis and the societal project of transformative change. Rather, sociologic research should study empirical cases of climate transitions or transformations, and contribute suggestions, as well as explanations, to how such changes can be accelerated.

This article explores the arguments for expanding deliberation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and scrutinizes their implications for the deliberative capacity of global environmental governance (GEG). An analysis of the IPCC is presented that builds on a systematic literature review and thus a broad set of scientific debates concerning the IPCC. Based on this analysis, two different paths are outlined, one moderate and one radical; these paths ascribe different democratizing functions to the IPCC and rely on different epistemologies. The moderate path emphasizes decision capacity, whereas the radical path strives to create deliberative space and to identify the value inherent in different claims. It is argued that the IPCC cannot accommodate the aspirations of these different pathways in a single assessment. Parallel assessments must be developed in complementary subject areas with different science-policy relations.

This study examines domestic media’s coverage of foreign wildfires from a climate change perspective. It explores Swedish newspapers’ coverage of wildfires in Australia, the Mediterranean region and the USA during a three-year period (February 2013–March 2016), focusing on how and to what extent climate change is viewed as an underlying cause. A central result is that climate change is mentioned far more often in the case of Australian wildfires than of fires in the other two regions. Another finding is that the climate change issue became more prominent after a severe domestic wildfire in 2014. These observations are also examined qualitatively through a combined frame and discourse study where the importance of foreign news values, the use of foreign sources, cultural proximity/distance, and domestication procedures are analyzed. In conclusion, foreign, domestic, and cultural factors in climate change reporting in relation to extreme events are further discussed.

In this article, we explore how young women in Sweden negotiate their gendered subject positions in relation to psychiatric diagnoses, particularly Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and the meanings of their own violent acts. The data consists of transcripts of face-to-face interviews with young women who have experienced using aggressive and violent acts. Given that the analysis is informed by ideas developed in discursive psychology, we identified the centrality of the concepts of responsibility and self-management. In this study responsibility is connected to gendered notions of passivity and activity. What we call the ordinary girl is neither too active nor too passive, and the extraordinary girl is either too active or too passive in the managing of herself. Similar to those of a troublesome past, the narratives of ADHD enable the understanding of an intelligible violent self, and therefore make female externalized violence what we describe as narrative-able.

Since publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987, the notion of sustainable developmenthas come to guide the pursuit of environmental reform by both public and private organizations and to facilitate communication among actors from different societal spheres. It is customary to characterize sustainable development in a familiar typology comprising three pillars: environmental, economic, and social. The relationships among these dimensions are generally assumed to be compatible and mutually supportive. However, previous research has found that when policy makers endorse sustainable development, the social dimension garners less attention and is particularly difficult to realize and operationalize. Recent years though have seen notable efforts among standard setters, planners, and practitioners in various sectors to address the often neglected social aspects of sustainability. Likewise, during the past decade, there have been efforts to develop theoretical frameworks to define and study social sustainability and to empirically investigate it in relation to “sustainability projects,” “sustainability practice,” and “sustainability initiatives.” This introductory article presents the topic and explains some of the challenges of incorporating social sustainability into a broad framework of sustainable development. Also considered is the potential of the social sustainability concept for sustainability projects and planning. This analysis is predicated on the work represented in this special issue and on related initiatives that explicitly discuss the social pillar of sustainable development and its relationship to the other dimensions.

In line with the current trend toward sustainability and CSR, organizations are pressured to assume extended responsibility. However, taking such a responsibility requires serious and challenging efforts as it appears to involve a wider range of issues and increased need for close interaction between actors along commodity chains. Using a qualitative case study approach, the present article focuses on Swedish public and private procurement organizations with attention paid to textiles and chemical risks. It focuses on two crucial aspects of buyers’ relationships with suppliers in their efforts to advance environmental responsibility-taking—monitoring and trust—as well as how they intersect. The aim is to demonstrate, both theoretically and empirically, the limits and possibilities of monitoring and trust for developing extended upstream responsibility. The article demonstrates the problems with, on one hand, simple ritualistic monitoring and, on the other, simple trust, and explores potentially constructive pathways to extended upstream responsibility at the intersection of monitoring and trust. In connection with the findings, the article argues that theories on responsible and sustainable supply chain management must also take the enormous variety of organizations into account: not only large, private, transnational companies, which the literature has until now been preoccupied with.

Overconsumption habits and structures have a huge environmental impact. The ar-ticle uses a qualitative interview study of environmentally conscious Swedish citizens undertaking a lifestyle transformation process to reduce their overall consumption in the context of mass consumption society. The purpose is to emphasise the importance of a transformative learning perspective to understand pathways and challenges for transforming towards less consumerist lifestyles. The study demonstrates five mutually bolstering aspects of learning experiences in this lifestyle transformation process: 1) factual and theoretical learning; 2) practical, corporal and tacit learning; 3) personal and emotional learning; 4) social relational learning; and 5) critical learning. It stresses the importance of a social dimension including the interplay of macro, meso and micro levels.

This entry presents drivers of mass/excess consumption by drawing on classic and contemporary sociological concepts and research. Mass consumption is understood as the totality of consumption of commoditized goods and services, which is increasing in a fundamentally unsustainable way. The entry relates mass consumption to concepts such as consumerism, excess, and sufficiency. It argues that consumption, including needs/wants/desires, needs to be studied as social and symbolic, that is, part of a communicative act expressing identity, status, social roles, belongings, etc. It furthermore argues there is a need to combine macro- (e.g. institutions, infrastructure, consumer culture, social stratification), meso- (e.g. social practices) and micro-perspectives (socialization, identity, social relationships) to explain and understand the phenomenon. Temporal and spatial aspects are also considered.

Increasing numbers of people in welfare societies express worries about their ecological footprint. Some make efforts to significantly reduce their consumption. Because people have been socialized into a society of mass/excess consumption, there are great challenges. How can someone learn to downsize when society incessantly compels her to continue with mass consumption habits? This article demonstrates, theoretically and empirically, how social relations, within a societal context of mass consumption, shape the conditions for transforming lifestyles to reduce consumption. It contributes to sociology as well as a growing interdisciplinary literature on reduced consumption by focusing specifically on challenges related to social relations. The study uses a qualitative approach and an interview study of 24 people in Sweden making significant efforts to reduce their consumption. Findings – both perceived challenges and creative ways of coping with them – are related to four analytical themes: (1) the intersection of everyday rituals and consumption; (2) the norms and normality of mass consumption; (3) social comparison and status consumption; and (4) social and community support for reducing consumption.

There is broad support worldwide for the concept of sustainable development and the integration of its three pillars: economicdevelopment, environmental protection and social development. Nevertheless, previous research shows substantial difficul-ties associated with fully incorporating and operationalising social sustainability features in various sectors. The presentarticle aims to explore further the reasons why incorporation of social sustainability aspects appears to pose a challenge.The article has a twofold explorative aim. First, the aim is to identify opportunities/benefits or difficulties/detriments thatemerge when actors try to incorporate social aspects into sustainability projects. Second, the article probes for explanationsfor the observed challenges. This is done by referring to a case study examining how the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)has attempted to incorporate social sustainability goals, principles and criteria. Using qualitative interviews, FSC-relateddocuments, participant observation, as well as previous research, the article examines the successes and challenges asso-ciated with including social sustainability features in the standards and certification process. Observed achievements anddifficulties are highlighted in relation to four general aspects: (1) improvement of substantive social sustainability goals; (2)local organisation, empowerment and employment; (3) communication; and (4) small-scale and community-based forestry.The article suggests and analyses eight reasons for these challenges, which relate to discursive, structural or organisationalaspects. The findings presented here may also be useful in attempts to understand other similar integrative transnationaland/or local sustainability projects

Reflexivity and its counterpart— anti-reflexivity— are key concepts in environmental sociology. Reflexivity and similar concepts are presented as means for taking constructive steps towards sustainability in face of the often wicked nature (complex, uncertain, dynamic, value-laden, dilemmatic, ambivalent) of socio-ecological problems and risks. Anti-reflexivity is the suppressing or resisting of reflexivity. This entry discusses definitions of reflexivity, anti-reflexivity and related concepts based on key scholarly work in environmental sociology. From this field of research, reflexivity— or its absence/resistance— is discussed with regards to the system or macro level (society at large, state apparatus, the scientific field or general discourses in the public sphere), the process level (governance networks, decision-making processes), or at the level of individual and collective choices of action (consumption/lifestyle choices, social movements).

The objective of this study is to gain insights about the opportunities andchallenges that private and public organisations face regarding the developmentof responsible procurement in a complex and uncertain issue. The paper focuseson chemicals in textiles, and uses a qualitative methodology with semi-structuredinterviews. Key elements of a pro-active, responsible procurement strategy aredefined, including criteria such as using a preventive, systematic, responsive,integrative and reflective approach. The analysis includes the following topics: (1)priorities and knowledge; (2) communicative strategies; (3) policy instruments; (4)monitoring and trust in relation to suppliers. The results show a fairly modestlevel of organisational responsibility, although it is possible to observe an initialpositive development.

The synergies and trade-offs between the various dimensions of sustainable development are attracting a rising scholarly attention. Departing from the scholarly debate, this article focuses on internal relationships within social sustainability. Our key claim is that it is diffi cult to strengthen substantive social sustainability goals unless there are key elements of social sustainability contained in the very procedures intended to work toward sustainability. Our analysis, informed by an organizing perspective, is based on a set of case studies on multi-stakeholder transnational sustainability projects (sustainability standards). This article explores six challenges related to the achievement of such procedures that can facilitate substantive social sustainability. Three of these concern the formulation of standards and policies, and three the implementation of standards and policies. To achieve substantive social sustainability procedures must be set in motion with abilities to take hold of people's concerns, frames, resources, as well as existing relevant institutions and infrastructures.

Departing from previous theoretical and empirical studies on sustainable supply-chain management, we investigate organizational commitment (drivers and motivations) and capabilities (resources, structures, and policy instruments) in sustainable procurement of “noncore” products. By focusing on chemicals in textiles, the article explores the activities of differently sized organizations and discusses the potentials and limitations of sustainable procurement measures. The study is based on a qualitative and comparative approach, with empirical findings from 26 case studies of Swedish public and private procurement organizations. These organizations operate in the sectors of hotels/ conference venues, transport, cinema, interior design, and hospitals/daycare. While this work demonstrates major challenges for buyers to take into account peripheral items in sustainable procurement, it also identifies constructive measures for moving forward. A general sustainability/environmental focus can, as an effect, spill over to areas perceived as peripheral.

This paper introduces the Special Volume on sustainable and responsible supply chain governance. As globalized supply chains cross multiple regulatory borders, the firms involved in these chains come under increasing pressure from consumers, NGOs and governments to accept responsibility for social and environmental matters beyond their immediate organizational boundaries. Governance arrangements for global supply chains are therefore increasingly faced with sustainability requirements of production and consumption. Our primary objectives for this introductory paper are to explore the governance challenges that globalized supply chains and networks face in becoming sustainable and responsible, and thence to identify opportunities for promoting sustainable and responsible governance. In doing so, we draw on 16 articles published in this Special Volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production as well as upon the broader sustainable supply chain governance literature. We argue that the border-crossing nature of global supply chains comes with six major challenges (or gaps) in sustainability governance and that firms and others attempt to address these using a range of tools including eco-labels, codes of conduct, auditing procedures, product information systems, procurement guidelines, and eco-branding. However, these tools are not sufficient, by themselves, to bridge the geographical, informational, communication, compliance, power and legitimacy gaps that challenge sustainable global chains. What else is required? The articles in this Special Volume suggest that coalition and institution building on a broader scale is essential through, for example, the development of inclusive multi-stakeholder coalitions; flexibility to adapt global governance arrangements to local social and ecological contexts of production and consumption; supplementing effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms with education and other programs to build compliance capacity; and integration of reflexive learning to improve governance arrangements over time.

In policy and research on sustainable consumption in general, and climate-oriented consumption specifically, key questions centre around whether people are motivated and prompted to support such consumption. A common claim in the scholarly debate is that policy makers, in face of fundamental governance challenges, refrain from taking responsibility and instead invest unrealistic hopes in that consumers will solve pressing environmental problems through consumer choice. Although green consumption is challenging, specifically climate-friendly consumption is even more so, due to the particularly encompassing, complex and abstract sets of problems and since climate impact concerns the totality of one’s consumption. Nevertheless, consumers are called to participate in the task to save the planet. This article draws on existing literature on climate-oriented consumption with the aim of contributing to a proper understanding of the relation between consumer action and climate mitigation. It provides a synthesis and presents key constraining mechanisms sorted under five themes: the value-action gap, individualisation of responsibility, knowledge gap, ethical fetishism and the rebound effect. This article concludes with a discussion of perspectives that endorse a socially embedded view of the citizen-consumer. The discussion indicates pathways for how to counteract the constraining mechanisms and open up room for climate-friendly citizen-consumers.